Four Rounds: The Timberwolves were built for this, was Jayson Tatum?

The Talking Point: Minnesota’s defense

A big takeaway from the last week of the NBA playoffs.

There’s one possession from this Minnesota Timberwolves–Denver Nuggets series that I keep playing back in my head.

Down five with three minutes left in the first game of the series, the Nuggets went to one of their staples. Nikola Jokic is at the nail, Aaron Gordon screens for Jamal Murray, who whips around and takes the handoff from Jokic. It flows into a pick-and-roll and Murray hits Jokic on the short roll, who lobs it up to Gordon, who has catapulted his way around to the baseline. 

Voilà. The Jokic-Gordon lob. A play that has been deemed “the most unstoppable play in basketball.”

Rudy Gobert swatted the ball away like a fly fluttering over his french onion soup.

In many ways, the Timberwolves are a team constructed to stop the Nuggets, designed by the architect of the reigning champs. When former Nuggets GM Tim Connoly took over as the show-runner in Minnesota, he quickly made the polarizing deal for Gobert, pairing the lumbering 7-footer with his in-house big man Karl-Anthony Towns. The trade and the expensive price were widely panned. It’s been nothing short of a home run.

Gobert won his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award this season, anchoring the regular season’s No. 1 defense, which has only gotten better in these playoffs. He'll be back for Game 3 on Friday night after missing Game 2 due to the birth of his child. The Timberwolves have zoomed out to a 2-0 lead over the Nuggets, and the series is heading to Minnesota for two games on Friday and Sunday. A sweep is in play.

Anthony Edwards has garnered the headlines, and rightly so. If the greatest of all time is the GOAT, Ant is the KID. But the Timberwolves would not be here without their defense.

The length of Gobert, Towns, Jaden McDaniels and Edwards has halted the gears of Denver’s Swiss-movement offense, but it’s not just the wingspans. The Wolves have expertly scouted the team they were created to defeat.

Gobert breaking up the Jokic-Gordon lob with the ease of a dad swatting away his kid’s shot in the pool is just one example. Here’s another.

Murray tries to get into another staple play — the pocket pass to Jokic. Nickeil Alexander-Walker chases Murray over the screen and Naz Reid presses up on Jokic. It’s timed well. Both Alexander-Walker and Reid are positioned to get the deflection. Just look at this window Murray had to thread this needle through:

This is key to Minnesota’s defensive strategy. It’s not enough to simply force misses. They have cranked the dials all the way toward forcing turnovers. These turnovers have added jet fuel to Minnesota’s offense and created key swing moments in games. 

According to Cleaning the Glass, 60 percent of Minnesota’s steals have led to a chance to score in transition and the Wolves are adding 6.3 points per 100 possessions through transition play while the Nuggets are losing nearly a point per 100 possessions in the transition game. The Timberwolves are dictating the terms of engagement.

It’s easy to point to offense as the problem for Denver — and it is. But so is the defense. If the Nuggets are to get their hands around this series, it will start with tightening the screws on the defensive end and playing the same level of effort and focus that the Timberwolves have dialed up.

C’mon, what is this?

If you want to win a championship, you have to play with championship-level effort. So far, the reigning champs have failed to do that, while the Timberwolves look like a team — literally — built for this moment.

The Reset: Jayson Tatum is letting his moment slip away

Sometimes an old narrative needs another look. 

After the Boston Celtics cruised to a 25-point win in Game 1 of their series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Payton Pritchard was asked about Jayson Tatum’s shooting. On a night when Jaylen Brown went off for 32 and Derrick White had 25, Tatum scored 18 points on 7-of-19 shooting, including 0-of-5 from 3-point range.

“It’s just the casuals who think it’s all about the shots,” Pritchard told reporters at Wednesday’s practice. “But there’s so many different areas he can affect the game. If he only gets 18 points, but we get a win by 25 points, he was very impactful."

Even after their surprising Game 2 loss to the Cavaliers, the Celtics will tell you that Tatum is the silent engine helping the team cruise through these playoffs. Coach Joe Mazzulla cites Tatum’s screening and playmaking as drivers of the offense.

I mean … yeah … I guess.

But doesn’t it feel like Tatum should be doing more?

It’s not that Tatum is hurting the Celtics, who are out-scoring their opponents by 11.3 points per game this postseason. He’s definitely helping. His assist numbers have gone up from the regular season and yeah, Boston, we heard you, his screen game is sick.

But the same player that Celtics fans were lobbying should be a bigger part of the MVP conversation hasn’t been a big part of these playoffs.

He was alarmingly out-played by Cleveland's Donovan Mitchell in Game 2. Yes, Tatum had 25 points and Mitchell had 29, but it felt like Mitchell had 49 and Tatum had 15. (Perhaps because Mitchell shot 53 percent overall and Tatum shot 41 percent.)

As Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Brunson assert themselves as the faces of the NBA’s next generation, 26-year-old Tatum has been little more than a curious line in a box score.

Tatum’s usage rate has dropped from 29.6 percent in the regular season to 25.5 percent in the playoffs. In other words, he’s being used more like Franz Wagner than Paolo Banchero. More Robin than Batman. This tweet might be a bit harsh, but I get it.

All of this is less of a critique and more of an observation. It’s cool that White has ascended and Brown has stepped up, and it’s not as if the Celtics have needed a big Tatum game yet.

Maybe Tatum will step up when the Celtics finally do need him. And they will need him if they are going to win a championship. Even if the Eastern Conference finals don’t pose much of a threat, the NBA Finals will.

Tatum didn’t rise to the moment in Boston’s loss to the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 Finals and maybe that memory is influencing this uneasy feeling and questions from Boston-based media about Tatum’s involvement.

The Celtics need to squash questions about their ability to perform in high-stakes situations and have yet to be tested. At some point, they will be tested. And in that moment, they’ll need Tatum to move up from the backseat, take the wheel, and meet the moment.

Observations

The Josh Giddey question

One of the biggest questions going into the Thunder-Mavericks series was how Dallas would go about defending Josh Giddey. In the regular season, the Mavs mostly had their big man play off Giddey to guard the paint. In Game 1, coach Jason Kidd started differently, with Luka Doncic assigned to Giddey.

On the first possession, Chet Holmgren missed a tough, turnaround jumper in part because Dallas had three bodies in the paint. It didn’t take long for the Thunder to adjust. In fact, it took about 70 seconds. On Oklahoma City’s next halfcourt possession, they had Giddey set a screen to get Doncic switched onto Gilgeous-Alexander, who drove by his fellow MVP finalist for an easy layup.

Eventually, the Mavericks shifted back to having a center defend Giddey, who played just 17 minutes in the game. Coach Mark Daigneault went with Aaron Wiggins and Cason Wallace as the fifth guy down the stretch. The Thunder have options, but they don’t wait for breaks in the game to make adjustments.

In Game 2, Daigneault yanked Giddey after falling into a seven-point hole halfway through the first quarter and surprisingly went with Jaylen Williams to provide more rim protection. Then, they started the second half with Aaron Wiggins in Giddey's place. The Thunder have been out-scored by 27 points in Giddey's minutes this series. We've seen a lot of adjustments other than a new starting lineup. After Game 2's loss, it's fair to wonder if more drastic changes are coming.

Isaiah Hartenstein as an offensive hub

Jalen Brunson and the Knicks offense is as heliocentric as they come. So when Brunson left in the first quarter of the Knicks’ Game 2 win over the Pacers with a foot injury, it looked like this magic bus was about to get to its stop. Tom Thibodeau needed to find a new hub on offense, and quickly.

He turned to Isaiah Hartenstein, who would finish with a team-high eight assists. Hartenstein has eclipsed that mark only twice this season and averaged 2.5 assists per game. Despite the numbers, he’s a good passer and has been throughout his career.

In a pinch, Hartenstein can do a spot-on Domantas Sabonis impression.

His Jokic isn’t half bad, either.

When the Pacers finally started trapping Brunson at half court (who returned in the second half), Hartenstein was the release valve and found Donte DiVincenzo for a stinging 3-pointer in the corner. 

If Brunson is forced to miss time, this series could be over. He’s that important. But if he’s available and the Knicks want to reduce some of the wear and tear, it wouldn’t hurt to run more offense through Hartenstein.

Is Myles Turner leveling up?

Something has gotten into Myles Turner. I can’t quite explain it, but he seems to really be enjoying these playoffs.

Veteran players will tell you the playoffs require more force and decisiveness. Turner, who has a reputation as a face-up finesse player, got the memo. His rollicking rolls to the basket have been especially fun to watch.

That’s not a roll, that’s a full-out, 47-foot sprint to the basket from halfcourt. When he misses the off-balance layup, he muscles his way for the tip-in. There are plenty of instances like this through these playoffs.

Take That For Data

Some numbers and stats, some real and some made up.

37%: That’s the share of the Knicks’ second-chance points that they are scoring in the fourth quarter of these playoffs. The Knicks are averaging 18.5 second-chance points per playoff game, and 6.9 of them come in the fourth quarter. They are scoring an average of 4.1 more second-chance points than their opponents in these playoffs in the fourth quarter. If it feels like the Knicks get most of their offensive rebounds lare in the game, that’s because they do. Those points are back-breaking. 

12.5: That’s the difference between the point differential of these Oklahoma City Thunder and the historical point differential of teams with an average age younger than 24, per The Ringer’s Zach Kram. We’ve never seen this young of a team, this good.

9: By winning his third MVP this season, Nikola Jokic became the ninth player to ever win the award three times. The others: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Moses Malone. If the Jokic, 29, wins another, he’ll be in the company of only Abdul-Jabbar (six), Jordan (five) and LeBron (four).

45.3%: Even after Thursday night's 1 for 8 dud, Derrick White is shooting 45.3% on 9.1 3-point attempts per game in these playoffs. For context, only three players -- Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and James Harden -- have ever attempted that many 3s per game in a postseason. Curry in 2015 had the best shooting percentage at 42.2%. 

91 seconds: That’s how much time Josh Hart has spent on the bench over the last four games.

18: With 503 playoff points, Anthony Edwards is already the second-leading playoff scorer in Timberwolves history. At his rate of 29.6 points per playoff game, Edwards will surpass Kevin Garnett (1,049) in 18 more playoff games, or about 36 total. Garnett set the franchise record in 47 games, or 11 more.

500: That’s how many heating pads (the expensive kind I assume NBA teams use) that Jamal Murray could have bought with the $100,000 he was fined for throwing a heating pad at a referee in Denver’s Game 2 loss.