Four Rounds: Here's how the Timberwolves can even up the WCF

The Talking Point: Minnesota’s Drop Defense

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

TNT color analyst, former NBA head coach and Doritos truther Stan Van Gundy was all over it in Wednesday night’s Game 1 matchup between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Dallas Mavericks.

“I don’t like the drop coverage,” Van Gundy said for the umpteenth time after Luka Doncic found Daniel Gafford for a lob. “I think you got to come up, be aggressive at the point of the screen.”

Minnesota’s defensive strategy in its Game 1 loss to the Mavericks boiled down to this: When Gobert was involved in the screen and roll, he dropped into the paint to defend against rim attacks. When it was Karl-Anthony Towns who was pulled into the action, Towns stepped up to the level. It threw Dallas for a loop for the first few minutes, but not for long as Doncic and Kyrie Irving figured it out.

Doncic and Irving combined to score 63 points on 49 percent shooting in Dallas’ 108-105 win to kick off the Western Conference finals. The Timberwolves have to switch things up in how they defend them.

But, sorry Stan, nixing the drop coverage altogether isn’t it.

As Tom Haberstroh pointed out on X, the Mavericks scored six straight times at the basket after Gobert checked out of the game in the second quarter.

In all, they gave up 19 points in seven minutes with Gobert on the bench in the period, allowing the Mavs back into a game they’d ultimately win. 

The painted area will be a key battleground in this series. The Mavs and Wolves have allowed the fewest points in the paint this postseason among the teams left standing. Minnesota has allowed an average of 43.7 points in the paint in the playoffs but gave up 62 to Dallas on Wednesday night. That needs to be cleaned up.

But drill down a bit more, and you’ll see that the culprit isn’t the drop defense. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Mavs made 11 of their 22 shots in the non-restricted paint area, or 50%. That would have been the best mark in the league by a mile during the regular season when the Nuggets had the top conversation rate of 48.3 percent. The Mavericks ranked ninth. 

Credit to Doncic and Irving for making tough shots, but these are the shots the Timberwolves defense is designed to give up. 

The Mavericks can win this series, just like they took Game 1, if their two best players are consistently making these. The Timberwolves don’t have much choice but to live with that.

I mean, look what happened when they experimented with Gobert showing at the level. This is too easy for 77.

When Chris Finch and the Timberwolves watch the film, they’ll notice that Gobert could still be better. On the lob before Van Gundy’s rant, Gobert didn’t even put his hands up. That’s not a scheme issue, that’s an effort issue.

Then watch the play that triggers Van Gundy again. It’s not as simple as Doncic throwing it over Gobert. Look closely and you can see Gafford shoving Gobert off his spot, which opens up the passing window. Gobert has to be stronger.

Gafford and Dereck Lively II are tough SOBs who have developed chemistry with their stars. Luka and Kyrie are different than what Gobert and the Wolves have faced in these playoffs. They take weird angles and play slightly off-axis. They can seemingly speed up and slow down time. The vaunted Timberwolves defense will need time to adjust, and it will take a team effort.

There were signs late in Game 1 that they were already beginning to do so. Later in the third quarter after those series of lobs, the Mavericks went back to the Doncic-Lively pick-and-roll. Gobert, again, is in drop. But this time Towns lowers his shoulder and bumps Lively on the roll. It throws off the timing and Doncic is forced to take a mid-range jumper. 

Doncic made the shot because it was just one of those nights, but the Timberwolves will take that over a clean dunk at the basket.

Like this, there are things the Timberwolves should do to make things more difficult on the Mavericks’ offense, but abandoning what got them here is not one of them.

"I told the guys, 'It's been a long time since I've been this disappointed in your effort,” Finch said Thursday. “Your performance, your attitude, your application and attention to detail just wasn't there.' The Western Conference finals started. Not sure if they got the memo [then]. But they got it this afternoon."

The Reset: The Celtics’ championship hopes rest on Jaylen Brown

Sometimes an old narrative needs another look. 

Jaylen Brown matched his career playoff high with 40 points on Thursday, with 10 of them fueling Boston’s decisive 20-0 run in the first half to take the lead for good as the Celtics dominated the Pacers, 126-110, to go up 2-0 in the Eastern Conference finals. 

The win sets the stage for their second Finals appearance in three seasons. If all goes as planned, the Celtics will meet the Mavericks or Timberwolves in the Finals. To win a championship, the Celtics will need Brown to deliver more performances like he had Thursday night. He may even have to be Boston’s best player.

A running theme of the Celtics’ season has been questions about who among their ensemble is most important. Some say Derrick White, others of the galaxy-brained variety trumpet Kristaps Porzingis, while some decline to overthink it and go with Jayson Tatum.

Well, at the risk of overthinking it … it might be Brown. At least in the next round.

Just as the Pacers have done with Aaron Nesmith, whichever team comes out of the West will deploy their best perimeter defender on Tatum. Minnesota will trust Jaden McDaniels to hound the All-NBA First Teamer or Dallas will task Derrick Jones Jr. with the same assignment. That will leave a relatively weaker defender on Brown.

Tatum, ever the team player, has been happy to play the role of playmaker. With the opponent’s best defender preoccupied with him, Tatum reads the floor, makes the right pass and sets up open his teammates.

The other Celtics make the most of what the defense gives them. Brown will bite the hand that feeds, put a shoulder into his defender and look for more. Because of this, Brown is the Celtic who is not like the others. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

The Celtics’ superpower isn’t the jaw-dropping stuff of Luka, Kyrie or Ant. While those guys can make something out of nothing, the Celtics’ superpower is that they rarely throw away a possession with a bad shot. 

That’s nice when the good shots are available. When they aren’t, the Celtics will need someone who can play with stubborn force. 

The defenses Boston has faced in these playoffs have left a lot of low-hanging fruit. The Mavericks or Timberwolves won’t. Against either unit, the Celtics can’t simply hope to make tough shots — they’ll have to create them first. Open ones will be fewer and further between.

After this likely run through the East, Tatum will have to adjust. Meanwhile, Brown has been practicing. 

In other words, the Celtics are operating with the highest floor of any team remaining, but Brown very well could be the one who raises their ceiling.

Observations

Derrick White’s game-tying screen

A lot has been made about the Pacers’ decision not to foul up three before Jaylen Brown made the game-tying shot at the end of Game 1, but there hasn’t been enough focus on why Pascal Siakam was unable to foul him late.

"I wanted to foul as soon as I got to him, but I was a little late because of the screen," Siakam told reporters. “It's just a judgment call.”

The screen in question may have saved the Celtics nearly as much as Brown’s miraculous shot. On the inbound, 6-foot-4 Derrick White jumps in front of 6-foot-8 Siakam. That slowed down Siakam enough that, by the time he got to the corner, Brown was already gathering for his jumper.

Brown’s 3-pointer and Jayson Tatum’s 10 points in overtime grabbed the headlines, but White is beloved in Boston because he does the little things.

You have to guard Kyle Anderson from 12 feet out

While I understand leaving Kyle Anderson open from beyond the arc…

… This is just disrespectful.

He has time for a rhythm dribble! He’s in the paint!

Anderson was left open on four mid-range shots and, guess what, he made all four of them for eight points in a game decided by three. Leave Slo Mo open from 3-point range if you want, Mavs, but this is downright disrespectful and harmful.

Minnesota’s secret weapon

Outside of Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves don’t really have another traditional creator. Mike Conley can set a mean table but he isn’t driving, putting the defense in rotation and finding open shooters at this stage of his career.

That’s what makes this Towns to Gobert pick-and-roll such an important tool in Minnesota’s toolbox.

Towns had two assists in Game 1 and both went to Gobert. This has been a pet set that Finch has deployed dating back to when the Wolves first paired their 7-footers together last season. 

We start with HORNS, with Gobert and Towns at the elbows. Towns flashes across Gobert, who sets a screen on Towns’ man and the pair blow into a pick-and-roll. This is an easy pitch and catch. 

And like I said, they’ve been working on it. Before Towns was sidelined for most of his first season with Gobert, they experimented with something close to this set. Here’s an early, clunkier version from Minnesota’s third game of last season. From what I can tell, this is the first time they ran it with success.

Of course, this became a staple in the playbook and an important play in Minnesota’s second-round win over the Denver Nuggets. It was the first play the Timberwolves ran in their dominant Game 6 win.

And then in Game 7, they added a variation to it, having Towns and Gobert set up high and wide and then having Gobert essentially slipping the screen. The Nuggets, expecting the usual song and dance, were taken by surprise.

Two-Round Awards

We’re skipping our Take That For Data stats section to hand out some made-up awards through the first two rounds of the playoffs.

The “... He did that” Award: Luka Doncic

This is the best defensive play of Doncic’s career. 

Up two with a minute left in Game 1, Doncic — who does not dunk or jump very often — leaps to deflect a potential game-tying lob to Gobert. The Mavs defense is in total rotation. Matchups mixed all over the floor. Luka ends up on Gobert. This should be easy. But Luka times it perfectly. What a play.

MVP (of the first two rounds): Anthony Edwards

Edwards is leads all remaining scorers with 28.1 points per game in these playoffs on nearly 50-40-85 splits. He’s averaging 6.6 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 1.8 steals. He’s sixth in total plus-minus, behind only Jayson Tatum among No. 1 options (and Tatum’s paper-mache competition has a lot to do with his league-leading number). 

Ant has passed boss battle after boss battle, starting with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and then to Nikola Jokic and the reigning-champion Nuggets. He’s unflappable on offense and often overwhelming on defense. 

He might be the best two-way player left in the playoffs, and that’s including Tatum.

Edwards was, by his own admission, tired at the end of Minnesota’s Game 1 loss to the Mavericks. That’s not MVP talk. Expect a better response in Game 2 on Friday night.

Defensive Player of the Year (of the first two rounds): Chet Holmgren

It could be tempting here to go with the regular-season DPOY, Rudy Gobert, but a few things are working against him. 

(1.) He didn’t play in Minnesota’s Game 2 win over the Nuggets, which was easily the best defensive performance of the playoffs. (2.) As we discussed, he could have been better in Game 1 of the WCF and, (3.) He simply wasn’t the best defender in the playoffs.

I’d love to go with his teammate, Jaden McDaniels, whose perimeter defense set the tone for Minnesota’s series win over the Nuggets. But I need to wait and see how he holds up against the Mavericks. He could very well end up taking this award when we do it again. (Bookmark this prediction. He will.)

But, for now, we’re going with Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren. Holmgren was tremendous in his 10 playoff games. He led the postseason with 2.5 blocks per game and held opponents to 14.8 percentage points below their averaging shooting rate within six feet of the basket (and 8.3 percentage points below from everywhere on the floor). 

The Thunder also had the best defensive rating among teams that made it out of the first round, limiting oppoentns to 104.5 points per 100 possessions. Holmgren was the anchor of that. 

Although the Thunder did get beat on the boards by the Mavericks’ front line in the last round, that wasn’t all on Holmgren. But he was part of the problem, which is why there is an opening for someone else to grab this award later on.

Sixth Man of the Year (of the first two rounds): T.J. McConnell

This comes down to McConnell and the real Sixth Man of the Year (for the regular season) Naz Reid. 

McConnell is averaging virtually the same amount of points but laps Reid in playmaking, averaging 5.2 assists. That’s nearly as much as superstar starters Kyrie Irving and Jamal Murray have averaged in these playoffs.

What’s more is that McConnell is a plus-0.9 (Reid is a minus-0.1), ensuring that Indiana’s offense keeps flowing when Tyrese Haliburton is on the bench. McConnell pushes the pace and, though he’s very different than Haliburton, is a reliable steward of the offense that takes on Haliburton’s identity. He races down the court and creates open shots often before the opponent knows what hit them.

McConnell is eight years older than Haliburton and, before this stint, never really found the perfect role in the NBA. If this is his NBA destiny, it’s a pretty good one.