The Timberwolves Dominate The Thunder In Game 3

The Timberwolves Dominate The Thunder In Game 3

I created a new rule for myself. If a team goes up by 42 points, I get to film my video early. I get to film my video early. 42 point lead with a minute and 50 seconds left in the third quarter. I’m assuming that after this timeout, coach Mark Dayton was going to bench starters to get ready for game number four. But what a response for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a series that felt like it was over. I mean, it was definitely going to be over if they go down 03. They came out with a level of intensity. They came out with a new scheme that we gonna talk about. And I love when a team is down by 02 because they just have to try almost everything. They have to just say that, hey man, sometimes the better majority of the times the better team is going to win a series, but at least we could go without saying that we didn’t leave no stone unturned. Today’s stone that they flipped over for the first time was Terence Shannon Jr. Shout out to Chicago’s very own man. Having an impact, man. Having an impact in this game. Great defense, great transition. He even hit some jump shots. I don’t know how much he’ll play for the rest of the series, but that was something that coach Mark Dayton didn’t expect. He even tried to match and say, “Hey, you throw a rookie out there, I’m gonna throw a rookie out there.” AJ Mitchell, go ahead, lace him up. Uh AJ Mitchell did not have the same level of impact. Um and I’m right, okay, so AJ Mitchell’s back on the court. So yeah, they benched the starter, so this game is I mean, it was already over. It was 42 points, but it’s like officially officially over now. So when I take my notes in these games, a lot of the times I’ll make an observation. I put a question mark. Sometimes that question mark is like, “Hey, during the next time out, rewind. Go see if you saw that correctly.” Or at halftime, go look at these things. Um, sometimes it’s like a prediction. Hey, this is what I saw through the first two minutes and I wonder if this is going to be the theme or a consistent thing for the rest of this game. I was wrong on this first. So, let me read to you this question mark I have. Rudy Gobear unplayable again. Boy, was I wrong because I thought this was his best defensive outing in like the last two series. And we’ll get to that. The reason I had this in my notes because the first couple offensive possessions from the OKC Thunder were going at Rudy Goar. The first one being a four five lob that you see OKC run occasionally and then the next one being the Isaiah Harden staff floater and then on the other side of the ball Rudy Goar tried to dribble the ball and he dribbled it off his knees and turned the ball over and I’m like, “Yeah, this is not a good start. Get ready to learn Nas Reed 40 minutes or something.” But he wasn’t hitting shots until tonight either. So I just thought this might be another one of them games where he was going to be unplayable. But I thought he was amazing. Like by the time I finished these first three observations with him, I was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no. I’m wrong.” Because one thing that Rico Bear is amazing at, yeah, obviously I’ve been the Rico Bear propaganda guy um on YouTube for as long as I’ve been around here, but I can also say that he’s been dog for like the last two games and then a lot of the last series and then a lot of the series before that. I try to be as optimalistic as possible by recognizing that when Rudy Gobear is good defensively, it’s like really really good. You saw that today. But the thing that made Rudy Gobear not so great over the last two games um outside of him being offensive offensively challenged was that OKC is such a great mid-range shooting team that his normal level of defensive plan drop coverage is playing right into their their hands because they’re okay with hitting that mid-range jump shot time and time again. You think about a game number two, Jaylen Williams was absolutely disgusting in that area. And of course, MVP Shay is also there too. But in game number three, they decide to play Rudy Gobear up a lot higher. They decide to play everybody high tonight except for Shu Alexander. I’m like, that’s pretty interesting because Sha Alexander is not an amazing three-point shooter. He’s all right. He could be all right, but that’s not his bread and butter. And I thought they challenged him to take those shots today and made him extremely uncomfortable. They also just clogged up every single lane that that Shakes Alexander had saw for the last two games. Hey, somebody else beat us. Hey, none of y’all really been shooting the ball that that well. So, like, let’s really see what it’s about. And I do believe that, you know, this is just one small observation that Chad Homegrren’s lack of jump shooting over this playoff run has bit them in the in the butt more than it has not. And some of this game, they were just saying, “Shoot it. Shoot it. That’s a shot we want you to take.” And I’m confident that eventually that would be an amazing shot for for Chad. But throughout the course of this playoffs, that hasn’t been the case. So they clogged up these this paint. They run the pick and roll. And they had not for the first two series or first two games. I’m I’m kidding. Let me take that back. They had done it but just done it sporadically where they just brought Rudy Gobear or whoever was guarding the pick roll to the level. So now it’s just the two guys trapping at Sha Alexander. Well, in the first quarter I feel like we saw the worst quarter you’ll ever see from J. Halo. This is the worst game you see from an MVP level player like Shio Alexander. A guy that doesn’t turn the ball over very often. A guy that normally gets to the spots that he wants to get to time and time again just couldn’t do that today. And because of that, if he’s going to turn the ball over and he can’t get to his spots, he’s not going to be as impactful as the first two games of the series. I thought this was just a masterclass of making this team think and I felt like in the first two games they didn’t really do that too much. It was great. It was an absolutely great thing and the shooting has to come to like I mean if you think about the last series as well right you talk about them versus the different nuggets the shooting was the big thing. Who’s gonna step up without if it ain’t Shaggy Alexander. The last series JDub shot 22% from three. Chad Homer shot this. Everybody shot the ball poorly. But in the first two games of this series, you wouldn’t have thought that was the case from Minnesota side because they was guarding up as if this team is a great three-point shooting team, which they really have not been since the first round of the playoffs. So, we gonna see if y’all can hit some shots today, man. we gonna throw because one thing that they did um at the end of last game, game number two, is they did start to show those two bodies as Shay like pretty much all the time and then that’s when you saw Minnesota go that little run and it was like oh this they making it real interesting. It wasn’t really that interesting but they had found just a little bit of something something. I also thought that they ran that small ball lineup a lot at the end of that fourth quarter in M in OKC in game number two. They didn’t really run that too much tonight because they didn’t really need to because Rudy Gobear was so damn good defensively. Jaden McDaniels was so great defensively and I don’t know how the hell I’m five and a half minutes into this video and I ain’t mention the guy Anthony Edwards. You talk about a guy just just just continue to learn with his surroundings and adjust to what the opposing team is throwing at him. His final box scores 30 points, nine rebounds, six assists, um two steals, but this was such a phenomenal game. Some of the finishes that he had in this one were were insane. Some of the reads that he had offensively was so insane. the defense. The defense, we always know that uh he can turn it up defensively, but this was one of them, I will not lose this game type of performances from Anthony Edwards, and I thought it was great. On the contrast of that, I feel like it’s been rare in the series where you got an amazing Anthony Edwards game and also an amazing Julius Randle game. You got both of those things sim simultaneously today as Julius Randle gives them 24 on 60% shooting. Overall, I just felt like everybody stepped up and they even mentioned on the broadcast that the the role players um play better at home and you saw that you you just truly did see that because Nas Reed, who was 0 for 11 through the first uh two games of the series when it comes to three-point shooting, hit two threes tonight. Terrence Shannon again, now he has 15 points. So, he’s hooping again on this game and I can’t even see right now. So, this was just oh my god, Rob Billingham checked in and at the end of this video, we got to see Rob hoop. Uh but just overall this is an amazing amazing response from a team that had their back against the wall and they were calm cool collected. The um the the crowd was electric was which was amazing. And I wonder what co coach Mark Dayton tries to do to start game number four to prevent this from going to a two- two series because you really do want to take one of these on the road if you are OKC. At the beginning of the second half he ran with Isaiah Joe instead of Isaiah Hardenstein. So trying to figure out maybe if this jump shooting I mean they were down by 30 some points. So yeah, maybe we just need somebody that can shoot in there, but wonder if that’s going to be more of a game plan as they go forward where they stick with the double big lineup to start off with and keep running them a bunch of minutes together. Um, I don’t know. I thought Minnesota did an amazing job of denying ball on those high ball screens. Um, the ball the high dribble handoffs between Dub and whoever the center might be at the time, whether it be Hart or Hartenstein or Chad Homegrown. I thought they did an amazing job there and they was doing that pretty much on every handoff except for Sheio Salazer because you play too high on that and you play deny on that. if he gets around that corner, it’s GG. So, they again opted to to play back a little bit. And I thought this is again a master class. I can’t wait to rewatch that first quarter and only the defensive side of the ball for Minnesota because I thought this was as good as they’ve played in this series. We all know that this team’s ceiling defensively is so damn high. They just didn’t really showcase that a ton in the first two games. They would give you little stretches, but it wasn’t like a full, hey, this is who we are and we going to turn up from that. And now that the jump shot was fall, I mean, they shot 51% from three as of right now. I don’t know if those have been skewed since I started this video, but 51% from three. It’s It’s going to be hard to be the team that’s doing that if they’re taking 35 plus three. So, an amazing amazing bounce back. And I wonder, can they hold this momentum to what’s it today? Is Saturday to Monday’s night game. Do we get a Monday game or do they try to break them up again? Nope. Monday game. I I don’t know how they’re planning these things because sometimes we get the three three-day break. One time we get the one game break, one day break. I don’t know. But defense electric um OKC is not a high turnover team and even tonight the turnover numbers 13. But I felt like when the Minnesota Timber was one of their biggest run when they played their best ball that’s when they turned the ball over a lot and I’m talking about OKC. And then you did get a couple times where OKC was starting to figure it out um at the beginning of the third quarter and then Dub would like dribble off his knee and just like that the momentum has shifted and now they were on an 112 run and that has swung back to an 110 run for the Minnesota Timberwolves. They had answers. They had answers on top of answers and they were ready. And now the time is for, you know, Dub, who had been amazing through the first two games, to step up again because now Shay’s about to have it even harder for the rest of the series because Jay McDaniels has figured some things out and the team has figured some things out. So, it’s time for Chat. It’s It’s time for Dub to do it together. Even though I think they had a 2020 2020 game, like in game one or so. So, I don’t want to overreact too much from this one, but I’m happy. I’m happy because the way this was going from both sides of these damn conference finals, I ain’t know if these are gonna be short series or not, man.

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