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Locked On Wolves - Daily Podcast On The Minnesota Timberwolves

Lineup tweaks for the Minnesota Timberwolves to consider + Wolves-Celtics tonight

The Minnesota Timberwolves continue to see any lineup with their bench trio of Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker outplay their regular starting lineup. There's a clear case for head coach Chris Finch to make some significant tweaks to the way he deploys his rotation - and soon.
Duration:
33m
Broadcast on:
02 Jan 2025
Audio Format:
other

The Minnesota Timberwolves continue to see any lineup with their bench trio of Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker outplay their regular starting lineup. There's a clear case for head coach Chris Finch to make some significant tweaks to the way he deploys his rotation - and soon. Ben Beecken (@bbeecken) makes the case, as well as why Josh Minott should play more. Plus, a preview of the Wolves matchup against the defending-champion Boston Celtics.

 

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It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hi, I'm Jake from Lockdown. For the love of Pete, it's something you might say when your car gets damaged, but that won't get you the help you need for your vehicle. As someone named Jake, what you should be saying is something that can actually help. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Never help filing your claim 24/7, whether it's on the phone, online, or on the award-winning State Farm mobile app, however you choose. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Your favorite podcast now has a newsletter, introducing locked-on daily newsletters for every NBA team. The ultimate team and league coverage delivered right to your inbox. Start your day with expert analysis, game previews, and recaps, news about your favorite team and the league and the daily fantasy cheat sheet. Plus, links to the most important stories real fans need to read. Sign up for your team newsletter now for free at LockdownDaily.com, the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome into another episode of Lockdown Wolves. Today on the show, a couple of lineup tweaks that are definitely overdue for head coach Chris Vidge. Some tweaks he should definitely make moving forward to kind of once and for all, pull the wolves out of this long season opening funk, a couple of ideas for Fitch as we headed to wolves Celtics here tonight. It's all come and welcome in you are Lockdown Wolves. You are locked-on Timber Wolves, your daily Minnesota Timber Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to the Lockdown Wolves Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. My name is Ben Beacon. I'm the host of Lockdown Wolves. Happy Thursday, everybody. Happy Wolves game day. The two wolves play the Celtics tonight on TNT at 6.30 Central. A really fun showdown. We'll get to that matchup later, of course, the wolves saw them five weeks ago or so right around Thanksgiving. So we'll talk about what happened in that game and also the injury report, a couple of key potential injuries for the Celtics in this one. I think, I mean, going back to last year, it's always a fun matchup when these two teams get together. So looking forward to tonight's game, we will get to that. I want to open with some bench, well, lineup slash rotation-related stuff and focus on how the bench has been playing so well lately, which isn't a surprise, and we've talked around this in a couple of different ways, and I want to kind of look at some of these players individually and then how that could possibly impact Chris Finch's rotations here in the near term. So we'll do all that on the show today. Big thank you for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day. Of course, this show is free and available everywhere where every listen to podcasts. You can also watch on YouTube and you can watch on the lockdown sports, Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon fire TV and a reminder about the daily lockdown wolves newsletter. You can sign up at locked on daily.com be delivered right to your inbox. It'll be basically a summary of what's talked about on this show Monday through Friday plus some additional national NBA content links to some more wolves content from around the internet. So be sure to subscribe at locked on daily.com you'll get that in your inbox daily Monday through Friday. All right. So it's no secret that the Tim Roles bench has been I don't even I don't want to say carrying them. But basically any lineup that includes the bench tree of Nasrid Dante, David Genzo and Nikhil Alexander Walker outplays the Tim Roles starting lineup and any combination that doesn't include those guys. And I don't want to repeat what we just talked about. I think on Tuesday's show and also last week, but like if you go to cleaning the glass and you pull those three man lineups, any lineup with that trio, it's off the charts. I think it was like 97th person to actually like and it only continues to grow. In fact, what I did first going through and in looking at different rotation combinations in the wake of the terminals loss on Tuesday, I went and I just pulled like what's their most used lineup period. It's obviously the starting lineup and how are they sitting? For a long time, they were still in the 60 to 70th percentile, you know, kind of lagging behind any lineup with the bench. This is again, including the glass and you know, respectable enough. Well, they've struggled so much lately that the starting lineup is now just a a 54th percentile lineup league wide. They've played 777 possessions together. Nearly a third of the Timberwolves overall possessions, pretty close to a third, probably about, I don't know, it's more than it's probably about nearly 30% of the overall possessions that the Timberwolves have played as a team this year have been played with their preferred starting lineup of Conley, Edwards, McDaniels, Arendel and Gilbert, they're at 54th percentile lineup, a plus 3.7, which it's fine. But it also kind of reflects the Timberwolves record of 17 and 15, right? Slightly above, this is technically true, but slightly above average, right? 54th percentile, a plus 3.7, but the offense is a 45th percentile unit. The defense is a 57th percentile unit. So of course, the defense is going to be fine because go bears on the floor, fine ish. But there's a lot of other units where it's a lot better. And those all include Reed, Devin Chenzo and Alexander Walker. At some point, Chris Finch is going to have to acknowledge that the sample size is big enough that he needs to make potentially a drastic change. And this has been the same starting lineup for basically three years. Just put Randall in there for for towns last year. If this is last year's starting lineup, but Randall and set of towns, it's the starting lineup post trade when Conley came to Minnesota two seasons ago with towns instead of Randall back then. So it would be a drastic change if health did not, if Finch made one of these changes without health playing a factor in it. And clearly, he's resisted it to this point and I am the first person to say, you can't make a rash decision without having a long enough runway without having enough of a sample size because it's so easy to overreact and Chris Finch's job is to not overreact. So I 100% get that, but we're getting to the point now, I mean, we're going to be halfway through the season in about two weeks, schedule wise, actually a little bit less than that. And that's a big enough sample to be like, okay, yeah, we're above 500. Yeah, our starting unit is a has a positive point differential. But look at how good all these other units are. And this isn't quite the same as like seeing an individual player and being like, ah, they're going to get overextended. You know, like some guys are just really good in their role and you don't want to, you don't want to upset the apple cart. You don't want to say like, like, like, Nas Reed in like his rookie year or second year, he was playing like 10, 12 minutes and he was good. And at the time, I was like, Hey, if you give this guy 30 minutes, he's not necessarily going to be as impactful. He's good in his role. Not like that. That's a random example, but that's true for individual players. I don't think that's true for some of these lineups. I don't think if you, I don't think like the more you play ant with the bench trio and Nas Reed or the bench trio and Rudy go bare. I don't think those lineups are going to be significantly worse given a larger sample. Because we've seen enough from that trio and also let's not pretend like the bench trio wasn't considered to be a really good group of players before the season. I mean, what do we come into the season saying? This team has the best, you know, eight man rotation in the entire NBA or as Chris Finch would put it and he did in training camp or, yeah, in training camp, I guess to the trade happen right before trading camp, they have eight starters. I don't disagree with that. On October 1st, that's what we all said. We said, this is a team with eight starters, Alexander Walker, Reed and David Chenzo would start on the majority of NBA teams and that's a hundred percent true. So let's not act like it would be the craziest thing if the two rules played Jade McDaniels a little bit less and played not to even Chenzo a little bit more and played smaller. Let's not act like it would be the craziest thing if Nas Reed played more than 24 minutes a game. It's not like these are, I guess I'm about to make this argument for Josh, my net, but it's not like these are guys that have never been in a rotation at the NBA level. These are guys who have proven it before two of the three with the wolves and other one as a starter in a next team that went to the second round and he averaged over 30 points per game in the playoffs last year in David Chenzo. These are proven players. So I'm not advocating for the Timberwolves to like start Luca Garza, like I'm talking about playing guys who we know are solid solid to very good NBA players, giving them more minutes, which of course comes with it, our reduction in minutes for some of the other guys. And Jack Borman and I talked about this a little bit toward the end of the post past back on Sunday night following the Spurs game. We discussed, you know, does this mean less minutes for McDaniels? Does it mean playing bigger at times, less minutes for Mike Conley? A little bit of that remains to be seen and I want to get into it a bit and also something that I talked about on yesterday show a little bit, which is the backup point guard minutes and how the wolves handle the mic, you know, the, the non mic Conley minutes, because Conley has been playing less and less here recently. How are the wolves going to handle that moving forward? Who's playing that point guard spot? And how could that impact this rotation? I want to get into that a bit before we get to the wolves Celtics matchup. We'll do all that here next today's episode of locked up wolves is brought to us by our friends over at game time. I love going to live events, whether it's sports, music, theater or comedy. That's always been the case. I love all of the above. One of my favorite memories, actually all of my favorite memories really of doing anything with family friends, my wife is related to live events. Like my wife and I saw a show on Broadway. We'll go to shows here where we live. We went to a show on Broadway just this past year and it was awesome. We go to as many live sporting events as we possibly can. It's always a ton of fun. Now game time has been an even easier to get tickets for your favorite events with their new feature game time picks. This feature filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats. So you don't have to waste time searching through thousands of tickets. You can look for tickets to anything like, for instance, like OKC, Minnesota, like here in OKC. You can find tickets to that game on the game time app. You can find amazing deals. There were some great seats available for that on there. Otherwise, it's hard to get thunder tickets just like in Minnesota at times. It's still hard to get wolves tickets. They have something called the super deal, which is super impressive. It offers great seats at unbeatable prices plus game times app offers all in pricing to show you the total cost up front. That way you have no surprise fees at checkout. Take the guesswork, out of buying tickets with game time, download the game time app, create an account and use the code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase term supply. Again, create an account, redeem the code locked on NBA. That's L O C K E D O N NBA for $20 off download game time today. What time is it game time? All right. So a couple more rotation notes and some thoughts. First of all, when I talk about advocating for a change to the wolves rotation, I'm not necessarily saying that I think the starting lineup has to change in name, like who the actual starters are. And it feels like recently in recent years, like coaches. So like, I don't know, 2025 years ago, like think back to the wolves conference finals in 2004, like urban Johnson, not magic, urban Johnson, the center started and he would start the first quarter. He would start the third quarter and he wouldn't play anything else. Like most of the time, he'd be on the floor for like 15, 16, 18 minutes, something like that. And and the wolves would end up playing, you know, Garnet at center and, you know, playing smaller lineups, et cetera. I'm not necessarily saying the wolves should like go full that way with Mike Conley or even Jade McDaniels. I don't know that coaches do that as much anymore. I think the, the, the prevailing thought is just like either change the starting lineup or don't basically now closing lineups is a bit of a different animal, right? Like some teams will start guys and they will not usually close and that could be on the table too. In fact, we're seeing that more recently. That's where you've seen Chris Finch make his biggest adjustments is in crunch time. But the point I'm making is that recently the starters have struggled so much in the first and third quarters that Chris Finch has made that change in the fourth quarter in crunch time, whether it's Stephen Chenzo or Nas or Nikhil, like all those guys have seen crunch time minutes here of late, not all of them at the same time. Cause usually it's some of the starters that are on the floor obviously, but they've all gotten the opportunity to close games. But the starting lineup has put them in so many holes in the first quarter and occasionally in the third quarter. I forget which game it was. But last week, I think, well, uh, actually, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's actually the multiple games for the third quarter. They put themselves in a hole, the thunder game, they played better at the start of the third quarter. And as it wore on, it didn't really matter what Finch did. It was a couple of games before that where it was like third quarter was just the wheels fell off. And sometimes it's the start of the game. We saw that a bunch, you know, going back about 10 days ago, there were two, three games in a row, the Atlanta game, um, whichever game was like right before that where the starters put them in the hole and the, and the bench had to dig them out. This is happening so frequently that I think some of those rotation tweaks need to happen more quickly. And we need to see the minutes of the actual starting five playing together short and considerably. And maybe it's getting Mike Conley and even earlier rest and he comes back later and Ant runs point earlier in the game. Now lately he's been having such a tough time getting off the ball and teams have been sending to it and consistently that maybe the timing for that is wrong too. And I guess that would be a concern as you don't want to further throw off his rhythm because Conley and Ant play so well together. But what I'm trying to do is find more minutes for Dante, even Chinzo and I'm trying to find more minutes for Josh, my not, um, lately, those guys have been off the charts and I don't know if it's like, I've been saying this for a while now, but staggering the Julius Randall minutes. Like I'm not saying a couple of weeks ago, I made the case for not starting Julius Randall. I could still make that case pretty easily right now. He's been better the last couple of games. And again, I don't want to do this knee jerk reaction wise. But I think giving Randall more minutes with the bench unit, he more minutes with maybe with Mike Conley. So you bring those two back together and then Ant and Randall or their minutes are more staggered and you're able to play say, Josh, my net or not, not as Reed with the rest of the starting unit with aunt with Rudy. And then, you know, Jade McDaniels, who's the, the one that to me is, is the one that's dragging down the starting unit the most, not Julius Randall, not necessarily Mike Conley. Because I think what Conley brings to the table, spot up shooting and ball movement, you know, uh, really kind of being a catalyst for ball movement is super important. McDaniels doesn't give you anything offensively. Um, and that, that to me is the biggest problem. And I think Josh, my net is the, is the, is the best, uh, solution for that. Like recently, Josh, my net has only played two games where he's played double digit. I take that back one game where he's played double digit minutes that is not a blowout with garbage time. In fact, he's played two games all season with, we'll say it this way. He's played two games all season where he's played nine or more minutes that didn't include garbage time either way up or way down at the end of the game. And they're the last two games the wolves have played. He played 11 minutes in the wind over the spurs on Sunday. He played 10 minutes, nine and nine and a half ish minutes in the loss to the thunder on Tuesday. There's the only two games all year, which is a side of a good thing. It means it's trading in the right direction, but at least he's played in 11 of the last 12 games, actually 12 of the last 13 games Chris Fitch has gotten him on the floor a couple of times for two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, but he's playing and most of these games he's playing at least five minutes. That's positive. Perhaps not a coincidence. The wolves have played really well over the last couple of weeks compared to how they they played in the stretch where he didn't play. Like go back and look when they lost like six of eight. Josh Minett, the only game he played in during that stretch actually played in three games. One was the Celtics game. He played one minute and then he played briefly in those Portland losses way back in mid November, like end of first quarter type minutes and then he didn't play and the rest of those losses in the middle and some of those, those, you know, those wins that they barely got. And now here recently with the team playing, he's playing a little bit more. I'm not suggesting that playing Josh Minett four minutes a game is what's making the wolves play better. But I'm suggesting that Chris Finch is trying some additional tweaks with the rotation and it's mirroring or it's, it's matching up with more accurately the team's overall improved play. Dante, even Chenzo is another one. I mean, Dante went from November 10th to December 15th. So over a month and the wolves played in that stretch, they played 16 games. He only scored in double figures four times. So four times out of 16 games. Now he scored in double figures six out of the last seven games and the other game he had eight and he had a couple of threes. That was the loss to the Hawks. Otherwise he's been in double figures six of the last eight games, excuse me, six of the last seven games and he was, he didn't do as much offensively against okay. So he only had two threes, he had 10 points, but he played really well and he was a big part of that third quarter when the wolves kind of were trying to deal with all the pressure case he was giving them, trying to push back and ultimately they did a little bit and was on the floor for a lot of that fourth quarter run too. But he had 26 against the Spurs, he had 22 against Houston and it looks a lot more comfortable. Those two especially are playing great lately. You could say the same thing about Nas Reed. I mean, Nas is finally back in a stretch where he scored a double figures of six of the last seven games where for the six games before that run, he was failed to score in double figures, including and the two where he did, he scored just 10 points. Now he said 11 or four out of the five of the last six games. So the point I'm making is the wolves go, how their bench goes. And I've been saying all season, I haven't talked about the Kale Exeter Walker today, but I think he's pound for pound based on the role he was expected to play been their best player, been outperforming what his role was supposed to be. So I think it's pretty clear that those three guys should be playing more and I would make the argument for Josh Minett to see more minutes too. And again, I don't think they're going to roll out there and start Nas instead of Julius or start Minett instead of McDaniels on Thursday night against the Celtics and I'm not advocating for that. But I am advocating for a slight shift in minutes allocation, more for Josh Minett and we've seen this with even Chenzo, more for even Chenzo a little bit less for Conley. I think we're at the point where McDaniels has to play a little bit less and Randall's either got to play a little bit less or stagger those minutes more sharply with Anthony Edwards so they're not on the floor together as much. And by the way, Ant and Minett have barely played together. And I think Jade McDaniels and Ant just have not played well together. I don't know if it's like, like, and you know, there's something to pay attention to against the Celtics, but like it feels like Jayden doesn't, he doesn't have much off ball activity. And this is, this is something that doesn't show up in the stat sheet. It doesn't show up in the advanced stats or the rate based stats. But Jade McDaniels and Josh Minett, although they play the same role, essentially offensively Minett is effectively the backup for McDaniels. Watch those guys off the ball in the half court. One of them moves and one of them doesn't. And Jade McDaniels doesn't move much, tell you that much. So you know what I think would help Anthony Edwards would be to have somebody off the ball with athleticism length that's willing to cut. That's willing to, I mean, he had two labs from the corner. One from Dante, one from, I think, Nas against the Thunder on Tuesday. And now part of that's on Ant. Ant's got to be looking for that pass, but often he's finding Jade McDaniels, he's trying to pass out of a double and it's Jade McDaniels in the corner who clanks it open three. Maybe it's Josh Minett who, you know, McDaniels isn't setting screens for Ant very often, but I think Josh Minett could and would be a legit lob threat. I think Minett crashing from the corner is scarier than Jade McDaniels crashing from the corner. It's a lot to like about Josh Minett and depending against matchups, it may not be the Celtics matchup because they're going to need somebody to play perimeter defense. And McDaniels is still the superior perimeter defender, but offensively, I think Josh Minett is a better fit with most wolves lineups than Jade McDaniels. Let's talk about that Celtics matchup next and that's how we'll close the show. Today's episode of lockdown wolves is brought to us by our friends at FanDuel. The NFL playoffs are almost here, but it's not too late to get in on the regular season action with FanDuel. America is number one sports book right now. New customers could finish the season strong with $250 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. FanDuel has a ton of different ways for you to pick up a W. It's a lot of fun to just bet on individual players, like you can bet on who's going to score a touchdown, how many points he's seen will score, et cetera. It's a ton of fun. 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That's Fadil.com for your chance at $250 in bonus bets. Make every moment more with Fadil, an official sports book partner at the NFL. All right. Let's talk wolves Celtics. So the last time Minnesota saw Boston was back in the last week of November, I think it was right before Thanksgiving, Minnesota lost by two on the road at Boston. They were down by 11 going to the fourth quarter and had a bit of a comeback. It came down to the final couple of possessions. And as a reminder, lineup wise, Minnesota did not have Mike Conley in this game. This is when he missed that short stretch of game. So David Chenzo was starting and obviously still not comfortable. He hasn't been until very recently. The rotation was basically eight guys might not played one minute that I mentioned earlier. Nas, Nikhil, and Rob Dillingham were the three off the bench. This is Dillingham's best game as a pro to date. He had 14 points in 16 minutes, no turnovers and really kind of ejected some life into this team off the dribble. The Celtics did not have Christops Porzingis. And for tonight's game, Porzingis is questionable. He's missed the last three, I believe, and Jalen Brown, who has not missed any time, is listed as questionable with a, I forget what the injury was. I think it's like a shoulder. So as of recording this early on Thursday, we don't know if Porzingis or Bridgetta Brown are going to play obviously both are massive to what the Celtics do. That said, Boston beat Minnesota by a bucket earlier this year with no Porzingis, although Jalen Brown had a really big game. He actually led them and scored in that game, 29 points on 18 shots in that one. The wolves did a pretty good job of limiting Jason Tatum in that game. He had 26 points on 21 shots and was still five at 12 from three, but only got to the line six times. Each of those guys, Tatum and Brown both had four fouls in the game and the wolves did a decent job. I mean, they held Boston to 107 points, which is fine. Minnesota's problem in this game, and I should also say they played a relatively clean game. This was actually like they only turned it over eight times. Like Minnesota Boston is always just a fun, solid, good basketball matchup. Remember last year, when the wolves in the Celtics split a pair of games that were both overtime games, and one of the best wolves games of the year was that home overtime win where Ant went right at the Celtics superstars early in the season. It was like early November last year. And then they lost on the road in overtime in Boston shortly thereafter. This was like this first game. The wolves had eight turnovers. Boston had six. This was like clean game. These teams both shot about 37% from three. There were only 36 combined free throws. So it's not like there were a ton of fouls called in this game either, released a ton of free throws. Neither team shot the ball great from the floor. It was just both teams played well defensively. They generated enough open shots to make it aesthetically pleasing to see enough threes go in, but just a well played game. The wolves saw Alexander Walker and I was read combined issue one of 10 off the bench, which I guess is is a little bit of a snapshot of what we've seen this season as a whole. Obviously those guys are both shooting better than that percentage wise, but neither one is to where they were last year where the wolves need them to be. So which by the way, I think is a little bit of an under discussed storyline for the entire season is that the wolves just I know their ninth overall in percentage, but they were number one in the league last year. If you look at cleaning the glass with which filters out heaves and it filters out end of possession or end of quarter possessions last season, the tables were number one in the entire league at three point percentage. So then be ninth kind of matters. And right now they're 13th overall effective field goal percentage. They're ninth in a three point percentage with essentially the same personnel, obviously towns to randos would be difference. But if you look at the rest of the guys, they're not like ants shooting much better, but like David Chenzo's shooting 35%, he's expected to shoot north of 40, Nas is still 34% and he's expected to shoot. I mean, he was 40 last year. I think that I think that last year is probably the outlier, but he still should be better than 34% Connolly's improved a lot lately. He's back up to about 37% Nikhil shot them all better, I guess, than expected. I think what I what I've met was combining those guys one of 10 is more representative of some of the games, the wolves have lost, they've just missed open shots, which is part of it. Like that happens. He said that a lot more frequently of late. Now the thunder game is different because OKC is insane defensively. It doesn't mean they can't doesn't mean they don't need to figure out a way to beat it, to beat with the thunder do defensively. But a lot of the wolves problems this year against teams that that aren't OKC have been they're just missing open shots. They're generating decent enough looks and missing them. And Jade McDaniel's is a prime culprit who we just talked about. So that's going to be key in this game. You can't miss your opportunities against one of the league's best teams. You know, the third best team in the NBA right now, record wise, and of course, the defending champs and the Boston Celtics. There's some similarities to how these teams play. They're both really good defensive teams, both top 10 defensive teams, really, Boston's just outside the top five, but I consider them really top five defensive teams. Boston doesn't play at a super fast pace. They shoot an insane number of threes. Their percentage is actually worse than the wolves. Their thirteenth and percentage. They're by far first in rate. In fact, 55% of the field goal temps are threes. They shoot more than 53s per game. Some massive part of what Boston does. So defending the three-point line is more important than ever. And I think of like the game closing possession against the Spurs on Sunday where McDaniel's and Reyna were pressed up on the perimeter, trying not to allow San Antonio to get off a three-point shot. Right? Like that's the type of defense. Obviously you can't play that aggressively up in the jersey of guys that far out of the perimeter early in the game. But similar to that, right? They have to be up. They can't get lazy defensively at all against this Boston team, which maybe you should go without saying, but honestly, just playing hard defensively consistently is the biggest key. Otherwise, I don't actually -- this is similar to the Thunder matchup. I don't hate how the wolves match up against Boston. It does not commit fouls defensively. They don't allow you to get to the free throw line, which is going to be important. The wolves rely a little bit on that. But again, like pace-wise, they're not a big offensive rebounding team. They don't turn it over offensively. They don't commit fouls defensively. Things that kind of align with what the wolves would try to do or you'd expect wolves' opponents to do. So I think we're just for another really solid game. The keys for me are contesting threes as much as you possibly can, and don't give them second chance opportunities. Again, they're like 18th in offense a rebound rate, so it's not like Boston's crashing the glass like crazy, but they shoot so many threes. It's those intermediate rebounds that are basically 50/50 balls that I've talked about so much that land near the free throw line, the wolves need to scoop those up. They need to have a concerted effort for the guards and wings to help support GoBear and Randall and others with those essentially 50/50 balls that turn into second chance points. For a team that's going to keep launching, you're going to get longer rebounds, you're going to get intermediate rebounds, and you're going to get additional opportunities for the Celtics. You can't give them multiple bites at the apple. You just can't. They're too good to do that. Now, Boston overall has been struggling a bit more of late in terms of their standards. They've actually lost four out of seven and five out of five out of 10, so five and five their last 10, which is weird for them. They did beat the Raptors by 50 plus last time out, but before that they lost the Pacers. They lost the Sixers. They lost the magic, banged up magic team, who of course is still good. They split a pair with the Bulls over their last 10 games. So it's certainly, especially, you know, Porzingis and Brown, both questionable, a winnable game for Minnesota, but it should be a fun, close game here tonight in Boston. We'll have the live postcast for you, Jack and Luke over at lockdown Sports, Minnesota on YouTube. I'll be back on Friday with the post game pod as normal. We'll get you set for the weekend as well. A big thank you for making lockdown wolves your first listen every day. And of course, this shows for you available everywhere. You can watch on YouTube and on the lockdown Sports, Minnesota app. And of course, a reminder to subscribe to the lockdown wolves newsletter at locked on daily dot com. The locked in wolves podcast is part of the locked on podcast network. Remember, the locked on network is your local experts on all the biggest stories. Once again, I'm Ben Beacon. This is the locked on wolves podcast and we'll catch you next time. The big upsets to game winning drives, the NFL playoffs are better with fan duel because right now, new customers can bet $5 and get $200 bucks in bonus bets guaranteed. That's $200 in bonus bets, win or lose. The Fandal app gives you everything you need for live bets, same game parlays and so much more. Plus, when you win, you'll get paid instantly just visit fan duel dot com slash locked on to join today and get started with $200 in bonus bets. Take the playoff season unforgettable with Fandal, an official sports book partner of the NFL. A prime members, you can listen to this locked on podcast ad 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. 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The Minnesota Timberwolves continue to see any lineup with their bench trio of Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker outplay their regular starting lineup. There's a clear case for head coach Chris Finch to make some significant tweaks to the way he deploys his rotation - and soon.