Minnesota Sports Forum

Coolbreeze44 wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 7:17 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 6:36 pm

Phenom wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 4:02 pm Are the Thunder last years Wolves? Easy first round, hectic 7 game win vs Denver but not quite ready for the next step?

Are the Wolves last years Dallas? Low seed that methodically picks apart the opponents? But is overmatched in the Finals?

It doesn't seem like the Wolves would be overmatched in the Finals if they get there.

Hopefully they are this year's Celtics.

The problem is the Thunder, despite their 7-game series, have only three guys averaging 30 MPG or more in the playoffs. And the guy that has played the most, SGA, is at 36 MPG. Last year Ant averaged 40+ MPG and I think it's safe to say SGA is in better shape than Ant was last year. OKC has so many games where they just completely blow the doors off the other team. Plus they are young, so unfortunately I don't think they skip a beat after the Denver series. We can't count on them being tired.

I think it's more of an emotional hangover than a physical hangover we're hoping for. Those 7 games against Denver had to drain some of the mental sharpness of OKC. I don't expect it to last past tonight, but we might get a little edge from it in game 1.

Understood. We'll find out soon enough!

A real butt kicking in game 1, but oddly I feel a little more confident after watching. OkC played the same kind of defense against us that they did against Denver...pack the paint and let the other team take all the threes they want. And just like Denver missed so many open threes, so did we. It wasn't OkC's defense, we just missed shots. So I came into this series thinking we would win one game at home but lose 4-1. Now I think if OkC continues to play that type of defense, we're going to win at least 2 games. We were the 4th best 3-point shooting team in the league this season, and we're not going to miss 36 treys every night. We're not going to score much inside, and that will be tough on Ant, Ju, Naz and Jaden. But we're going to have at least two games where we shoot as well or better than we did all season. I'd love to see us shoot the lights out on Thursday and force OkC to change their defensive strategy the rest of the series. But they're not going to change unless we make them pay. Let's make them pay Thursday.