THUNDER TAKE GAME 4 😯 Timberwolves’ fatigue, Chet Holmgren’s defense & more reaction 🏀 | SC with SVP

THUNDER TAKE GAME 4 😯 Timberwolves’ fatigue, Chet Holmgren’s defense & more reaction 🏀 | SC with SVP

with the game you just saw, Western Conference Finals, game four. We pick this up in the fourth. OKC leading by seven off the miss. So many offensive rebounds for OKC turned into second chance points. It’s a nine-point game. And that’s the one three he made all night. Five minutes to go. It’s a three-point game. Shay Gilis Alexander with the spin and the hit. The lead is five. Four-point game again. Shay starts to lose his footing. This was such a big time hit from Jaylen Williams. Hits the three. Look at that left foot. I don’t think it slid until the ball was out of his hands. Everybody in Minnesota was looking for a travel. Seven-point game late. Edwards finds Dante Devon Shenzo who had an enormous game. He hits the corner three, but every single time the Thunder had the answer. There’s Williams. Part of his 34point night off the miss. Second chance points for Minnesota. Five-point game. Cut to two as McDaniels hits the corner three late. It’s a two-point game. You got to get the miss. Got to get the rebound. They can’t quite do it. SGA throws it out of bounds and they put three on the clock. I don’t know how they determined.3, but that’s what they put on the clock. And on the inbound, it’s Williams who steals it. It was going to have to be something miraculous. There was no miracle for the home team. The Thunder are able to withstand 16, I beg your pardon, 18 threes for Minnesota. Tim Leggler joins me now. and legs. I think the theme of every conversation I’m going to have with whoever we talked to tonight was was the Thunder’s ability to answer every single time that the Timberwolves made a run. Down seven, Timberwolves tie it up. Answer late. Every single time, Tim, they never let the home team take the lead. How important was it for them to constantly be able to keep it at minimum tied? Completely agree. We talked about it a lot on the broadcast. It seemed like every time Minnesota got it to one possession game where they’re one stop away from potentially taking the lead and you know what the reaction is going to be like in that building and how the energy is going to change, they weren’t able to do it. And it was different guys but primarily their stars. When you get that kind of an offensive performance out of Jaylen Williams and Chad Homegrren to go along with what Shay normally does, you know, it’s a miracle really. Minnesota was even in this game. When you look at how quiet Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall were and all three of Oklahoma City’s big guns play that way offensively, it’s incredible they were in the game. Great production across their roster. Role players making three-point shots. They played hard the entire game, but they could not get over that hurdle because of the way Oklahoma City executed to get the shot that they wanted in the last six minutes and made those shots. put too much pressure on Minnesota ultimately and OKC now with a chance to go home and close this out. It’s an unbelievable performance from the bench. 64 from the bench and a dozen threes from Minnesota and that helps offset the quiet night for Randall and the the night from Anthony Edwards. And I’m interested Tim in your perspective because when he only takes 13 shots, you’re you’re wondering, well, was he passive? didn’t look like that as much as it just like the the focus of that Oklahoma City Thunder defense was to prevent him from getting loose. What did you see? No, I agree with that. I do think at certain times in the first half, I do think he lacked the the aggressiveness, but as the game wore on, I started to see why. I think he was really fatigued. And the reason, Scott, is because the number of different elite on ball defenders that Oklahoma City can hand him off to on any given possession. Forget about the course of the game. You’re talking about possessions where he’s starting with Kase Wallace on him. Elite, a switch happens. Now Jaylen Williams has him who’s an all league caliber defender. Oh, you don’t like that? How about another switch later in the possession where Lou Dort ends up on him or Alex Caruso? And by the way, if you finally do get some daylight and you get to the rim, Chad Homegrren’s waiting for you back there. I think it was mentally and physically exhausting for Anthony Edwards to go up against that caliber of defender literally every second of the game. So, it looked passive a little bit in the first half. The second half, I just thought it was a little bit of fatigue. Fortunately, his guys stepped up in a big way to keep them in the game, hoping for some lateg game heroics out of their best player, but it just wasn’t going to happen on this night. Tim, you’ve sat in this studio. You know that gigantic monitor. I’m looking at the 40 from Shay. That’s a playoff uh high in his young career. Chad in his home state, a big night, but I’m staring at that number in the middle. Jaylen Williams, Tim, 34 points. And and you think of the most important shots, the got to have it shots, it felt like he caught it and that ball was in the air in the blink of an eye and it was bottoms. What kind of confidence is that guy cooking with from from where you’re sitting? Yeah, he’s answered, Listen, he’s answered the call in a big way. You think about go back a year ago, their number one seed, they get knocked out in the second round. He didn’t play very well in that series and people started to wonder, is that good enough as your second best player? who Jaylen Williams is come into this year’s postseason. He has a little bit of an up and down start to the postseason, but look at the way he played in the closeout game against Denver. Look at the way he’s played in this series. Look at the way he played tonight. I thought he started the game with a mid-range jumper and a three right out of the gate. That set his night up. Now he’s ready to go and he was great late. There was a stretch when Shay was on the bench the beginning of the fourth quarter and Minnesota could not stop Jaylen Williams. He carried their offense for a little mini burst of his own and bought them time until Sheay came back in. Then he goes off ball and makes a couple of huge jumpers with all that attention given to Shay. This was a fantastic offensive performance for OKC and a credit to Minnesota that they were able to put up that kind of a number on a night when their two stars were just really just not impactful. They were in the game. It’s it’s a testament to how hard they played, how hard they fought, but actually it’s a bigger credit to OKC, the way they executed down the stretch. It’s a championship caliber close that they had to that game. Absolutely. You know, it’s 40 between the two. You know, you’re not going to beat a team like this. Um if you’re certainly turning it over 20 plus times and letting them have a bunch of second chance opportunities and we knew that. So Shay and Jub just really had in the fourth like what made it so difficult to defend and keep them from um you know they got to their spots and they they you know they rose up and made shots over us but we got to do a better job of trying to contain that first dribble like we did um game three did a much better job there. So Chris, you have a balance between Ant going off and given what the game gives him. How do you think he played tonight? Um, you know, I thought, uh, second half was more aggressive. He got downhill. We got him off the ball a little bit more. Uh, when he got to the paint, I thought he found some people, made the right plays. Um, you know, I think, uh, first half he lagged behind a little bit too much. You know, he needed to get out in front so we could stretch the floor and screen for him a bit. Um, but second half was much better. So, Chris, similarly, what did you think of Julius tonight? Yeah, I mean it’s, you know, um didn’t have a great night, obviously. Uh bench was really, really good, so I rolled with them. Uh you know, those they were finding shots for each other. Uh they shot the ball extremely well from the three-point line. Um which you know, we did a good job of finding those things. Um and uh you know, that that’s the guys that we we chose to go with there. So on on the offensive rebounds, was it from your vantage point a matter of of just effort or was it Yeah, I was, you know, they they on a lot of them hit first. They rebounded well out of their area. You know, they came from distance to get stuff. Um, you know, I think some of them were long. Uh those, you know, those we were all trying to track back and some of them were long and we weren’t able to get those particularly uh later in the game. So it was a two-point game. the difference in a 22 series or 3-1. How do you kind of emphasis upon your guys that there’s still more series to play? Yeah, for sure. 100%. Um, but you know, this isn’t the formula to get it done, you know, and I think that’s the most important thing to take away from tonight. So, Chris, you mentioned pregame about the decision-m when you guys are making quick decisions, those turnovers go down. How much of that did you see in terms of Yeah, they um you know, we didn’t I didn’t think we started the game with that, you know, kind of mindset and mentality and imposing ourselves offensively. Um you know, we turned it over seven times in the first quarter and a lot of those were just, you know, trying to play in traffic, taking on matchups that um invited more, you know, attention and more of a crowd um and not kind of really going anywhere. Again, we’re expecting Jaylen Williams to join us here shortly. We continue our conversation with Tim Leggler and legs. We talked about the defense and how you can you get passed off from one great defender to another. And then there’s Chad on the back end. How significant is that block late and the ability I watched the replay not to foul to to patiently wait and let the ball get beyond him and then use that length to get a block. I just thought that was an amazing moment. Incredible moment. big play in the game and I I said on the broadcast it was almost as if in some ways he baited Jade McDaniels into that shot because he cut off the right hand and he knew at that point the only thing available to him was to spin back and get to the left but to watch Chad Homegrren change directions knowing he’s got that reach at the end of it timed it perfectly and there were a number of plays you know he made throughout the game as their last line of defense on a night Scott when they were under assault Minnesota played really well offensively which is crazy because of the way Anthony Edwards and Randle struggled, but they really had a great offensive game. And there’s probably another dozen points out there if Chad Homegrren is not back there manning the paint and protecting the rim, either altering, blocking, or just being a flatout deterrent where you don’t try him in the first place. Yeah, I’m just looking at these numbers from Minnesota. O 51% 18 threes, 60 plus from your bench. Now granted, you make the point and it’s the correct one that their stars didn’t give them the kind of numbers you’re used to seeing, but that’s the recipe for the home team to even this series and they don’t. I just think that the maturation of this OKC team, and this is I think we referenced this the other night, right? Like the old school days where you you take your lumps, it takes some time. If you let things bake, you you know, it might work out. This OKC team now a game away from from advancing to the finals. It’s very difficult to envision that not happening whether it’s game five or down the road, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And you and think about how demoralizing it is for Minnesota to play as well as they did with pretty much everybody else on their roster. You still come up short and now you’ve got to go on the road. Team that lost, I think, six games all season in the regular season in that building. It’s going to be very difficult task for Minnesota.

Tim Legler joins Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter after the Oklahoma City Thunder’s victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals.

0:00 Game 4 recap
1:35 Legler joins
6:30 Chris Finch’s comments
9:19 Chet Holmgren’s late block

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