Minnesota Sports Forum

FNG wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 8:16 am

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2024 8:37 am

FNG wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2024 7:07 am

I'm a Finchie fan, but I've been disappointed with him during this series. The defensive lineup I suggested above was the better call than the way he coached in Games 1-3 (Jaden/Luka, Ant/Kyrie), and he finally came out the right way in Game 4...with a lot of Kyle sprinkled in on Luka. For the first time in this series, we looked like the better defensive team. Terrific defensive effort by Jaden and Ant in this game. Let's keep it up!

If I'm not mistaken, Ant did start the series checking Luka and it did not go well.

May be they are starting to figure things out. One thing I love about Ant is he does absorb things like a sponge and it felt like he was a bit smarter about navigating around screens - when to go over and when to go under.

Q, I think Ant has been on Kyrie right from the start of this series. Remember, Game 1 was the "Don't poke the bear" game? Immediately after Game 7 in Denver, Ant announced "I got Kyrie", and that pretty much sealed the deal that it was going to open that way. And of course we saw what happened...Kyrie went off for 30. I don't know if you watched the past-game stuff, but the TNT guys invited Kyrie on the stage with them, and they asked if he was especially inspired against Ant because of his brash statement. Kyrie handled the question very gracefully, and was quite complimentary of Ant...but you could tell all game he was especially motivated to show up the new kid. Anyway, it took Finchie a while to make the right adjustment, but I think we saw in Game 4 that Jaden is a much better option on Kyrie. Let's hope he has similar success tonight, and that Ant (and SloMo) do a good job on Luka too.