Jason Timpf & Colin Cowherd make Timberwolves-Thunder PREDICTIONS after Edwards HUGE Game 3 win

Jason Timpf & Colin Cowherd make Timberwolves-Thunder PREDICTIONS after Edwards HUGE Game 3 win

Okay, Western Conference game three, uh, pretty much unwatchable blowout. Uh, and and you know, there’s a there’s a way Minnesota has to play to beat OKC, and they played it. They did a lot of it. Um, it what’s what’s funny is it’s hard to find anybody that likes watching OKC play. you know, they’re they’re kind of hovering defense where they kind of they swarm on you and it’s I think you said it, it’s almost collegiate looking the way they play defense and then it’s a lot of uh you know drawing fouls. SJ I don’t think they’re a fun watch. I just think they’re really athletic and and really deep. Do I am I supposed to take anything beyond just a desperate well coached team in Minnesota ant crazy and it was just a young team listen really feeling their oats and just got overwhelmed and just packed it in. I mean it is anything more than that. Sorry to interrupt this great video but please remember to like and subscribe. Thank you. Now back to the video. I think there was something more in the sense that I I think that Oklahoma City is a better team than Minnesota, but I also don’t think they were the type of team that should blow them out multiple times in a row the way they did in game one and game two. Chris Finch was running what I thought was an extremely foolish game plan through the first two games. The gist of it is if I asked you what Shay Gildas Alexander’s strongest traits are as a basketball player, you’d say he’s probably the best driver of the basketball in the league. and he’s just like the best isolation player in the league. He was like of all isolation players who attempted at least 300 shots, he was number one by a mile this year. And so what Chris Finch was doing was picking up Shay at half court and letting him play one-on-one, staying glued home to shooters. And it was just like gift wrapping Sheay the perfect environment for him to thrive on. And it was hilarious juxtaposed with a Denver series where we saw the exact opposite game plan with lesser defensive personnel have a great deal of success. Now they won by 40 because yes there was an urgency gap and they shot a lot better and there were a lot like Anthony Edwards was hitting shots over triple teams in the second half. Like yeah there there was that was what caused it to manifest in a destructive blowout. But right away to start that game, one of the reasons why they were able to quickly uh assert control and hold Oklahoma City, I think they held him to 15 points in the first quarter. The reason why was they immediately dropped back to Denver’s game plan. They had they had Jaden meet Shay inside the three-point line cuz again, if you ball pressure a player, it’s the easiest time to drive past him because you’re being forward aggressive as a defender. So, of course, Shay’s going to go right around you. He’s literally the best. He drove to the basket more than 200 times more than the second best driver in the league this year, Colin. That’s like almost four times a game. He’s far and away the best driver. You can’t pick him up that far. He’s going to go right around you. Jaden sat back and then they started packing the paint off of shooters. And so as a result, it looked like the Denver game and all of a sudden it turned into Oklahoma City’s role players needing to knock down threes and Sheay having to make tougher decisions in the lane about whether or not he wanted to shoot over some double and triple teams where he can have some shortcomings. Because if I asked you what Sheay’s biggest weaknesses are, it’s probably his three-point shooting and his ability to process in traffic in the lane. Now, he’s still pretty good at those things, but they’re not his strengths. And in that end of the first half, he was 1 for four from three. He had four turnovers. He finished the game, I think, four for 15 from the field. Colin, only eight times all season did Shay shoot below 40% from the field. He is one of the most consistently efficient scorers in basketball. They held him to 31% in that game. So, there definitely was a better game plan. And so as a result, I think game four will be a closer, more tightly contested game because they’re running the right game plan for this environment. Well, and I think that one of the vulnerabilities of OKC is young teams, role players are generally not as good on the road in the playoffs, and that’s exactly what you saw. Like we’ve talked about this before, role players at home are just different players. They play, they need that confidence. They need the swagger of the crowd. Steph Curry doesn’t, aunt doesn’t. And I think when you force Oklahoma City and you just say, “Okay, okay, young guys, hit your shots on the road, loud crowd, it’s hard. It there’s a history. It’s like really, really hard.” And I also think and and I also think when you’re playing a team like um OKC, so I I wonder about sometimes OKC is so good defensively and so swarming and so frenetic. I do wonder if Minnesota players tend to spend so much of their oncourt time thinking about that. So much of playing OKC is deciphering their defense and figuring out. I mean, you have to really be you have to be be intentional when you play them defensively because they can trap you. They can make you look bad fast. And so I think sometimes when you play OKC, they don’t play like a lot of other teams. Nobody quite plays like them and I think they can get into your headsp space and and it’s why and and then you go on the road and they and now they lead by six and SGA is getting the whistle. I do feel some and I don’t know what the numbers say but I do feel like OKC is is like Indiana. I get the same team. Same team. I got enough veterans. I feel I feel with Oklahoma City they’re a vulnerable road team. I’ve got a shot. You know Denver, they didn’t look quite the same at Denver. Now, maybe it’s altitude. Now, maybe I’m wrong on this. The splits don’t say that, but I do feel like a OKC is is a vulnerable team on the road that you can win your home games against them. They’re three and three, Colin. And their defense uh their offense falls all the way down to a 104 offensive rating. That’s brutally bad. And their defense slides all the way up to 112, which is pretty bad for them. So, you’re I mean, you’re not what you’re on to is is what’s really been happening with them in this post. Okay. Okay. Yep. They’re a different offense on the road. They don’t feel like the same team. And that doesn’t surprise us because they’re young and they play with huge energy at home. But when I watch them on the road at Denver a couple times, I’m like, it just doesn’t feel the same. It’s a different I I honestly feel of all the teams left, I get the exact same team with M with Indiana, except for six minutes tonight. I feel like I get this exact same Pacer squad home and away. they want to run. If they can’t, you know, it just I just OKC of all the four teams left, I feel like I get a different OKC team home and away. To your point about adjusting to OKC’s defense, too. Like I thought A and Julius did a poor job in the first two games of attacking their defense. Like I Colin, like cuz Oklahoma City’s defense, I don’t know if you like just just stare at any possession. Shay’s ignoring whoever he’s guarding just sitting in the basket. They’ve got three, four, sometimes five guys in the paint on like every single drive. They’re daring Minnesota to take and make corner threes in this series. And in the like when after game one when Ant was like, I vowed to be more aggressive. I’m like, that’s not the answer. They’re like, you you’re going to just drive into the teeth of the defense and you’re going to take bad shots. And by the way, in the first half of game two, he took 18 shots and had 16 points to show for it. What was kind of fascinating about the flow of this series is to your point, you start to get more comfortable as you adjust. Ant and Julius were awesome in game three, especially early at making those corner kicks and they were finally knocking down those corner threes. They have had three games worth of experience against Oklahoma City’s base defensive scheme and they’re starting to figure it out a little bit. Oklahoma City saw that bad game plan for two games and then Finch throws the appropriate game plan in game three and they looked like completely shell shocked by it. I mean, Colin, I don’t know if you saw in game one, Oklahoma City only took like 20 threes. And the reason why is because they were staying glued off the ball and letting Shay play one-on-one. It’s a it’s such a fundamentally different defensive game plan that Minnesota’s rocking from this point forward. Now, to be clear, in game four, by the way, via DraftKings, all of our odds are from Draft DraftKings. Oklahoma City is a three-point favorite in game four. That feels right to me. I think it’s going to be a close game. They’re going to bring a intense defensive effort right away out the gates that’s going to test Ant and Julius’s decision-m again. And then you’re going to see Oklahoma City because they have seen this defense before with Denver, you’re going to see them kind of come into the game prepared for that game plan. That said, and this is the one thing I’d say, like I think Minnesota has a much better chance of beating Oklahoma City from this point forward than the Knicks do with the Pacers because what Minnesota can bring to the table is Denver caused problems for OKC with some weak defensive personnel. Minnesota’s got a bunch of really good defenders out there and so if they properly execute this game plan they could potentially do some real damage and and as long as they ride that momentum going forward in the series. There’s also a little bit of like a Ant straight up can be unguardable sometimes with some of the shots that he can make and like he was just better than Shay in game three and if he can maintain that that would be the other thing that could swing things back towards Minnesota.

Colin Cowherd and Jason Timpf react to the Western Conference NBA playoffs and discuss whether Game 3 was an outlier or will the Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves make it a series against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

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