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. Or 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. Hey, Lockdown listeners, this is John Corralis from Lockdown Celtics. Did you know Discover is accepted at 99% of the places that take credit cards nationwide? That's right, 99% and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. That could mean earning rewards when you buy those last-minute tickets, those overpriced concessions, and that takeout you ate at home after you bailed on meeting your buddies at the bar. Well, wherever you spend your game day, remember, it pays to discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report, learn more at discover.com/creditcard. Your favorite podcast now has a newsletter, introducing Lockdown 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 in 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 lockedondaily.com, the Lockdown podcast network, your team every day. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Lockdown Wolves. This is the post-game podcast for the table's hard-fought loss, the OKC Thunder, on New Year's Eve, Tuesday night. We'll talk about what happened in this one. The Wolves built a lead, gave it all back in the third quarter. There's a couple of key issues that keep coming up for the Wolves, and OKC really exploited them. Plus, SGA wins the battle of the superstars. It's all up, 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 Wednesday, everybody. Happy hump day, and Happy New Year's Day. The Timber Wolves lost Tuesday night on New Year's Eve in OKC, but it's a new year, and it's been a good calendar year for the Timber Wolves. Something we'll, at some point, I want to do a bit of a recap of the last calendar year, but today, this is the post-game pod from the Wolves Lost to the Thunder, the best in the West on Tuesday night. One of the best three teams, the NBA. And for my money, I think when it's all said and done, they'll be maybe the best or second best team in the entire NBA over the course of the regular season. This was a fun game made a little bit less fun by, well, we'll get into this. I feel like I may have a soapbox moment or two in this one about the officiating, the plain style of the Thunder and their superstar, and yes, the OKC announcers, who I know a lot of folks were exposed to for perhaps the first time on NBA TV on Tuesday night, and it's, they're not, they're not good. I guess we'll open, put that right here in the open. We'll get to that, though, because it's, it's bad. Lots to talk about today, and I do want to talk about OKC, or excuse me, SGA versus Ant. Lots of abbreviations there to sort through in this one as well. And then also about the Timberwolves, how they built a lead, and then how do they collapse in the third quarter? So a lot to cover today. A big thank you off the top for making lockdown wolves your first listen every single day. Of course, this shows free and available everywhere that includes YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms. You can also watch on the lockdown sports, Minnesota app on Roku and Amazon, Fire TV, you can follow an ex at lockdown T wolves and also at be beacon with two B's to ease CKE and a quick reminder about the lockdown wolves daily newsletter. There's not one today, excuse me, on New Year's Day, but if you subscribe today, you'll get it tomorrow on January 2nd, usually Monday through Friday, sign up at locked on daily.com to get the daily locked on wolves newsletter, all right. So the tables open this game actually playing really well. The defense was super active and OKC of course, you know, comes to this game at 26 and five. I think they're like 16 and two since Chad Holmgren went out, got hurt. Heart and Stein's been awesome for them this year. We talked about a lot of this on Tuesday's show getting you ready for the game. And they're all they're about is SGA being SGA, which will talk a bit about his proclivity to draw fouls and then, you know, them making enough shots off of that and also getting out and running in transition. This is a top 10 team in pace. They're not a great three point shooting team, but they generate a fair number of three point looks because of the pace they play with and because of because of the SGA drive and kick game and just the way that they have to play as they let SGA do his thing. And again, they don't have a whole lot of sharpshooters. But the guys that get those looks make enough of them, you know, enough of them to keep defenses honest and and and well, I shouldn't say that SGA's who's keeping defenses on us, but they make enough of them to allow Casey to score enough to win games. And early in the game, the tables did a pretty good job on SGA and the Thunder weren't making those open threes. They started like one of 12 or one of 13 OKC did from three. The wolves weren't much better, but it was basically like each team was playing the same way. And it was the OKC was trying to put two on the ball a bit and they did a great job. We'll talk more about that, especially in the third quarter of putting a ton of ball pressure in Minnesota, but they were trying to force a lot of ants hands early. They did the wolves made enough spot up threes around him to build something of a lead. They were up three at the end of the first quarter. They're up six at halftime and did get hot a little bit in the second quarter where he hit two or three shots in a row and, you know, helped the wolves kind of push that lead. We saw some strong minutes from Josh mine out. We saw good ball moving, good activity. We saw mine at score a couple of times on lobs where he crashed. He cut from the corner and I think one was a NAS pass. The other was maybe a demon chenzo pass where they the timing was just perfect and mine out was able to throw down a slam like the the again, the ball movement and also the player movement offensively from Minnesota was good enough and the shooting was or was good period full stop. The shooting was good enough to build it. What was a six point lead? It should have been a bigger lead because OKC was not playing their typical brand of defense and the wolves were getting open looks, but I mean, you look up and this is another game. The wolves ended up shooting 40% from three. However, early in the game, you have Randall and McDaniel's combining to go two for nine total for the game. A lot of those misses were early. Mine at miss his only three point attempt. NAS was just one for five on threes. A lot of your makes came from a couple of runs from Ant and Mike Conley and there's just too many misses from the perimeter, especially early when they had a chance to go up double digits and they did at some point. I think in the third quarter they got up by I was at 10 or 12. I'm going to see if I can pull it up real quick. They were up six at halftime. They did get up by 12 Minnesota did in the third quarter and then all of a sudden the OKC ball pressure ratcheted it up and it looked a lot like what the wolves did last year to opponents where it was just this breakneck speed jumping passing. It wasn't even jumping passing lanes as much as it was the ball pressure and putting to on the ball when it was aunt, not just aunt either. Like they were pressuring anybody who had the ball on the perimeter basically as soon as they crossed the timeline. Mike Conley had the ball strip from him a couple of times. Anytime a big tried to handle, which usually is not as sometimes Julius Randall. I mean, I had four turnovers in this game off the bench, which is a ton for a guy like Nasri Julius had four in this game. Ants had three Mike Conley only had one, but it felt like he had more because of the way that they were putting pressure on the ball. And that's something that became a major issue in that third quarter. And because of the wolves rotations, they ended up playing the last two, three minutes of the third with no aunt on the floor and no Mike Conley on the floor, which leaves Dante David Chenzo, Nikole Alexander Walker is the only guys that can handle the ball and either one of them is a point guard. They're both very much secondary ball handlers and struggled with the pressure. We've seen Nikole had five turnovers in this game, he had one assistant and five turnovers. And it's something that I've been worried about from a roster construction standpoint going back to before last year when the wolves ended up signing shake Milton and I thought they should have signed a, you know, at the time it, I can't remember who was the free agent, you know, veteran point guard like a Javon Carter, you guys who maybe aren't in a rotation now. So I'm not saying that like I was right, Tim Conley was wrong, but in the moment last offseason, I said, look, this team needs a second. They need an actual backup point guard and they eventually got one at the deadline in Monte Morris and he played a, you know, here and there down the stretch and obviously the team got to the conference finals, but from a, a belief in Nikole to be able to operate an offense and, and keep his dribble against a really strong defensive team. And I would say the same about a David Chenzo. I think that the wolves were a little bit too optimistic about that. Now, to be clear, there's probably less than five teams that it becomes a significant issue against because of personnel and scheme and actually playing hard, which is, is a skill. Um, you know, it's okay. See the wolves haven't seen Memphis yet, but like they forced turnovers at a high rate. There's some other teams in the East that do it. Um, but like, I don't know, I'd put the wolves in the top five of those teams in terms of playing that way on the perimeter and putting ball pressure on teams, but okay, sees the one who's the best at it. They're number one, the league and forcing turnovers as a defense. The wolves turn it over as much as anybody. I think Minnesota is, who are they as an offense now? Uh, they are 22nd in turnover rate offensively, meaning they turn it over at 16% of their possessions. Okay. See forces. The most is a defense. They force turnovers on 19.1% of opponent possessions. That's almost one in five opponent possessions. They're forcing turnovers, which is insane. And it's a point, 1.3 points higher than the second best in the league. And almost five points, I guess 4.7 points higher than the league average as far as defensive turnover rates. It's incredible. What okay? He can do. And you mix that with the wolves at time stagnant offense and a lack of true ball handlers. Like it's good, but I mean, he sometimes struggles when he gets, when he gets, you know, two put on the ball. I mean, he had more turnovers than assists in this game. Three turnovers to assist. Connolly was the one who handled it the best and aunt would be the next best. Nobody else handled it well. And that's a little bit of a roster construction thing. But again, that only crops up as an issue five to seven times a year, like a true issue. It's always kind of there. But in this game, it's basically what led to this big OKC run and then you have to credit obviously OKC as I did for the way that they play turn or the way that they play defense. The way that they execute their ball pressure and that they recover on the back end when the wolves were able to swing to still contest threes and you know, the wolves obviously hung around and OKC never led by more than 13 in this game. Excuse me, 14 in this game and then like credit to the wolves at the end for for pushing this thing back to a became a one possession game with under two minutes to play. They're only down three and then OKC hit a couple of threes in a row. We'll talk about that. But this was this was to me, I'm not like demoralized by this loss. OKC, as I said, in the open is a top three team in the NBA and they will be all year. I think I know Cleveland's got the best record in the league. I think when it's all said, Don Boston and OKC, the two best teams in the NBA and Cleveland can be in the top like obviously those are the top three, no matter what. But I think OKC as far as what a ceiling ceiling looks like, they're really, really, really good and you know, I think as a wolves finish, OK, to be a little jealous because it's what the wolves a lot of what the wolves did last year and SGA is kind of the fully realized, you know, the way he plays offensively is a lot like what the what we want to see Anthony Edwards do minus the flopping stuff, which we'll talk a little bit about. But the way that he's able to navigate doubles and the way that he's able to, you know, make accurate kick out passes and the way he's able to yes, get to the free throw line. Sometimes legitimately, all those things, you know, are things that can do now. It's obviously a better three point shooter and, you know, like more physical, I think, like truly physical, which apparently is a detriment in the NBA now. Anyway, SGA is incredible and the ceiling for what OKC could do is incredible. This is not a bad thing for the wolves to have a legitimately competitive loss to them where they played, you know, three plus quarters really, really well, you know, the three quarters, the first second and fourth quarter and the first part of the third quarter was all fine. And then the wheels came off and the wheels came off quickly against a really good team. And I think it exposes the ball handler issue and a little bit of the lack of creativity offensively, which we've talked about in the past and, and I think that is a little bit on Chris Finch. Some of the Chris Finch takes out there, though, are a remain, I will remain a defender against some of these wild takes like this is still an above 500 team at a really difficult conference. And they, you know, they've still won what nine of the last 14 they'd won three in a row, like, there's some lineup tweaks that need to happen, but these coaches, like they're not going to make a decision, you know, and maybe sometimes to a fault, it's a little bit too deliberate. But I, you know, some of this lineup stuff, I think it's improving, right? We're seeing more Josh Minett. We're seeing different closing lineups. We're seeing Devin Chenzo playing better. Like there's a lot to still take out of this from a positive standpoint. I do want to get into some of the, the Shea stuff, the free throw attempts. I'm not going to be able to help myself with the OKC announcer's not like that's like a bullet point. I have to hit today. But I'm going to get there. And let's talk a little bit about the fourth quarter. We'll close with studs and duds. It's all up coming here next today's episode of lockdown wolves is brought to us by our friends at RocketRx. If you're ready to boost your confidence and take control in the bedroom, RocketRx has the solution. Imagine feeling more prepared and performing at your best, RocketRx makes it simple and stress free. RocketRx offers FDA approved treatments for erectile dysfunction at a lower cost than branded alternatives. No more uncomfortable doctor visits or pharmacy trips. Everything is delivered straight to your door into street plane packaging with RocketRx. You'll get trusted care from a real US clinical team, complete a quick 100% online consultation and you could get your free prescription today. Visit RocketRx.com to get started now. It only takes two minutes. Right now our listeners can get 40% off your first order when you use the code locked on NBA. That's rocketRx.com code locked on NBA for 40% off your first order terms and conditions apply. RocketRx. Better sex. Made simple. 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. Your Markable Paper Pro is available at remarkable.com today. Go get your paper tablet at remarkable.com today. All right, so we established what the wolves did well to build a modest lead that became 12 in the third quarter briefly. And then we talked about the OKC ball pressure, the wolves inability to break it in the third quarter. The other thing I mentioned is a lack of offensive creativity. OKC doesn't have a lot of offensive creativity either. And also, by the way, a quick ant point. I still blame Ant for a lot of the offensive issues that turnover issues for Minnesota. Yes, he needs teammates to make shots. And like Jada McDaniel's to me, I've been saying this for a lot. He's a major problem with the fact that he just can't make threes. But like OKC's 20th in the league and 3 point percentage. So it's not like these dudes are a bunch of Ray Allen's and Reggie Miller's playing off the ball for helping SGA space the floor. The Temerals are still 10th in the league in 3 point percentage. They're like 3 points better than OKC. So like like I think they're a little over 37% I think OKC's like 34% to make sure that that's true. OKC is 20th in the league. Yeah, 34 and a half percent. Those are two and a half points better from outside the arc. They're 3 point rates higher, the 3 point percentages higher and OKC is not running anything crazy. Like diagnosed a really, really, really good coach, one of the best of league, no question. But like for anybody saying Chris Finch needs to do more, I will criticism is fair to try and get ant free with the way teams are putting two on the ball, which is the different than how the wolves did it with SGA. The wolves occasionally did put two on the ball with SGA. But they didn't do it with the with the ferocity or the or the frequency that OKC did it and OKC can like I know Chris Finch didn't want to do that last year either and that was a mistake in the playoffs. I don't think Chris Finch slash Mike and Nori did a good job at all in that Dallas series because they should have been putting two on the ball fluke more frequently and quicker than they chose to do it in that series. And you live and die with PJ Washington and you know, most teams died against PJ Washington last year of the playoffs. But like you make somebody else beat you and we came into this one, I was saying, look, you got it. You got to make Jan Williams beat you. You got to make Lou Dort be you and the wolves didn't do a good enough job with that. So I will criticize the wolves for not getting the ball of SJ's hands quicker and more often and I will criticize the wolves for not as a more macro comment, not just in this game, running more stuff to get and just get him some catch and shoot threes and get him going. Your first ATO drop and a catch and shoot, whatever. Like that to me is an issue, but most of the blame lies to it lies on Anthony Edwards. The tables have a good enough team around Anthony Edwards to be a better offense than they've been and Ant needs to get off the ball more quickly and and the comparison against SGA is so stark because he's so SGA is so good at that. He's so much more decisive and I called the side after the Spurs game on Sunday, both on the postcast with Jack Borman that I did and then also on this show on Monday in and I think a little bit on Tuesday, the decisiveness that Ant needs to play with has not been there this year. Um, early in the season, we saw it with like, Hey, I'm just launching threes like crazy, which is great. Like that's better than not being decisive. But the decisiveness and going to the bucket needs to be there, the decisiveness and what's the next pass I make, he needs to be there, uh, and SGA is decisive. And when he's not, he's drawing fouls to the tune of eight free throw attempts per game, which is something Anthony Edwards can only dream of, right? I mean, like, if you just look at free throw attempts per game, it's under four, which is insane for the superstar caliber, the superstar level that Ant is at. He's 41% from three and he's shooting 10 threes a game. Great. I get it. That's part of it. But he has to be getting to the rim more and he has to be getting more foul calls than he does. And the SGA, how he draws foul calls thing is, is pretty absurd. Um, there was a stretch of like three possessions in the fourth quarter where if you just watch SGA, he literally just falls over. Like no one's touching him and he falls over trying to get a call. I think he gets one or two of them. Um, but it's like that's his default response is, is I feel someone close to me, I'm going to just crumble to the ground. Like that's, that's something we're seeing. And I'm not not saying SGA is not good. He's one of the best five players in the NBA. And I said that last year too, by the way, I was ahead of a lot of people on this because he gets a line so often and does other stuff really well too. He is a two way player. He like his two point shop percentage, like when he's not getting filed, he's 60% on twos. That's really good. And he's gotten good enough at threes that he's, you know, sniffing league average on six attempts per game. I'm not taking anything away from SGA. I'm just saying it's pretty obnoxious when Anthony Edwards won't do that because he's trying to play actual basketball. Uh, now I don't like the aunt, you know, the, Hey, ref thing that he does. It's been not quite as bad this year, but this is the sort of game where it gets pretty frustrating. And I think in an honest moment, if these refs or the NBA would go back and actually watch some of this stuff more closely, they would see like, Hey, this is bad. Like the stuff SGA is up to. And the fact and the thunder analysis are just, they've, they've always been this way. So like, let's not, uh, uh, let's not act too surprised. Like everybody knows that their, their color commentator, Michael Cage is a, a massive Homer. Um, it's, it's laughable. Um, and like, like, like really bad, like going back to old, what the Rockets broadcast, maybe a decade ago in the James Harden era, we're super homery, uh, Matt Harpering, I think on the jazz broadcast was really bad for a long time. Like there's some of these broadcast parings that are just like just completely in the tank where it's, uh, they're complaining, you know, throughout the game, like, Oh, finally a call goes the, like literally that's, that's how they were reacting. Okay. C shot. Almost twice as many free throws as the wolves. Okay. C shot 23 free throws. The wool shot 12. Um, okay. See, it was called for only 13 personal files in this game. It was, it was pretty unbelievable. Um, I, I, I should have, I should have just written down some of the stuff that Cage said. It was, it's just like, and, and the inability to grasp actually the rules, uh, was, was pretty surprising too at times. Um, but in like, like, like, Chris Finch doesn't challenge the David Chenzo file call on the jump ball in the fourth quarter, which was a bad call because David Chenzo had the ball well before anybody, well before he landed on whoever, whatever, thunder player was, but wondering why the wolves weren't challenging. Well, best case scenario, it's a jump ball, worst case scenario, it's a side out. Like what? I mean, that's not something you're going to challenge in a close game, you know, unless it's like the final 30 seconds, right? There's still like four or five minutes left. Anyway, um, we'll get more opportunities to complain. Actually, I think the other wolves games are, are actual wolves, slender games are actual national TV like is Peter T and T. So I'm not sure that we'll have to be some sis, um, um, secepted to, uh, sorry, subjected to his, subjected to, uh, to, okay, sees and answers again, but it's, it's bad. It's really bad. Trust me. Uh, watch them for a, for a laugh, uh, against any team. It's not like they have anything against the thunder. They're just, they can't help themselves. Uh, they, they are beyond homorific. Um, okay. Uh, I want to hit on, uh, we talked to Ann versus J a little bit. I talked a little bit of rotation stuff. I, I think the other thing that everybody knows, Chris, like this goes without saying Christmas should have called another time out late in the third quarter. Um, I don't know that it would have changed anything, but like he loves strategically using his timeouts to the use of the loses and stuff. Like the time out management there should have been a little bit better. And I think I know that there's a rotation to keep to, or to some, to some extent for Chris Finch and I get it, but taking and, and Conley both off the floor late in the third quarter is tough for me. Um, and Rob Dillingham was out. I don't know that he would have ever gone to Dillingham anyway, but like that's part of the Dillingham's like the one guy on the team besides, besides aging Mike Conley and, and, you know, kind of up and down and when it comes to this stuff that could actually keep a dribble against this, this trapping defense that okay, see, he was playing. Dillingham was out with the ankle. Uh, and again, I don't think he would have trusted him. But that's where you need a Dillingham who can keep his dribble, split the double, find the open guy, uh, and get off his own shot too. If he splits it, like Dillingham would do that. That would be beneficial to have somebody like that or to just have another point guard. Like Jordan McLaughlin would have handled that pretty well. I know he's small. Jordan McLaughlin's not as small as Rob Dillingham. Mate Morris would have handled it. Okay. Nikhil's not a point guard, Nikhil's a great player and I've said multiple times pound for pound based on expectations. He's been their best player this year based on expectations. Nikhil has delivered greater than anybody else compared to that, whatever that level of expectation is, but he's not a point guard and, and he turned it over five times against, against this trapping defense, uh, you know, and Naz turned it over four times and Julius turned it over four times and Jaden turned it over three times like these are avoidable. Minnesota had 23 turnovers to okay, sees nine turnovers and the layer on top of it. That SGA is just getting to the free throw line, you know, down the stretch or whatever whatever he wants. Makes it pretty difficult. Let's talk about individual studs and duds. That's how we'll close the game or close the show here today. Today's episode of lock that wolves is brought to us by our friends at rocket money. Did rocket money help you find any subscriptions you've forgot about or that you were paying for twice? That's definitely happened to a lot of folks who have a few subscriptions. They don't even realize they're paying for, but rocket money makes it so easy to track them all down. It's like having a personal assistant for your finances. Rocket money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions monitors you're spending and helps lower your bill so you can grow your savings. It brings everything together in one place, whether it's subscriptions, your spending habits or even the goals that you want to hit this year. Rocket money has over five million users and it's saved a total of $500 million in cancel subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the apps premium features. One of the best features is definitely the subscription tracker. You can use it to cancel services that you just don't use anymore. You can save a ton of money doing that plus with our goals feature, you can automatically set aside money for the future, so there's no more stressing about budgeting every month. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with rocket money. Go to rocketmoney.com/lockdown today, that's rocketmoney.com/lockdown. Today's show is sponsored by Indeed. If you've ever been a hiring manager, you know just how challenging it can be to find the right candidates and to do it fast. But with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts and you only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/lockdownsports. Just go to indeed.com/lockdownsports right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/lockdownsports. Terms and conditions apply, hiring indeed is all you need. This doesn't does for this game, I don't know, I talked a lot about Aint already and like he was the team's leading scorer at 20, like he only got 12 shots up. It's tough for me to call him a stud in this game. I know that he was the only source of efficient offense for Minnesota, but I think he needed to have a better game and he didn't. I don't think he attempted a shot in the third quarter, which is the quarter that the wolves lost by 20 points. They gave up 43 points because OKC pressured the ball and picked up the pace and did exactly what Dagno said this in his pregame. I think they actually ran this clip on TV of Dagnos saying like that you can't let their defense get set. You have to push it. The wolves defense was pretty good in three quarters. They held OKC to 25 or less than three of the four quarters, but they gave up 43 in the third quarter. Minnesota was a minus 20 in that quarter route scored by 20, went from a six point lead to a 14 point deficit going to the fourth and anti-hours didn't attempt a single shot. That's tough. I actually don't know that I have like really a stud in this game for the wolves. Like, I mean, the anti-gressiveness sees to be better. Randall only had 11 points. He got off to a good start and was effective in the post like they actually ran offense through Julius Randall in the low post which is weird and it worked to an extent until OKC decided to start doubling as soon as he got to a certain point and then they wrote that they're so fast and so long they rotate so quickly on the perimeter. The wolves weren't getting clean enough looks off of that anyway. I think I probably go naz. I know he had the four turnovers. He had a really bad one when they were down six with like a minute left that when they were still technically in it, he just like lost the ball and tried to dribble hand off and messed it up. I don't know. I think naz was probably the world's best player on the floor in this game. He had 19 points off 14 shots. He missed four threes, but he was aggressive going to the basket. He was seven of nine on two point attempts had eight rebounds led the team in rebounding in 33 minutes, which is very unusual. He actually played the second most minutes because playing small against the slider team actually made some sense. He had three blocks. He had an assist in a steal. He was aggressive overall offensively and I thought that was really important and naz has played great here lately. We saw that late in what was the Atlanta loss maybe that he played really well late in. So a good game from naz overall. I'd probably say Conley too, just like because he was finally aggressive. He ended up only playing 23 minutes because Dante was was so important in that third quarter. Important as in able to break the trap, but also a bit more of an off the dribble threat offensively than Conley was. I know Conley, they actually shot the same number of shots and Conley was more efficient than Dante shooting the ball, but Dante was still really big for that stretch and there's just more of a threat offensively because the Thunder knew that other than Ant, none of the ball handlers are looking to score off the dribble from Minnesota. Dante is the only one who who's like willing to do it. Conley had that nice run, which helped the Wolves bump that lead to double digits that then immediately evaporate. It was right before the big Thunder run in the third quarter. Besides that, like he wasn't looking to be aggressive with the ball in his hands. I know that's something the Wolves want him to do with the wrist injury and obviously his age, like we're not going to see a ton of aggressive off the dribble Mike Conley, which is a problem. And that's where I think even Chenzo, we talked about this on the show Tuesday, I think even Chenzo comes in as the season wears on more and more often, especially in crunch time, but we saw that in the third quarter of this game. All that to say, that run by Conley was great. He had 16 points in this game on 10 shots, four of seven on threes, knocked on a floater, which was great to see. It's been a while since he's done that for assist, two steals, only one turnover in a game where everybody except Josh Minett turned it over for Minnesota. And the Wolf said one, two, three, four, five guys that had at least three turnovers. Conley only had one, which was nice to see. So I'll go Conley. I'll go Nause. And I guess Dante, I mean, he only shot three of 10, but again, was big in that third quarter had five assists. Second on the team and assist, only two turnovers for Dante despite all the pressure in the trapping. So decent game from even Chenzo. No actual duds in this game, like nobody was was bad, like I would have liked to see Rudy be a little bit better against such a small front court. But offensively, it's just, you know, I think there were a couple of times where the spacing was clunkier than normal because the wolves were thinking, I'm sure that the game plan was like, hey, there should be lobs for Rudy because these dudes have heart and shine and nobody else with size with, with Chen Holmgren out and even with heart and stuff like heart and stuff. The only guy with any size. However, they're athletic, they're quick, they're well coached, they're, they're long, they jump into passing lanes, they can still block shots like the, like they can still disrupt you because of the length, youth athleticism activity and the wolves just didn't do a good job of spacing Rudy out and getting him lobs. They had a couple of lobs to my not. I think they were both off of pick and roll too, where Rudy was out of the paint. So it kind of created that, you know, mine out could move into the wake of Rudy going up to set the screen and get a lob. And that's something I think I'd like to see the wolves do more of moving forward. But so all that to say, Rudy didn't play great. I don't think he played terrible. I thought he was pretty good defensively. Again, outside of that third quarter, the wolves held OKC under 25 points in three or four quarters. That's a good thing. This is a really good, really good team that the wolves just lost to. They're top, you know, what, they're seventh in offensive rating on cleaning the glass. They're, they're, you know, top three team in the entire NBA, like it's, it's okay to lose this game. What's not okay is, is the, the way that it happened in the third quarter. But again, a team, I said this on Tuesday's show, a team the wolves can play with, a team that I actually think as far as good teams go, they match up with as good against them. And I would say Boston too, as they do against, you know, the dialysis and some of these other teams that we've seen the wolf struggle with at times. And they've beaten good teams over this, this, this extended period of improved play as well. So all that to say, not too much like worrisome that I would take from this game other than you know, some of the same issues, the turnover problems, the lack of ball handling that are really only going to come up against some of these teams that force a lot of turnovers. And obviously, okay, season their division, they're going to seem three more times, they're going to have to figure it out. Maybe we'll see some more dealing him down the road once he gets a little bit healthier. All right. That's all we got for a today on the show. We'll be back on Thursday. We'll talk about some more, I think probably talk a little bit about the rotation stuff with mine out. We didn't get to that on Tuesday. She'll like I wanted to maybe some of the ball handling stuff. How does the back court look for Minnesota moving forward? What tweaks can they make? And then we'll look at the Celtics game Thursday night, a TNT game, 6 30 PM tip, fun wolves, Celtics for the first, I guess second time this year, second and final time this year. We'll see that Thursday night. So all we got for you today here on the show, a big thank you for making lockdown wolves, your first listen every day. Of course, this shows free and available everywhere where every listen to podcast, you can also watch on YouTube, you can download the lockdown sports, Minnesota app on Roku and Amazon fire TV and watch there as well. And you can subscribe to the newsletter at locked on daily.com daily newsletter Monday through Friday. New years, we're not doing a newsletter today, but every other day Monday through Friday, you'll find a locked on wolves newsletter. You can subscribe at locked on daily.com the locked on 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. From big upsets to game winning drives, the NFL playoffs are better with FanDuel 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 FanDuel 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. Please visit fanduel.com/lockedon to join today and get started with $200 in bonus bets. Make the playoff season unforgettable with FanDuel, 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. The ultimate team in league coverage delivered right to your inbox. Start your day with expert analysis, game previews and recaps, news about your favorite team in 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 lockedondaily.com, the locked on podcast network, your team every day.
The Minnesota Timberwolves built a double-digit lead against the best-in-the-West Oklahoma City Thunder, but the home team's ball pressure, athleticism, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were too much for the Wolves as OKC came away with the win.
