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Sign up for your team newsletter now for free at LockdownDaily.com, the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. You are locked on Wolf's Postcast, part of Lockdown, Minnesota, on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. Ants last second, game tying three, it rims out. T-Wolves fall to Boston tonight, final score, 118, 115. What's going on? Back in the lab, back at it, another T-Wolves Postcast episode right here on the Lockdown Sports Minnesota Network. Our team every day, Jack Borman, with me as always, give them a follow at GR Borman 13. Jack, lots to get into from tonight, including an absolute, it was a three-point slugfest by both teams tonight, plus another quiet night for Ant in the box score, all things considering. But first quick reminder tonight's episode, brought to us by GameTime, GameTime, download the GameTime app, create an account, use code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase. That's locked on NBA for $20 off. Your first purchase. All right, so you always like to text me before the game, which I really appreciate, by the way, tonight's text. I just want to pull it up. Let's see what tonight's text read before the game. No jail in Brown or Porzingis tonight should be a win with a solid performance. Well, I mean, there was some good takeaways. There was some solid performances, but despite crawling all the way back, there were 14 down at one point, 13 down at halftime. Wolves had a great third quarter, which we'll get into to cut it close, having a chance to tie it with three seconds left. Anthony Edwards, three ball, it comes up short. So the tee will drop, but you know, I will say this was a very entertaining game on TNT, no less. So in front of a national audience, Kevin Harlan, one of my, he's one of his, if he's not the favorite, he's in like my top three when it comes to play by play guys for the national broadcast, but T wolves dropped this one, 17 and 16 on the year, 96 three-point shots attempted tonight combined, Celtics 22 for 57, wolves 21 for 39, Julius 27 points. He led the team 20 for Nas, 19 for Jaden, which was fantastic to watch. But you know, I mean, Jason Tatum was an absolute machine per usual, Derek White is just wildly annoying to play against. Just start with your biggest takeaways, Jack, under your a topics from this one, first and foremost. Yeah, first and foremost, just an awesome basketball game again, another game where, you know, even though the wolves lost, it was just a ton of fun to, you know, to have a seat and target center tonight and be able to take in a really entertaining back and forth game that was kind of fun to watch the two teams throw, throw punches at each other, you know, metaphorically speaking, and the biggest battle coming into this game was unquestionably the three-point line. Both these teams are in the top three in the league and in terms of the percentage of their total points that come from beyond the arc, while both being excellent three-point defenses, they are great at kind of winning that three-point math equation of consistently taking more threes than your opponent, both teams are in the top five and their opponent shooting the fewest amount of threes per game. And that certainly did not happen in this game. They got out fast and furious with the three-pointers. The wolves first seven field goals attempted were all three-pointers. They started four of seven. Well, Boston, I think seven of their first nine were threes. So they were one of sevens from the floor. It was hilarious. The first quarter was hilarious, man. The first-- Yeah, it was seven minutes was hilarious. Yeah. Yeah, I think I have it written down in the first quarter, yeah. In the first 10 minutes, Boston's 16 of their first 19 shots were threes and 11 of the wolves first 16 shots were threes. So 27 of the first 35 shots in the first 10 minutes for threes, which is kind of crazy coming into this game. And final tally, the wolves end up shooting an outrageous number for threes. They were 21 of 39 from three, 54%. But Boston made one more three, 22 of their 57 shots from beyond the arc, 39%, which is still a great number for a Celtics team that has been struggling to knock down the three of late. And have kind of been dealing with some three-point variants of late. That's why they're five and five in their last 10 games after starting, I think, 19 and four. Obviously, some injuries are mixed into that as well, but it's just kind of a crazy night for the wolves. And then when the three ball wasn't falling for guys like Sam Houser, Al Horford, or Derek White, or Drew Holiday, then Jason Tatum was just torching this team in isolation, particularly in that third quarter. He had 16 of his 33 points in the third quarter, had zero turnovers while he was going on that just forces switch, get a bucket type of run that was really impressive to watch. And the Timberwolves just aren't super great at sending a second guy to an opposing star player because they're so used to, whether it be Jim McDaniel's, Nikki Alexander Walker or Anthony Edwards, even time to even Chenzo or Nas Reed guarding those guys on an island and doing a good job of it, that they don't normally need to send a second guy. So a lot of times when the wolves did send a second guy, whether it be Tatum or Derek White or someone else, the Celtics did a great job of just making a simple pass. A lot of times resulted in an easy bucket right underneath the hoop, whether it be for Nemias-Cada or a cutter, whomever it may be. And yeah, I mean, to hold Jason Tatum 6 of 17 from 3 is a pretty good mark considering how many 3-point shots he was really getting him up. But 7 of 10 from 2, and a lot of those 2's were pretty tough isolation scores in the mid-range. There wasn't a whole lot at the rim for Jason Tatum. So you got to tip your cap to him. I know it pains a lot of people to admit, but Jason Tatum is a pretty darn good basketball player when he's got a guy on an island and he's an excellent job. The players around him did an excellent job of forcing switches to get McDaniel's off of him to get Randall on him and in the first half they got Mike Conley switched onto him. A decent amount also did that in the third quarter as well. So the Celtics just went matchup hunting when the 3-point shot wasn't falling and Tatum did a great job carrying the load at the point of the game where the Celtics 3-point shooting really took a nose dive. And the other big one for me is just turnovers, right? We were at 16 turnovers, Celtics only had four turnovers. Coming into this game, the Timmer Wolves were 23rd in the league. So eighth worst in the league in turnover percentage. So the percentage of turnover or percentage of possessions that end in a turnover. That's 16 turnovers, I believe, on their, what was it, 85 possessions tonight? Yeah, it's like 19% turnover percentage there, which would be worst in the league for, you know, if you extrapolated that, you know, to a team number over the course of a season. And the Celtics scored 22 points off of those turnovers. Meanwhile, the Wolves just scored four points off of Boston's turnovers, even though the Timmer Wolves shot 54% from three. It's pretty tough to win a game in the NBA when you lose that points off turnover differential by 18 points. And the Wolves coming into this game, 26th and points off turnover differential. So the amount of points off turnovers they score, subtracted by the points off turnovers are opponent score. There were minus 5.8 in the last five games, and they've gotten absolutely destroyed by OKC in the last game. And in Boston tonight, there was a big reason why the Celtics won on that huge run, won the third quarter, I believe 34 to 16. It was just very similar to that OKC game and that you had one really bad quarter that kind of soured what was really a good performance in the rest of the game. And it was just unfortunate that that hole that they dug in that one quarter just proved to be proved to be a little too much and certainly doesn't help when Anthony Edwards has just 15 points on 15 shots. So another game, another subpar game from Ant, we'll get into it a little bit more here moving on. Yeah, just real quick, just to tack onto the turnover topic, you know, 22 points to four points off those turnovers that you mentioned. That's a huge discrepancy, not to mention Boston had 18 more shots attempted as well. So I mean, you look at the turnovers and it's like, OK, a lot of those just came from those turnovers specifically right there alone, but maybe you said this already. I might have missed it. Where is this wolves team as far as the turnovers go just amongst the rest of the league? Because it does feel like when you sit down and watch them night after night, it has been one of the biggest things holding the back from any type of like real consistency possession to possession, but also game to game as well. Yeah, no question about it. I don't love looking at rock turnover numbers across the league just as much because some teams like to play really fast. The Tim Roles are, you know, bottom 10 in the league in pace, bottom five in the league and pace. So, you know, that's why I like looking at turnover percentage a little bit better. The wolves are 24th this season in turnover percentage, about 16% of their possessions end in a turnover. And for the Tim Roles, it's just unfortunate because either you're a team that has played at a considerably slower pace these last three seasons as you've leaned into defense really being your identity. And when you lean into defense being your identity, you play to slower pace. There's just so much less of a margin for air offensively when you do have all those turnovers, because inherently you're just not going to have as many possessions where you can make up for it. And to the Tim Roles credit, they have done a very good job this season enforcing opponent turnovers, their fifth in opponent turnover percentage, about 16%. But despite that, they're sixth in opponent turnover percentage, but they're just 19th in points off turnovers. And so the fact that they can't couple forcing turnovers with scoring off of those turnovers is just a bit of a bummer considering that it feels like when the wolves turn it over, most of those turnovers are live ball turnovers that result in points going the other way. So again, like you said, great fallout that the Celtics had had 18 more shot attempts than the wolves. They've done a great job of winning in that, just the overall total shot battle as has Oklahoma City and Houston who are also two teams that are right up there near the top of the leaderboard. So yeah, it's just becoming imperative for the Tim Roles to take care of the ball and they had some stretches where they did that really well, we'll get to that in the next segment. Yeah, just the bumper that it feels like that's the, that's why they've lost a lot of these games. I know, I know it'll be just steals alone in a nine steals for Boston to T wolves one. Just it's such an advantage there in a three point game and a one possession game. Unfortunately, even just one of those might have been the difference between in a win a loss again in such a tight game. Plenty more deep down for this one. I want to talk a little bit more about the third quarter ball movement that sparked that 11 to two run got the wolves back into this one. 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All right, one of the reasons the wolves were able to erase that lead in the third quarter, again, they were down 13 at halftime, they come out, they had an 8-0 run, they finished with another 11 to 2 run, well, one, just like we're talking about, they didn't have any turnovers. So imagine that good things happen when they're not turning the ball over. But what else did you specifically see though in that third quarter? Because that it just felt like to the human eye, that was some of the better, more efficient ball the wolves have put together this year, I'll just say that. So what did they do and what do they maybe need to continue to accomplish more consistently on a bigger scale, specifically when you watched that third quarter? Yeah, and Anthony Edwards had zero points and took one shot attempt in that third quarter, but was a key reason why the offense was as efficient as it was, that the Celtics were playing a trapping 2-3 zone where they were trapping with the top two guys in the zone and they had actually had drew holiday as the bottom middleman in the 2-3 zone guarding Rudy Gobert and was a key reason why Gobert didn't play in the fourth quarter was because he just couldn't do a whole lot offensively and it's harder to screen against a zone and for Rudy to go screen up top and help get any type of runway against that zone because the rest of the four guys can just collapse into the paint and enforce ant to get rid of the ball. But what Ant did really, really well was he dragged the defense further away from the basket and brought two to the basketball and then did an excellent job of kind of using his dribble to create passing lanes and thus creating wide open three point shots for guys like Nas Reed, Dante DiVincenzo, Jade McDaniel's and Julius Randall, which was awesome. I didn't think that Ant forced it at all in the third quarter. He was exactly what he did in the playoffs last season where he needed a couple minutes to just kind of figure out like, all right, this is a defense that you're throwing at me. All right, this is what my response is going to be, I'm going to take what you're giving me. I'm going to play clean, efficient basketball and just make smart decisions and make the right read and not just necessarily need to force my imprint on the game as a score. And you had four assists in zero turnovers in that third quarter despite Celtics having a ton of length and speed and strength out there and the five guys that were playing that trap in two three zone with. So for the Wolves in the first eight minutes of that quarter when the Celtics were pretty much employing that defense, they had 20 points on eight to 16 shooting and zero turnovers in the first eight minutes of that quarter and did a great job of, you know, just kind of keeping pace with a Celtics offense that was just, I mean, that was when Tatum was just going nuts. And so sometimes like if that's happening, you just got to find a way to stay in it. And most of the times the Timberwolves find a way to stay in it with defense, but you have to give credit to their offense. And guys like Julius Randall and Jade McDaniel's did a great job of playing behind and the pressure that the Celtics were putting on Anthony Edwards and they did not do a good enough job of that against Oklahoma City on New Year's Eve and they did a great job of it tonight. And the first quarter and in the third quarter, those two guys were absolutely tremendous. And again, in the third quarter, those two combined for 18 of the 34 points, six attend shooting, three of six from three, and they made all three of their free throws. And again, like I just think that the Celtics three points shooting creates a razor thin margin for air. And like they needed that just to just stay with the Celtics because of how well Tatum was scoring it and they were shooting it. It's kind of almost like a final boss fight of a video game where you feel like you're doing everything right, you've rehearsing, you know, you've kind of rehearsed what you need to do. You know what you need to do at each step of the way. And then you make that one mistake and boom, all of a sudden it's a quick 7-0 run and instead of a two-point game, it's now a nine-point game, you just are fighting this uphill battle. And then that's kind of what happened, right? That's kind of what happened in the middle of that third quarter. And then Chris Finch goes to the old reliable lineup now that we're seeing to bridge the first and second and third and fourth quarters with Na, Dante, Josh Minot, who is tremendous tonight, Julius Randall and Nod's Reed. And those guys were a plus 13 and a little bit more than five minutes playing together bridging that third and fourth quarter. And I thought that Josh Minot is kind of within earshot of Na's Reed territory where just every single thing that he does provides energy to his teammates and the crowd just goes absolutely bananas for. And he had that huge dunk on Derrick White, which got everybody in the stands. Maybe the dunk of the night. Maybe the dunk of the night. Probably the dunk of the night, that Rudy had off, the offensive rebound was certainly great. But I think what that Minot dunk did for the crowd and got everybody going. And then Dante DiVincenzo, I think, ties up Sam Houser kind of with the two of those guys rolling around each other at the middle of the floor. And they have this jump ball at the center circle. And before Dante could even get off the ground, I think every single person in target center was off of their feet, cheering super loud. It kind of took you back to last season a little bit where this is a blue collar crowd at Target Center. They appreciate guys that do all the dirty work, that work extremely hard, play really hard. And they're going to live with Miss shots, no question about it. But if you aren't making up for it by diving on the floor, flying around, playing defense, good luck trying to endear yourself to this fan base. And I think Dante DiVincenzo, after kind of a rough introduction with all of his shooting, the way that he then almost forced another tie up that resulted in a foul on him. I actually thought that was the right call, even though a lot of fans might disagree with me. But it was still a great hustle. And then when Kayda had that wide open alley up, he flies out of nowhere from the weak side to break up that pass. And then, you know, after that, and then Minot has a huge block on Derek White. So you have the dunk over Derek White, then comes back and has the block on Derek White. And that results in Dante DiVincenzo's second straight three of the game to help, I think, at that point, tie the game. I don't have it in front of me exactly. Exactly. Yeah, while you're looking at it, Josh Minot, second best plus minus on the team tonight with a plus seven, seven points in 11 minutes. Yeah. He was absolutely fantastic. Real quick, just on this topic, I see a lot of Mike Conley questions right in the chat. 19 minutes, five points, two for four from the floor, Stan Van Gundy had an interesting stat. Did you know Mike Conley within two point shots, so take out the three point ball. He's four of his last 28 from two point shot and even saw it again, he's not hitting that running floater as much this year that used to be automatic. Even Genzo or Josh Minot or maybe a third guy that I'm not maybe mentioning right now, should somebody be soaking up even more Mike Conley minutes as the season goes on or where does Conley kind of fit into the big picture equation in your point of view? Yeah. I think for Conley, the biggest thing for me is his three point shooting. I don't necessarily, I mean, obviously it's not great, his two point shooting. His two point shooting wasn't great last season and the wolves struggled a little bit when teams really forced him to play below the arc and couldn't get to that two point shot quite as much. But yeah, certainly it's a problem and I think for him, he doesn't really have that stop and pop two point shot in the pick and roll game with, you know, with Go Bear and what's the bummer is, you know, you see guys like McKillogg's Interwalkers added that kind of stop, go and left, dribble move, pull up jumper from like the elbow that he's added in that Go Bear pick and roll. Mike just hasn't really had that and floaters are generally a tougher shot than a standard mid range jump shot and have a lower expected points per shot just looking around the league. And so I think a lot of those, a lot of those misses from Mike have been, you know, those off-handed righty floaters that, you know, he's been pretty good at relative to the last rest of the league. But just in terms of all the other shots that Tim Rool's offense can take, it's certainly not necessarily what you want. And I think the important thing for Mike Conley too is just that the Tim Rool's don't try to overuse him. And I think we might get a stretch here once Rob Dillingham is back and the schedule light ends up a little bit that we might see Mike sit a couple of games because we're already getting to the point now where, you know, pretty consistently over the last, over the last two weeks or so, Dante DiVincenzo has certainly been outpacing Mike Conley in minutes. He's heating up. And Nikhila Alexander Walker has kind of been dead even with Mike Conley in minutes. Instead of Mike pushing, you know, high 20s, about 30 minutes per game, he's really been down closer to 20. And those 10 points or those 10 minutes a game have almost directly gone to Dante DiVincenzo. So that's just kind of something to monitor. And again, you know, those are key reason why the Wolves went out and got Monte Morris at the deadline last year is because they didn't want to have to play Mike Conley too many minutes down the stretch of the season and they just didn't end up resting him as much as, you know, as much as they wanted to. And then Mike obviously hurts his cap on the last play that, you know, but I think it was game three or game four against Phoenix. And so you just don't want to get into a situation where you're, you know, overly reliant upon Mike and then, you know, you overuse him. So I think it's a good thing that, I think it's a good thing that maybe they're kind of trying to find some other options right now. And yeah, I mean, that comment nails it right there too. So I think that's certainly contributing to the lack of go bears effectiveness offensively and why, you know, Mike Conley didn't play a single minute in the fourth quarter tonight and we're going to go bear to play a single minute in the fourth quarter tonight either. I mean, I can't think of that ever happening since the two of those guys have been on the Tim rules and have both been active for a game. So that was wild that there was a couple of times that to do it, not a double a triple take. And I'm like, are neither of them still back out there? This is crazy. But at the same time, it's like this, this is when the wolves were playing their best, most scrappiest ball to nothing against either of those two guys. But it seemed to be working at certain junctures during that ball game a couple minutes left. I want to talk to you basically about ants night, just a little bit more in depth. I just want to pick your brain a little bit about and and then we got to talk about this pistons game coming up this Saturday. That's all coming up right after this quick reminder tonight's episode also brought to us by better help. You know, when your schedule, it's packed with work projects and more. It's so easy to start to let your priorities start to slip, even when we know what makes us happy, but when you feel like you got no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy, they're more important than ever. You know, if you've been thinking about starting therapy, it's time to get better help, but try it entirely online and designed to be convenient, flexible and suited for your schedule. So, so simple as you got to do, you fill out a brief questionnaire, you get matched up with the licensed therapists and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. For skip therapy, day with better help, go visit betterhelp.com/lockdown. You're getting 10% off your first month. That's better help, h-e-l-p dot com slash lock down. You know, I was worried about what would happen to old paper and pen notes. I miss just writing something down and being able to circle things and box things and do a bunch of things that you can do only with a pen that you can't really do when you're typing things out on a tablet or a phone. I've been using the future of paper and pen. It's the Remarkable Paper Pro tablet. It's a game changer for writing notes. It was designed to help you focus and take notes with no other distractions. The screen is so much easier on the eyes because it reflects natural light. You can connect it to the cloud. You can send notes to your phone or back and you take better notes. I kind of hate my own handwriting, but I can easily fix mistakes that I make, change things and you can take your handwriting and turn it into text, which is awesome. You can easily mark up documents or PDFs, so go check out the Remarkable Paper Pro. The Remarkable Paper Pro is available at Remarkable.com today. Go get your paper tablet at Remarkable.com today. Okay, I do want to ask you about this Pistons matchup coming up this Saturday, but just real quick, 60 seconds or less, just aunt, what did you see from him tonight? What are you seeing? Big picture. I noticed when he shot a, it was just like a 13 foot jumper, six and change left in the fourth quarter. I realized those were his first two points of the entire second half, so quiet, but as you mentioned, they were getting some good offensive production despite his, you know, box score scouting would tell you, I guess tomorrow morning when you look at the paper. So just aunt, I guess, and what you're seeing with some of these new rotations as well. Yeah, I think it's impossible to talk about aunt without talking about Julius Randall, too. I think that kind of goes hand in hand. I think in the second half, you know, aunt obviously was, was phenomenal as a playmaker in that third quarter and helped get everyone else going. And it was, it was really good. And you obviously would have liked to see more from him in the fourth quarter. Got some open looks, just wasn't able to knock enough of them down. I thought obviously blew that layup. I don't know why he didn't dunk that. That, that seemed problematic to me that that's normally a time when, when aunt would dunk that. I just think that. Nause had a capable dunk there as well that kind of tried to float it in there, just popped right out to you. That was a bummer as well. Yeah. For sure. Like the biggest thing for aunt is just, he was so used to just being passive in that first quarter that, you know, it was a situation where it was, you know, it was kind of nice for him to be able to play OKC and then play Boston right after because the team's kind of uses similar defense and just like showing to him build a wall force in the pass and others to play beyond it. But the problem I thought in the first quarter was that Randall did so much of the, you know, scoring and the playmaking. He was great. He played two threes in the first couple of minutes, created two other threes off the drive in the first few minutes. But the back half of the first quarter, I just thought that kind of dominated, kind of dominated the ball a little bit too much and was taking some, some tough mid-range shots and not making the same passes that he was making earlier in the quarter and it kind of was hard for everyone else to get going beyond or kind of outside of that, especially once Jay and McDaniel's left the game and so I think when you have a guy that's just kind of dominating the ball, not really using, you know, the isolation to create for others like he was at earlier points in the game. It's just kind of harder for guys to get into a rhythm and I think Randall's isolation can certainly be a weapon. Both is a scorer for himself and is a creator for his teammates and we saw both of that in this game. But it can also be a bit of a problem and I thought that that was part of the reason why this team didn't get going quite as much in the second quarter and that kind of includes Ant, too. I think when that first lineup of Naw, Divin Chenzo, My Naw, Randall and Reed kind of struggles to get going and struggles to kind of play with a flow and a rhythm that Ant can then kind of come back into when the ball is kind of popping around and he can really be successful like he was in the second quarter against Dokaloma City when he had like 11 in a row. That's great. Not that sometimes the downstream effects of Randall being on the ball a little bit too much kind of hampered things in the second quarter and so I thought that that contributed to it. But I thought more in the fourth quarter, it didn't really have anything to do with Randall. It just had to do with, you know, Ant not being able to finish and, you know, make the good shots that he did find for himself. So I think for Ant, again, his three-point shooting numbers have dipped quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, so that certainly got to be a focus. Rem, I know he was out here earlier today taking a ton of shots before anyone else even really got to the arena. So he's certainly taken note of that and certainly trying to rectify that himself. But overall, I thought Julius Randall did a very good job tonight. He had 27.7 assists and was certainly the Timberwolves most consistent playmaker throughout the game. The more that you can kind of, Julius can kind of realize, "Okay, I've had two or three isolations in a row that haven't gone well, now I need to get rid of the ball and maybe go back to being a spot up three-point shooter." The more he, more quickly he can kind of realize that. Maybe pick his spots a little bit more, about one to ISO versus one to not, only when he's got a good matchup or if the Timberwolves can force a switch like Boston was doing and he can get a smaller guy on him. He's tremendous, he's tremendous, it's taken advantage of those mismatches. I think that that is certainly something that he's got to kind of focus on a little bit moving forward but thought it was probably one of, if not the best Julius Randall game we've seen so far and I thought he recovered really nicely from a really tough, kind of late first, early second quarter. And that was really the first slippage that we've seen from that five-man lineup. And the first three mistakes that group really made, they give up two offensive rebounds to Kayta and Horford and then Randall had that turnover on the other end. All three of those mistakes led to Sam Houser threes in the early part of the second quarter and that's kind of what it goes back to like the boss fight. It's like you stack a couple of mistakes, it's just tough to make up for it. And then I just really liked, and we've talked about Conley a little bit that the hero was where I was going to talk about that but yeah, I love that Josh Meinatz continuing to get more minutes. I think he probably would have been closer to 15, 16 minutes instead of 11 if Jade McDaniel's wasn't having one of his best games of the season. And you got to give James some love, he was four of eight from three, knocked down a good number of his open threes and he continues to be just a beast on the glass on both ends. I think if you look at his rebounding numbers, October, November, December, it was like three in October, it was up to almost five in October, or excuse me, November. And then in December, I think he was up near six, six and a half rebounds a game while shooting almost 40% from three. So that's exactly what you want from Jaden. He's trending in the right direction and hopefully he can kind of continue to build some of these confident, or stack some of these games where he's playing really confident basketball and help the Tim Rulves kind of survive this stretch of ants struggling to score and it's certainly big when you can get, what is it, 48, when you can get 80 points from Randall McDaniel's reading deep in Shenzil, he'll certainly, he'll certainly take that, yeah, he'll take the bummer that everyone else can kind of push it, push it further north than 115 points. Hey, just real quick, what's, what's a guy like Derek White's trade value, huh? That guy is pesky man, Eastern Conference team don't see, you know, don't see the Celtics born once or twice a year. Obviously, we saw in the last two years some great match-ups we've seen, but Derek White dude, 26 points, 5 for 10 from 3, 2 blocks, couple assists, couple rebounds, but just a menace man, just pesky. I think he's the best role player in the NBA. Oh my God, and they were saying, I don't think he was a all-star last year. It sounds like he's on pace to finally be an all-stars, what they were saying on broadcast anyways, and basically that he was criminally undervalued, but this year finally, at least from a all-star point of view, he should get some recognition that he deserves. So hey, well, he's got a lot of depth. Can we, what's up? Can we get that guy over on our side? I feel like we need, we need some of that. Just a glue guy, man. Just a hustle glue guy that just does all the little things well, I feel like. And you can scale him up or down as much as you want, and he plays perfectly as, you know, the number two score like you did tonight, and he plays perfectly as like the number four score once Brown and Forzing is her back. Just coaches dream, dude. One of the best trades in the last, maybe 20 years is Romeo Langford in the first for Derek White was unbelievable. Crazy. Two minutes left, maybe a little less, but Wolves pistons coming up this Saturday. I know you got in your notes, Jade and Ivy, former fifth round, or excuse me, fifth overall pick. He's out broken fibula that was two drafts ago, a Cade Cunningham, number one overall pick from three years ago. He's like, he's been a stud this year, but yeah, two minutes or less. Just give us the, I guess the scouting report. What's the deep dive? What do we need to know about this pistons team and this matchup specifically with the Wolves? Yeah, I know a question about it. I feel like it's, it's, it's our two loves going against each other. The pistons and the Wolves this year, the Wolves fans are rooting for the pistons and being the playoffs so that the Wolves get the pistons first round. That's right. That's right. Plus we got a, plus we got a Detroit, Minnesota battle going on Sunday as well. You might have heard of Vikes Lions on as well. Yeah. The prelude, man. We love it. I didn't even think of that. That's great. No, I love it. Um, yeah. But hey, let's get on a, let's get on a little prelude. Yeah. We'll see what this game is. Sunday and we'll see how this game turns out, man. Maybe a little prelude. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it was just a bummer for anyone that was watching that game last night. Uh, Jade and Ivy broke his fibula and shin bone, uh, had to get structured off the court air casted, uh, so that was a total bummer cause he, he and Kate Cunningham have been awesome as a back court so far this season. Um, now that they've got JB Bicker staff in there, um, uh, those two guys have really been unleashed and they've just spread the floor with pick and roll and, and have found shooters on the perimeter and Malik Beasley, uh, has been awesome there. Uh, it's been, been a lot of fun to kind of, kind of watch his, his renaissance, uh, with, with the box and now with the pistons. So, uh, the wolves also have to do a really good job of, of boxing out and, and protecting the, the, the glass and they've done that really well the last couple of weeks and they've got to continue to do that because, uh, Detroit's one of the more active teams in terms of, uh, hitting the offensive glass between Jalen Duren and, uh, Nizaya Stewart are two really, really strong and, and, uh, just guys who have seemingly endless motors on, on the offensive glass. So got to do a really good job there, closing out, uh, forcing, forcing this team to play, play below the three point line, uh, because they are a team that can, can certainly get hot and, and can play from three. So I think more you can force them to play on that short mid range, long mid range area. I think, uh, the wolves will be being a good spot if they can prevent guys like Kade and Malik Beasley from, uh, you know, combining for, for seven, eight, nine, ten threes, I think, and, and they, they rebond the ball. I think that they should be in a good spot, but, um, yeah, just a bummer that, uh, the, you know, the Pistons lose a guy like Jay Nivey because he's been, he's been really fun to watch and, and is certainly, uh, a guy that over the last couple of seasons, when he's played the wolves, he's put together some really solid performances because he's one of those guys that, um, you know, kind of has the nitro gear that he can, he can get into and, and really cause problems for, uh, the Timberwolves perimeter defense that is, it is traditionally struggled a little bit more with, with really fast and quick guards that we've seen with the Aaron Fox already this season. So, um, yeah, should be a, should be a very favorable match up and, um, should be a good opportunity for, uh, the Timberwolves to hopefully start off at two and a weekend, uh, for, for the boys in, in Detroit. I love that. We'll end their ants game tying three at the buzzer rims out. Wolves lose a tight one. Final score versus the Celtics 118, 115 wolves dropped to 17 and 16 on the year. Hey, as always, huge shout out to all the everydayers out there that always make us your first listen. All you guys coming in the chat every night, game to game, venting with us, sometimes celebrating after a win, uh, make sure you like, make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. And go follow Jack to on X at Jair Borman 13. He's live from the target center during almost every home game. Again, pistons up next this Saturday night, 6 p.m. tip off. We'll catch you right here. Same time, same place. Until then, signing out. A prime members, you can listen to this locked on podcast and free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Your favorite podcast now has a newsletter. Introducing locked on daily newsletters for every NBA team. The ultimate team in league coverage delivered right to your inbox. 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The Minnesota Timberwolves struggled with turnovers again and fell short to the Celtics at the Target Center. Join Jack Borman and Luke Inman for the instant reaction and recap after the game.
