Are the Timberwolves Optimized to Challenge Nuggets | NBA 5/4
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00:03 People have been saying, pundits around the NBA, the Timberwolves,
00:07 they are perfectly constructed to combat the Denver Nuggets.
00:11 They have the two seven footers,
00:12 Jokic is not gonna have as much room to breathe.
00:15 You got Jaden McDaniels getting in the way of two man game.
00:19 Just from a real high level perspective, do you think that is true?
00:23 Do you think that the Wolves can hang with the Nuggets?
00:27 >> Well, I think we know they can.
00:28 Go back to the regular season, I realize that's a different time,
00:32 different focus, travel and back to backs.
00:35 It's not, everyone's on the playing field right now across the board in terms of
00:39 there are no advantages for certain teams other than I guess Denver does have
00:43 a home court advantage with the altitude and
00:46 it is a very difficult home playing environment.
00:48 As people know, visitors run into some trouble there.
00:51 But generally speaking, these teams matched up four times in the regular season.
00:56 You had two double digit wins by the Timberwolves and
00:59 two single digit wins by the Nuggets.
01:01 So I think Minnesota has proven it can hang with this Denver team.
01:05 And what's gonna be so different here in this series is, I think it's gonna be
01:10 a little bit of a feel out for game one, especially from a DFS perspective.
01:14 In terms of seeing, we know what the Nuggets generally are going to do.
01:18 They have played, it's not next level with Tibbs, but
01:21 they have played their four starters at least 35 minutes per game.
01:26 Their five starters, pardon me, very little bench run, it's a tight rotation.
01:30 On the other side for Minnesota,
01:31 you're seeing some guys that get a little bit of run in the playoffs.
01:35 They're playing around kind of matchup dependent.
01:39 For instance, in the last series, we saw very little Nas Reed because he wasn't
01:43 needed nearly as much with the size for Phoenix.
01:47 Here in this series, we expect to see a lot more Nas Reed,
01:51 maybe less Nikhil Alexander Walker,
01:53 who would effectively become the sixth man in that previous series.
01:58 He should see less run, fewer minutes here in this one.
02:02 And so I think they are just more willing to sort of play into the matchup, and
02:08 size is going to be key.
02:09 How in the world do you attempt to stop Nikola Jokic?
02:13 It feels borderline impossible.
02:15 The guy can obviously do everything, but they're gonna throw the kitchen sink at
02:18 him from towns and go bear and read and whatever size they can.
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