The Wolves vs. a brick wall

Holy Thunder

One of these players is the MVP. STEPHEN MATUREN/GETTY IMAGES

This is my favorite time of the NBA season. Four teams, games every night, it’s all lively and popping. (The Finals have a far slower pace and half as many teams.)

And this year it’s special. Watching the Thunder’s nail-biter Game 4 win in Minnesota, I had all kinds of thoughts that are below.

First, though, here’s David Thorpe’s high-level takeaway:

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the second-best player in the world, the best non-center, and the current MVP of this season. He’s 26. He has been through some regular season and postseason wars, and is at the top of his game. That means more times, far more times, than not, he will attempt to make the big plays. Often, he will succeed.

Anthony Edwards is 23 and though this is his second WCF, he still presents more as a potential MVP level player than an actual one. He simply is not on SGA’s level as a consistent play/shot maker. Perhaps one day he will get there, the league is too good to predict that.

That being written, Jalen Williams emerged as a star this year and hit monster shots in the clutch and all game. Maybe having SGA as a teammate helped, he is a better leader than Edwards at this point. It’s an OKC culture thing too, playing without fear. Either way, he was superb when the franchise needed him to be. As a team, “clutch” is a fair way to describe them. The Wolves were great down the stretch, OKC was better. That says mountains about leadership when they can perform like they did after the Saturday beatdown.

I think SGA had the best “mic’d up” moment ever when he was telling a teammate about what happened in Game 3, basically explaining that they were down 40 simply because they played terribly. He assured that teammate (Aaron Wiggins if I recall correctly) that he wasn’t guaranteeing a win in Game 4 if they played better, just a far more competitive game. In other words, don’t be scared about this outcome, we will be fine.

Julius Randle and Anthony Edwards are badass scorers

But in a pick and roll against Alex Caruso and Chet Holmgren, with Cason Wallace racing over to help when it gets close to the rim, they couldn’t get anything done. And, with the Thunder handsy and the refs in chill mode, they couldn’t crack the code all night. For long stretches they couldn’t get a shot off. An impeccable play from the regular season became a bad play.

This is a warning to the whole darn league of scorers. If you can’t solve that, if you can’t get a decent number of points per possession against this Thunder defense, you’re not going to win a title.

The slightly overweight version of your star: no shot. The slightly old version of your star: no shot. The star with one bad ankle: no shot.

The Thunder play defensive legends only

In Dunks and Threes “actual” setting (just go with it), the Thunder players rank just dominate the individual defensive ratings this regular season:

• #1 Alex Caruso

• #7 Chet Holmgren

• #11 Jalen Williams

• #13 Isaiah Hartenstein

• #30 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

• #47 Cason Wallace

• #58 Lu Dort

• #63 Kenrich Williams

I could keep going. By math, an average NBA team would have one player in the top thirty; the Thunder have five. With the players I listed above, the Thunder can mix and match all kinds of lineups without a single weak defender.

As Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, and Chet Holmgren make life a living hell for the Wolves’ go-to scorers, a normal temptation for Chris Finch would be to have his team pick on whoever is the Thunder’s weakest defender. Sometimes, no joke, the weakest defender the Thunder have on the floor is superior to any defender the Wolves are playing. The Thunder played most of the key late minutes with a lineup of Gilgeous-Alexander, Caruso, Dort, Williams, and Holmgren. When plan A didn’t work for the Wolves, they force-ged Alexander-Walker who was mostly incredible, but did have a late shot blocked by Lu Dort in memorable fashion.

Although to my eyes Jaden McDaniels looks superhuman (that thing he did contesting two fastbreak shots in the third quarter), the fact is that in defensive EPM this season, Rudy Gobert was 22nd in the league, McDaniels was 44th, and no other Wolf was in the league’s top 100. Again one team has nine players in the top 100, the other has two. For sheer defensive moxie, this Western Conference finals is not remotely close. (They don’t call him Donte Defensecenzo. Sorry, couldn’t resist the word play. In all honesty, DiVincenzo is one of the best Wolves, 130th in the league, just behind Nickiel Alexander-Walker.)

All the Wolves Chris Finch won’t play

For the last several years, the Nuggets were trapped in the reality that Calvin Booth had a strategy of keeping costs low (almost certainly at the billionaire’s behest), and letting players like KCP walk while drafting well and attempting to plug the holes with youngsters like Christian Braun and Peyton Watson. It worked well but not well enough to win Jokic a second title. And it might have worked better if coach Mike Malone had been anywhere close to on the same page. He simply did a terrible job of giving most of those youngsters royal jelly, and mostly they had a failure to thrive.

I wonder if the Wolves front office and coaching staff are on the same page. Despite Terrence Shannon Jr. getting a few minutes late in Game 4, mostly the role players on this team have played no role at all. From afar it appears that the front office has brought in a hell of a lot of players who have not blossomed. Here’s a quick rundown of some Wolves who have not been helpful to the team in these playoffs, mostly because they have been glued to the bench:

• 20-year-old eighth overall pick Rob Dillingham was cleared to return from an ankle sprain weeks ago.

• Jaylen Clark, 23-year-old second-round pick from UCLA, started a few games this season, guarded SGA about as well as anyone this season, and ranks as one of the Wolves’ better defenders in advanced stats.

• Joe Ingles and Bones Hyland are presumably on the roster to hit big shots, which they are not being asked to do.

• Tristen Newton is 24, and was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA tournament in 2024 after leading UConn to two straight titles.

• Josh Minott is 6-8 and 22 years old and on the Jamaican national team.

• Dutch center Jesse Edwards was the Wolves’ first call after the draft ended, presumably because they think he can do something helpful on the court.

• I think the idea is that 6-10 Luke Garza could be a modern athletic big who shoots 3s, but now that he’s 26 and in his “prime” he’s three years straight into shooting a worse percentage every year.

• Leonard Miller was one of David Thorpe’s favorite players in the 2023 NBA draft. “There’s something truly special—at least potentially so—about players who are guards their entire lives and then, after a huge growth spurt, are suddenly big men. Leonard Miller might be 6-10 or taller, but in his mind he’s still a guard. He makes dribble moves and attacks as if he’s a little guy—only he’s a foot taller (if not more) than when he first started doing those moves, so he’s loose with the ball. Often, Miller looks like he’s all legs, but the great news is that, in time, bodies tend to catch up to minds. Consider Joakim Noah and Anthony Davis, who were guards as younger teenagers before their huge growth spurts turned them into centers. Neither player in his prime was cooking defenders off the dribble.” None of that is happening.

It’s just such a huge advantage to the Thunder that the team has built deep trust with not only the ten players who regularly see the court, but even beyond that. After Game 3, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault was asked about a little lineup switch he had made after halftime. Would that be upsetting to the team? “It’s in the water,” he replied, meaning they play everyone all the time and that’s just normal.

DAVID: It’s important to note that perhaps none of those players, or maybe just one, could have helped last night. I’m sure Knicks fans didn’t blink an eye when their head coach ignored veterans Delon Wright and Landry Shamet while they lost the first two games at home against the Blur Ball Pacers. That was in the water too.

But then they played 24 combined minutes in the victorious Game 3, each guy scored and won their minutes on the court. Far more importantly, they allowed better players to rest. There’s a lesson here, one TrueHoop readers easily recognize.

Thing I would like David Thorpe to explain

When the Thunder were on defense in Game 4, a lot of times the paint was eerily vacant. This was because they were directing defenders to the Wolves’ stars. But sometimes I wonder if it was also kind of a trap, trying to bait the Wolves into abandoning their offense to dump the ball to Gobert or a cutter, who would then be subjected to the Thunder’s wildly fast ability to collapse to the ball.

DAVID: They prioritized pressing up to all the perimeter players, hoping to force drives and cuts before bringing help. They trust their speed to rotate. The Knicks used a similar strategy in Game 3’s win.

What Chris Finch thought about when he couldn’t sleep last night

Alex Caruso entirely unguarded in the dunker’s spot and then slipping into the paint, catching a pass, and making a reverse layup.

It happened twice in the fourth quarter.

In a game that ends up separated by two points, every play, at both ends, all night, is effectively the game-winning play.

The Wolves roster will change

David Thorpe would have a far more nuanced view, but watching the Wolves, I grew the conviction that this roster will never win a title. They have Anthony Edwards entering his prime, and killer surrounding pieces like Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker (for a few more days at least, he’s about to be an unrestricted free agent), and Donte DeVincenzo. Those are the bones of a super explosive, athletic, switchable team. I suspect Naz Reid fits with that vision as a mobile shooting giant.

But after that it gets a little clunky. Mike Conley Jr. is an essential leader and maestro of the offense, but he’s 6-foot-nothing and turning 38 soon. He’s physically outmatched by just about every single Thunder player. Thorpe has suggested for two seasons that it’s time to bring in a new point guard and let Conley come off the bench.

As a traditional big, Rudy Gobert is the player Shai most wants to iso against, and a liability against some lineups and playing styles. It’s not purely Rudy’s fault, but when Anthony Edwards doesn’t beat his man and savagely attack the rim, it’s often because he has teammates like Gobert and Randle who have drawn a crowd into the paint.

Many of the Wolves’ key players (Julius Randle, Rob Dillingham, Naz Reid, Anthony Edwards) are only middling defenders. So they play those guys for offense. But … they’re not exactly the Pacers on offense either. It’s good to be in the top ten as a team on offense and defense. But when you’re eighth in one and ninth in the other, you’re never going to be the best.

Exhaustion is … ideal?

Mike Breen: “Everybody out there on the floor right now looks absolutely exhausted and that's the way it should be.”

Richard Jefferson: “If you're not exhausted … you are not doing what you're supposed to do out there.”

The very next play: exhausted DiVincenzo drives on rested Cason Wallace and misses a very makable layup.

There were so many plays like this. With 4:01 left in the third quarter, and the game tied, Caruso struggled to inbound from the baseline. Cason Wallace raced over trailed by Ant Edwards, AKA the best athlete in the league. Wallace caught the ball with 4.5 seconds on the shot clock. He instantly pivoted, rose, and fired. In many settings, it would have been a dream setup for Edwards to sky and block that shot into the upper deck. Instead the tired-looking Edwards jumped about a third of his max height, and Cason drained a pretty easy jumper. The Thunder never trailed again.

Of course players should be willing to fight through massive fatigue. But–see Pacers, Indiana–of course the team performs better if the coach keeps fresh players out there. No one’s at their best exhausted.

Donte DiVincenzo didn’t “respond”

A lot of the broadcast is about this idea of “responding.” Something bad happens, and I guess the idea is that these high-level professional athletes might melt into a puddle of tears or something? Or, they keep playing and do a little better, which we call “responding.”

It’s just not how humans are wired. DiVincenzo made three of his fourteen shots a week ago, and then just three of eight in Game 2. Everyone made huge deal about that, even though everyone has bad shooting nights.

In Game 3 he took only two shots but made them both. In Game 4 he made seven of his 11 shots from the field, which prompted a fair amount of talk about how DiVincenzo responded.

But there’s research about this. In a massive study, when a good NBA player misses a shot, they’re more likely to make the next than if they had just hit.

Do you see the implications of that? It’s not weird that a guy who missed for a while would then make. It’s the most normal thing of all time. There’s just about no other way for it to go. Every player, at all times, is sliding around from making more to making less.

As Donte lines up to fire a 3 in Game 4, what’s the better predictor of that shot’s success: his season-long shooting percentage, or (as implied by the broadcast) his performance in some recent game? It’s not close. The bigger sample of the whole season has far more predictive value. He’s just a career 38 percent 3-point shooter, making 38 percent.

The only weird thing about Donte hitting big shots in Game 4–something he has been doing regularly for years–was the wack idea that he’d keep shooting like Game 1.

Coaches challenges undermine the broadcast

I wrote about referees yesterday, and made it sound pretty bad. But it struck me watching Game 4 that it’s worse than that. Now a big topic of the commentary is strategy around coach’s challenges. Players ask for them 100 times a night, Mike Breen and Doris Burke riff on when it is or isn’t a good idea.

And then now and again the green light flashes and entire broadcast is dedicated to the topic.

The topic, though, is referee mistakes. That’s what it’s all about. We’re using this giant platform, the NBA’s massive global television reach, to really pound home the idea that the only league (as opposed to team) employees on the floor, the referees, are mistake-riddled. The HD slow motion suggests that if you gave each coach 10 challenges, they might find 10 chances to get a call overturned, because the referees are that bad.

It’s presented as a little strategic choice for the coaches, but it’s undeniably also about incompetence. The first-draft calls are often wrong and the broadcast reminds us all about it.

What a weird way for the league to spread the gospel of the game.

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