Suns at Wolves R1G2

[Coolbreeze44]

Jaden’s presser was great, especially since he hardly ever gets the spotlight. His motivation seems to be at an all time high after missing out on the playoffs last year. He was great in game 1 too.

https://youtu.be/m6-FMF2fWWQ?si=IWAo3tKiKx8ywz6A

The dude is cool

[rapsuperstar31]

Now that we've seen Jaden play like this, we're gong to want to see him keep playing like this always. Of course in the regular season when refs are calling the game tighter it can be harder to get Jaden going. But those offensive rebounds are exactly what I want to see Jaden doing. Hopefully this playoffs puts Jaden on the map from an officiating perspective and refs stop calling the silly marginal contact fouls on Jaden going forward in his career .

[FNG]

I loved Finchie's comments about our defense that I just heard on Barreiro. Paraphrasing: "We have a lot of guys who love to guard, and they know they have to win that fistfight every time down the court." Barreiro asked how many coaches can say that...that they have a lot of guys who love to guard. And Dan pointed out that the defensive intensity seems to build as the game goes on. I don't know that we have mentioned here Ant picking up Durant full court when the game was all but over in the 4th quarter...he fouled him about 3 times before the ref finally called it! My initial thought was "What a nitwit...there's no reason to do that at this stage of the game". But quickly I realized that Ant was sending a message: "this is what we do, and it doesn't matter what the stage of the game is". I wonder if the Suns are going to be thinking the next couple days about how crazy and relentless Ant was on that play.

There is always the question about what wins championships...offense or defense. I think most NBA fans would argue offense, but I've always been firmly in the camp that defensive intensity is more likely to win you a championship than offense. Shooting can come and go, but if you have the mindset the Wolves have, defensive intensity is a constant.

Can't wait for Friday night...

[AbeVigodaLive]

I loved Finchie's comments about our defense that I just heard on Barreiro. Paraphrasing: "We have a lot of guys who love to guard, and they know they have to win that fistfight every time down the court." Barreiro asked how many coaches can say that...that they have a lot of guys who love to guard. And Dan pointed out that the defensive intensity seems to build as the game goes on. I don't know that we have mentioned here Ant picking up Durant full court when the game was all but over in the 4th quarter...he fouled him about 3 times before the ref finally called it! My initial thought was "What a nitwit...there's no reason to do that at this stage of the game". But quickly I realized that Ant was sending a message: "this is what we do, and it doesn't matter what the stage of the game is". I wonder if the Suns are going to be thinking the next couple days about how crazy and relentless Ant was on that play.

There is always the question about what wins championships...offense or defense. I think most NBA fans would argue offense, but I've always been firmly in the camp that defensive intensity is more likely to win you a championship than offense. Shooting can come and go, but if you have the mindset the Wolves have, defensive intensity is a constant.

Can't wait for Friday night...

Most champions enter the playoffs with a Top 10 offense and Top 10 defense.

Or, in the case of the 2014 Timberwolves... they end up below .500 with a Top 10 offense and Top 10 defense. Aaaargh!


[Note: To be fair, the '14 Wolves were top 10 on defense all season until the final week of the season. Finished #12. Still unheard of to be a below .500 team with those rankings though.]

[Q-is-here]

I loved Finchie's comments about our defense that I just heard on Barreiro. Paraphrasing: "We have a lot of guys who love to guard, and they know they have to win that fistfight every time down the court." Barreiro asked how many coaches can say that...that they have a lot of guys who love to guard. And Dan pointed out that the defensive intensity seems to build as the game goes on. I don't know that we have mentioned here Ant picking up Durant full court when the game was all but over in the 4th quarter...he fouled him about 3 times before the ref finally called it! My initial thought was "What a nitwit...there's no reason to do that at this stage of the game". But quickly I realized that Ant was sending a message: "this is what we do, and it doesn't matter what the stage of the game is". I wonder if the Suns are going to be thinking the next couple days about how crazy and relentless Ant was on that play.

There is always the question about what wins championships...offense or defense. I think most NBA fans would argue offense, but I've always been firmly in the camp that defensive intensity is more likely to win you a championship than offense. Shooting can come and go, but if you have the mindset the Wolves have, defensive intensity is a constant.

Can't wait for Friday night...

Most champions enter the playoffs with a Top 10 offense and Top 10 defense.

Or, in the case of the 2014 Timberwolves... they end up below .500 with a Top 10 offense and Top 10 defense. Aaaargh!


[Note: To be fair, the '14 Wolves were top 10 on defense all season until the final week of the season. Finished #12. Still unheard of to be a below .500 team with those rankings though.]

Ah yes, the '14 Wolves, whose Pythagorean record was 48-34! That was the year we lost all those close games and you thought it was Ricky's fault and I thought it was mostly bad luck.

Holy shit, that was 10 years ago, wow! That's also the season of the famous Alan Horton "Doh! Ed Malloy!!!" radio meltdown where Kevin Love was blatantly smacked on the forearm by Shawn Marion on a last second shot. It became one of many close games we lost that year.

[davemang]

Tim Legler was breaking down playoff series on Redicks podcast and one of his big takeaways from G2 is that even during a poor shooting night where he doesn’t have his offense going, it doesn’t affect Ant and he’s still able to impact winning in other aspects while bringing positive energy and hyping teammates up. Especially when he’s had all these highlights and crazy hype about being the next “face of the NBA” in the past few months and had an awesome showing in game one - he just cares about winning over “getting his”. Obviously we’re going to need better offense than what he provided in G2 most nights, but it feels good to have a guy like Ant who isn’t going to sulk or take himself out of games when he didn’t have it going.