[MUSIC PLAYING] It's the Lock-Dawn Podcast Network, your team every day. Your favorite podcast now has a newsletter, introducing Lock-Dawn 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 Lock-DawnDaily.com, the Lock-Dawn Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to another episode of Lock-Dawn Wolves. This is the post-game pod for the Terrops 3rd straight win and exciting win over the Spurs. On Sunday, we'll talk about how the wolves dug themselves a bit of a hole, how the bench helped build them a 16-point lead. They gave it all back, but still one down the stretch, and it wasn't because of Anthony Edwards. Once again, strong bench play. Dante di Vincenzo continues, a really impressive hot streak. We'll break the whole game down here on the show. Welcome in, you are Lock-Dawn Wolves. [MUSIC PLAYING] You are Lock-Dawn Timber Wolves, your daily Minnesota Timber Wolves podcast. Part of the Lock-Dawn Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to the Lock-Dawn Wolves podcast. Part of the Lock-Dawn Podcast Network, your team every day. My name is Ben Beacon. I'm the host of Lock-Dawn Wolves. Happy Monday, everybody. Hopefully, you've had a fantastic past week or so of the holiday season. And I guess in early Happy New Year's, we'll-- the Terrops play New Year's Eve this year in OKC. So I guess in early Happy New Year's, we had toward that all day later this week. The Wolves have won three straight. Today's the post game pod from the Terrops win over the Spurs on Sunday. A really fun game, really kind of wemby versus-- not wemby versus ant, more like wemby versus the collective. Timber Wolves, you know, they're-- I don't know, the Terrops collectively, right? There wasn't-- you know, other than we'll get into Dante di Vincenzo's game, there's some pretty interesting stuff to get into on this one. Because he led the team in scoring. Rudy was awesome against his fellow countrymen, wemby. And the Wolves had a really good plan defensively, too. So we'll talk about kind of the fits and starts of this game, why it was so Topsy Turvy. And that's what we'll do on today's show. A big thank you off the top for making Lockdown Wolves your first list in every single day. Of course, this shows free and available everywhere. That includes YouTube, as well as all of your favorite audio platforms. Wherever you like to listen to podcasts, you can find Lockdown Wolves you can also watch on the Lockdown Sports Minnesota app on both Roku and Amazon Fire TV. And reminder, you can subscribe to our daily newsletter at LockdownDaily.com. It's one stop for ultimate team and league coverage, delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free right now. We'll get locked on Daily.com. And start your day with the all new free Lockdown Wolves newsletter. All right, setting this one up. So the Terrops are coming off the exciting win over Houston on Friday night, the game winner in the final 25 seconds. And have now had one too straight coming into this one, of course, beating Dallas on Christmas Day. A couple of really good teams, Dallas and Houston. And I'll play in a team that they had lost to earlier in the season. And obviously, as one of the league's best young exciting players in Wembley. And just a solid Spurs team that feels like they're going to be at least a play in team. And Minnesota was, I think, fatal had been favored by six and a half, which surprised me a little bit. Besides Rob Dillingham, the Wolves were fully healthy. The Spurs were pretty healthy too. So I was a little surprised that they were favored by that much. And sure enough, it ended up being a really close game. The Terrops, once again, this is another one of those stop me if you've heard this before moments. But they, again, came out really flat with their start. I shouldn't say flat. I don't think they looked flat. It wasn't an energy thing. And of course, back home, where the last couple of times they've been at home, it was pretty much a debacle with how they performed at home. Target center crowd, booing, getting on Julius Brando, the whole thing. Their last two wins had come on the road. The last time they were at home, they lost to the Warriors and Knicks. And that was the first two games of what ultimately was a three game losing streak. But I thought the energy was good to start. That wasn't the problem. The problem was, once again, just missing shots and a bit of stagnation in terms of the offense. The Wolves spent the early part of the game kind of match-up hunting. And Jack Borman and I talked about this on the postcast that I hosted last night. So if you missed the live postcast on lockdown sports, Minnesota, and YouTube, you can find the audio. It's the episode before this in your audio feed. And typically, Luke Goodman hosts, I hosted this time around with Jack. And Jack talked a bit about how basically the Timberwolves were trying to hunt, like Chris Paul was trying to guard Jane McDaniel's. And the spurs have done this before. Teams that have had Chris Paul, well, not just, Chris Paul's done this in the past, but other teams have tried this too, where you put your point guard on Jaden, because he's your least threatening offensive player. You obviously can't put him on Rudy, because then lobs become that much easier. But the idea was we can hide Chris Paul and Jaden, we can put our length elsewhere. Sohan can guard Ant, stuff like that. And the Wolves spent some time trying to hunt that matchup. They were trying to find like, hey, we have this mismatch. Let's go get a bucket because Jaden can score on him. And they were able to get a couple buckets that way, but they also tried so hard that they turned it over a few times. They got some easy buckets in the paint, they had some turnovers, then they missed some threes. They weren't really, they didn't really do a great job actually getting all the way to the rim. And actually, Ant didn't even shoot the ball until the five minute mark in the first quarter. And in some ways it's a credit to the Wolves trying to find those mismatches, trying to move the basketball and get open shots. But they also just weren't scoring. And at some point you just need Ant to take over. And the first quarter was a struggle offensively for Minnesota because Ant wasn't involved, because they didn't consistently find those matchups that they could attack. And then on the other end of the floor, the Spurs were just crashing the glass. They got offensive rebounds, they got them, I think they had at least five second chance points in the first half of the first quarter. And the Spurs were able to build a little bit of a lead. In fact, it was a 10 point lead. The Wolves got their reserves in the game a little bit later than they typically do. So the starters dug a double digit hole for the bench to dig out of. And sure enough, the bench did dig out of it. They did a lot of that work already in the first quarter. It was a bench unit of the bench chair that we always talk about, Nikhil, and Dante DiVincenzo, and Nas Reed. And this time, plus Josh Minut, who we'll talk more about on tomorrow's show, who played really well against Houston on Friday. And I've also been, if you've been listening, I've been talking a lot about Josh Minut lately because I think he's going to be a key part of where this team ultimately gets this year. But Josh was part of that lineup and the Julius Reynolds in the game as well. And they actually pushed the pace a little bit more, which is something we've talked about quite a bit on the show that, believe it or not, Anthony Edwards, a lot of times is the culprit when it comes to slowing down the wolves in transition. And as I've said many times before, I don't think the wolves should be a top 10 team in pace. I don't. However, they need to be more opportunistic when it comes to chances to push the pace against certain teams in certain matchups, with certain lineups on the floor. And I don't mean to say that like, they need to, I don't want to make this like a checklist that they have to literally think about every time they get a rebound. But they should just know, like, hey, okay, we need to run on the Spurs 'cause it's hard to score on Wimby and the half court, it just is. We're also not making threes. And we've got this lineup with Randall and Dante and these innaas on the floor and the keel. These are all guys that can push the pace. Julius Randall's at his best when he's got the ball in his hands in the open floor in the secondary break. Can attack a mismatch, can attack somebody who's on their heels and just go to work instead of, all right, 16 seconds on the shot clock, have him back down until it gets to about, you know, eight seconds and then shoot a really tough kind of fade away or throw a, you know, start a rotation on the perimeter which gives somebody a hand grenade with a, you know, the whole thing unfolds so slowly that the defense has time to recover. This is Randall at his best. And Dante di Vincenzo is much better as a trail catch and shoot three point shooter or sprint to the corner three point shooter or even attacking the rim in transition. He did a lot of that with the Knicks last year. Remember, he wasn't just a three point shooter. He was a phenomenal three point shooter with the Knicks but that's not the only thing he did. He also scored in the half court. He also scored in transition at the rim and he's a talented offensive player. So to get those two going in the open court with three more guys who loved to run, Nas, Josh Minot, and Nikhil Alexander Walker. That's a lineup where everyone can shoot the three and you know, Minot is the jury still out on, if he's a rotation, you know, league average or above three point shooter getting rotation minutes but he seems to be capable enough as a three point shooter. Randall's a league average three point shooter but teams have to respect it. And Nikhil, Di Vincenzo and Reed all are better than league average. I know what their numbers are this year which by the way, are improving. But they're all potent catch and shoot guys. So to push in transition and they can all score at the rim. Right? The athleticism. We know what Randall can do. We know Nas can get to the rim quickly. Nikhil is comfortable doing it. Dante is too, and Josh Minot, it's super athletic. This is, that lineup is quickly becoming one of my favorite lineups for the Wolves because it can do so many things but it can push the pace and score both at the rim and outside the arc and play make for each other. Those are all guys who could pass the ball too. And all guys who could put it on the floor. It's a really kind of a weird, a little bit undersized yet still big. Like, I mean, think about it. Randall and Reed are both undersized to play the five. And obviously Reed is the nominal five in that situation. Minot's pretty big to be playing the three. So you basically got three guys between Minot, Randall, and Reed who are between six, eight, and six, ten. And, you know, none of them are like point forwards but they can all handle it a little bit. Minot would be the one that I'd worry about passing the ball but the other two guys can pass it. And then you have two guys, neither of them who are actually point guards. Nikhil, Exeter, Walker, and Dante, Devan, Genzo. But both masquerades point guards at times and are being asked to do it quite a bit this year. That's a really weird lineup. Just from a one through five basketball perspective. But it works because they play how the Wolves need to play as a team which is opportunistic, push the pace, using athleticism and outside shooting. And, you know, they also can play, you know, dribble handoff game was really strong with even Genzo. It's something he did great in New York. And, you know, rather than him running the traditional offense, just going to dribble handoff with Dante, he can pull from three. He can pull from 30 feet and knock it down. Or he can, you know, throw a pocket pass, which we saw him do as well. A really fun unit that did really well for the Wolves in this game. And they went on a quick run to start the second quarter. I think they, I think it was a 10-0 run. Ultimately, they scored 32 points to the quarter and hold the Spurs to 12. In fact, San Antonio was stuck at nine points in the second quarter until like, or actually they were stuck at seven points until like three minutes left in the frame. And then finally at the end of the second quarter, Ant got involved a little bit. I want to talk more about what happened late in the game down the stretch. And then we'll get to individual studs and does. We'll talk about Ant's performance as well. We also have to talk Rudy. He was great. A lot to get to still get to all that here next. Today's episode of Lock that Wolves is brought to us by our friends at RocketRx. Today's episode is brought to you by RocketRx. If you're ready to boost your confidence to 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. 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There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/lockedonsports. Just go to indeed.com/lockedonsports right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/lockedonsports. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. All right. So the Timberwolves use a big second quarter and that bench unit again. We'll talk a lot more lineups tomorrow. I don't want to go too far down that path today. We've got a show tomorrow to do that. We'll also preview the Thundermatch up tomorrow. But the lineup, the bench lineup and then obviously that hybrid lineup as the starter starts to come back into the game midway through the second quarter. That's what builds this lead. They win the second quarter, 32 to 12 after we down eight at the end of the first quarter. Now they're up 12 at halftime. And the offense is humming a bit. If the Edwards got involved toward the end of the second quarter, hits a couple of threes. They start running more spread pick and roll with Rudy go bare. And then Rudy is also in the second quarter and continues that into the second half. Rudy really locked down Whenby. Early in the game, I should, I talked about cross matching early, but the Wolfs had had go bare guarding so hand, which by that, I mean, in air quotes guarding, it's like what they've done in the past against other teams. Where, you know, he just roams off of the least threatening offense of player. It's like last year against the Thunder. When Josh Gideon was on OKC, you know, the, the Wolves weren't the only team to do this, but Rudy go bears the most frightening free safety in the league, this side of Whenby. And so that's what they did is he sagged off of so hand. Whenby was like, I'm just going to shoot jumpers. I don't want to attack the paint, which is crazy because the dude's massive like that much, so much bigger than Rudy go bare. And he didn't want to contest. And then he ends up trying to do that in the second quarter. And Rudy shuts him down. Rudy blocked him at one point. Like lots of contests, some neverminds from Rudy, where guys were like, now I'm not doing this. A really impressive second quarter from Rudy kind of helped put the cap on that run, and then anchored a little bit of offense going. So again, they're up 12 at halftime third quarter. The starting unit kind of pushes that lead a little bit higher, and then they give a ton of it back. And they miss a ton of wide open threes. Like I'm talking seven, eight, nine, just wide, wide, wide open threes that they miss. Still doing enough in terms of forcing turnovers, and activity level, good enough to again, build that lead up to 16. But then all of a sudden it's Wembley who can't miss. And Devin Vassell, who's killed the Wolves in the past, is a really nice player, has an awesome third quarter as well. The Spurs win the third by 12, which makes it this a tie ball game going to the fourth quarter. And the Wolves start the fourth tough, with Wembley off the floor. The Wolves actually lost the non-Wemby minutes. And then Wemby checks in, the Spurs go on a run. I think the Wolves got down eight in the fourth quarter. And then Anthony Edwards comes in and Ants and Randall both get to work. Randall more so than Ant. Like Randall was just better than Ant in this game. And they were a bit hesitant in the offensive flow, which again goes back to some of the stagnation. I talked about this on the postcast summit, this point with Jack last night was, I felt like it was indecisive in this game, which is unusual for him. It's almost like he wanted to be more assertive in getting to the paint. And that was hindering his overall game, because he was like, I don't know if it's because Wemby was there, then it gave him a hesitation or what. But he would just go too late. And he ended up only shooting one of nine down threes, because he was indecisive shooting outside the arc too. And the Wolves also had fouling issues. The Spurs are great at not fouling themselves. The officiating, by the way, in this game, I think I've only said this twice this year, maybe three times. The officiating was quite poor. And I don't necessarily think it was lopsided. I know the Wolves shot a lot less free throws. Part of that is just the way these teams play. They did catch up a little late, but like they had a dozen free throws until like midway through the fourth quarter. And still San Antonio attempted nine more. I don't think it was like intentionally bad or anything like that. It was just bad officiating on both ends. And I think grand scheme of things, the Wolves did get a bit of the short end there, but that was tough. Anyway, the Wolves were down a couple of possessions. Jayden gets a big put back slam midway through the fourth quarter, and then Ann gets a big block on the other end. Dante also had a big play in transition to keep Wembley from getting a dunk in what was a one possession game at that point. Goes back and forth down the stretch. Don't really want to go completely blow by blow, but basically the Wolves did a really good job. And on the final possession of the game, we didn't actually touch on this on the postcast, but the Wolves up too to be able to force the ball out of Wembley's hands, force of all out of Chris Paul's hands, Randy O'McDaniel switching seamlessly on the perimeter, pressing up against each of those guys 30, 35 feet from the basket, and ultimately getting a Jeremy Sohan semi contested three point shot from the slot. That's exactly what you want if you're in Minnesota. And the last thing you want, if you're saying to Tony, I don't know why he didn't swing to Harrison Barnes in the corner. Dante was trying to play too, and did a really good job playing too, because he jumped the passing lane where Sohan thought he had to shoot it. And Dante still got a pretty good contest on Sohan's three point attempt. That would have won the game for the Spurs instead. It clanged off the far side of the backboard and the Wolves held on to win by two. But impressive execution down the stretch. I thought Ant was good enough for how poor he was for most of the game down the stretch. Rudy continued to play well. He had a big free throw. He had a pair of free throws. He had been five for five, actually four for four to that point, and got a big rebound and was fouled. Could have hit two to make it a four point game, which would really change the complexion of the final 30 seconds. But he split the pair, which was huge because it pushed it from two to three. So a big free throw from Rudy. Strong play down the stretch defensively from Jaden from Julius Randall, which I don't think I've said all year. I don't think I've complimented Julius Randall's defense. And it was good in the late, you know, the final minute of this game. Really good execution down the stretch against a solid Spurs team. Like this is a team with a similar record that, you know, after this game now, the Spurs are at 500. Obviously, an ascending Spurs team, a healthy Spurs team, a team that is likely going to be in the play in this year. And we've needed to see the Wolves execute in crunch time and they did. Now, disappointing that the starters continue to kind of allow this, this team to be dragged back down to earth when they should be building a bigger lead. Jack and I talked on the postcast. If they just make their open threes, they probably win this game by 15, 20 plus. I mean, like it was one of those games where the offense was actually generating these looks. The Spurs perimeter defenders are poor enough that that like when he's obviously formidable, which by the way, when we didn't get his first block until the second half of this game, it only had two when it was all said and done. But the Wolves had a lot of opportunities to build a bigger lead in this game and just weren't able to do it because they missed so many open threes. Minnesota finished 11 to 44. That's 25% on three point attempts. Dante was five of 10. So everyone not named Dante Divincenzo was six for 34 in this game. Ant was one of nine. Jayden and Julius in the starting lineup combined to go for 11. Connolly was one for four, Nas was one for four for four. Josh Biden was one for two and then Nikhil was two for four. So Nikhil was the only player besides Dante that attempted a three in this game for the Wolves that made more than one really brutal shooting display from Minnesota. Yet they were good enough in the paint, got to the line enough late and at 18 offensive rebounds, I should also shout out Jack's note that he had. He pointed this out on the postcast and then again on Twitter last night. Rudy had 11 offensive rebounds, 10 of them in the second half. He's the first player with 10 or more offensive rebounds in a game since Evica Zubots over two years ago and near as we could tell, we couldn't find easily where the last time somebody had 10 offensive rebounds in a half, 10 of his 11 offensive rebounds came in the second half of this game and you wouldn't expect it to come against a team with Victor Webb and Yama. But again, Rudy's activity was awesome. We'll talk a bit more about that when we get into studs and duds. We'll talk about and we'll talk a little Josh Monet. We'll talk Nas a lot to get into here in the final segment related to studs and duds. We'll do all that here next. All right, individual studs and duds from this one. I thought that the best overall player on the floor, it wasn't really close for the Wolves was Dante even Chenzo. He had 26 points on eight to 15 shooting. So better than 50% for the floor. He was three for five on twos. He got to the rack a couple of times hit a really nice kind of hesitation. Almost like a, it wasn't an up and under, but it was like a, like he jabs up to one way, lost the defender, got through him for a reverse. One of his misses was a dunk that he just blew. It was a good performance from Dante. Five of 10 on threes, five of six at the line, got the line six times, seven boards. He was fourth on the team and rebounding in this game. Rudy had 15. Jayden had 10. We'll talk about that. Ant had eight. Dante had seven rebounds. Also four assists, only two turnovers. He was a, this is crazy. Dante even Chenzo was a plus 23 for the Wolves in this game. They only won by a bucket. Nobody else was better than a plus six. Well, they only had one starter that was positive. Ant was a plus two. Otherwise, the bench was all neutral. They were either zero or positive. And Dante was a plus 23. The next best was Nikhil's plus six. David Chenzo was really good. I talked a lot in the first segment about his activity level and, and assistance in pushing the pace. His catch and shoot three. Is this something else I think we'll do on Tuesday's show? But his catch and shoot number recently has been off the charts, still struggling a little off the dribble. But he's gone back to taking more attempts. Catch of the catch and shoot variety instead of off the dribble, which for anybody is a good thing. I know like ants are great off the dribble three point shooter. It's always still better to actually, I think for a while, at least Ant was better percentage wise this year. Catch a dribble that dribble off the dribble than he was. Catch and shoot, which is abnormal. Like for basically any player, it's better catch and shoot opportunities are better. They're usually cleaner. The rhythm is better. You know, all the above. And Dante has been taking more catch and shoot recently, less off the dribble. And sure enough of this game, I think all of his misses, but one might have been off the dribble. All that to say, five to 10 on threes. The first half again from Dante was great. Just like it was against Houston. The second quarter, I believe he played the full second quarter again, which he did against the Rockets on Friday. They need to keep Dante going because if this is the Dante, Devin Chenzo that the wolves got, I mean, this is who they thought they were getting. And I talked about it in the wake of that trade, how Dante would ultimately be the key because I thought Randall's production would eventually get to the point where it was similar to cats. And, you know, maybe a little, you know, I still in a vacuum, cats a better player. I don't, I said it then, I'll say it now. But I thought aunt could take a step up and, you know, level up to pull some of the old cat offensive production. They could paper over some of it with Nas and Randall would be good enough. And Randall could provide some ability to punish mismatches. And basically it was going to swing on Dante because if Dante was going to be a starting caliber player off the bench for Minnesota, then the wolves could still win the trade and be as good or better this year. I thought that was a possibility. I still think it's unlikely sitting here now, you know, 30 plus games into the season. But if Dante plays like this, they have a shot to, to, you know, at this point, it's tough given the number of wins they're at at this point in the season. But to still be a 50 plus win team, that to still be a, you know, to get hot to push for a top four C in the west. That's also on the table. And I don't need to put it all on Dante to even change those shoulders, but he's a big part of it. And then there's also the my Conley piece, which is very related to this. Conley only played 23 minutes. Again, struggled was, was one of five shooting. And, and he's the only guy on the roster that plays. That's a true point guard. And that's where the Rob Dillingham conversation comes in. But if they can kind of, again, paper over the, you know, the issue of not having a true point guard with Dante and Nikhil. Kind of, uh, and, you know, in, in at times, Julius Radle and obviously Ian initiating offense. It certainly dicey at times as we've seen. But this is a good example of if you push in transition with certain lineups, especially with Rudy off the floor, you can, you can get a lot of that offense back by just making them transition opportunities by getting threes in the secondary break, trail threes, getting to the free throw line in transition without needing to set up an offense and, and run something with somebody who's not a true point guard. I, I, and Dante's a huge part of that. Anyway, he was great in this game. We'll talk more about this here moving forward. Rudy, also awesome in this game, talked a lot about him already. He had 10 second half offensive rebounds, which is crazy. The first guy with 10 more offensive rebounds in a game in over two years, 17 points, 15 rebounds overall, six of 12 shooting. And, uh, you know, he played a little bit of patty cake there on the, um, on the offensive glass with himself. Uh, it wasn't quite Kevin Loveworthy, but, or Kevin, to Kevin Love's level, but six of 12 overall shooting, but he was five or six at the line as we talked about, hit that big free throw to make it a three point game in the final minute. He had a couple of blocks, a couple of assists. One of those blocks was on wenby. He had another big block in this game that started a fast break the other way. And honestly, like, I think, I think this is the best he's played wenby. Wenby, yeah, he got what 64 or 64 34 points, but it took him 30 shots to do it. The wolves made wenby's life difficult. And everything flowed through Victor Romanama in this game. Nobody else on the Spurs attempted more than 14 shots. So said another way. Wenby attempted more than twice as many shots as the next most used, if you will, or next most, the next most shot attempts by an individual Spurs player, which is nuts. And I mean, that's probably how it should be because like, who else is scoring on this team, I guess, Devin Wassell probably should add more than 14 shot attempts. But like, uh, I get it. And again, credit to Rudy and credit to the wolves for a strong defensive game plan, have Rudy roaming off of so hand and, uh, you know, cross match where necessary and just try and make like, wenby hit a couple of impossible shots. He had a long two when the wolves were trying to pull away in the final, like four or five minutes of the fourth quarter. That was just crazy. Like Randall forced him into a really tough shot and he made it. And that's just credit to wenby. And I should also, I mentioned Randall's defense early in the final possession, but Randall was the primary for wenby for a lot of this game with Rudy as, as the, the Romer and Randall was solid, really, really solid defensively. It's the same strategy they've deployed against some other bigs where you use Randall's physicality. He's not going to get called for a file every time down. And actually he only got one file called on him in this game. It was Jaden that had five files, maybe not surprising. Rudy had four in this game and I said four off the bench, but Julius, and I don't think it was for lack of effort. Sometimes it is with Julius Randall and for ants defensively when those guys aren't picking up files, but actually that Julius, his defense was active in this game. He was in the jersey of, of wenby for, for a good chunk of this one. And I was very impressed with the effort he put forward and his effectiveness defensively in this game too. All right. So Dante, Rudy are my first two studs. I guess for my third one, I could go, Nas, you know, I could go. Julius, I think I'll go Jaden McDaniel's 12 points, 10 rebounds. The second game this season and also the second in his career where Jaden McDaniel's had, had 10 rebounds. His set, I think that's true. I know for a fact it's a second career double double and they both came this year. And I don't think he'd ever reached double figures and rebounds and like also had a single digit point total in a game. So I'll roll with that. His second career double double, 12 and 10, six to 12 shooting, he did miss four or threes. They were all open. That's another, that's an issue. We talked about that already as a team, Jaden's got to start making threes. He's like around 30% now in the season. That can't be where he is. Like it's got to be better. However, his offensive activity was, was good in this game. I talked about the tips slam that made it, I think I've cut the deficit to maybe five or four about halfway through the fourth quarter after a big Spurs run. That was a big play. I think it was like right after he'd been called for a tiki tack file on the other end. He had five fouls, some were tiki tack as they are with Jaden. He's got a reputation the whole thing, but I thought he played through the foul trouble. The foul issues well in this game. He still managed to play 32 minutes. He still managed to get 10 boards for offensive boards. And even though the three point shot wasn't following, he hit falling. He hit those miss those shots against mismatches early in the game. And then he had that tip dunk at the end and he had one other shot in the paint in the fourth quarter. All of his scoring was like early first quarter, late fourth quarter. And even though the three point shot wasn't falling, I don't know the last time Jaden got to double figure scoring and didn't make a three. Now that shouldn't be a habit because he needs to make threes, but that shows how active he was in this game and how aggressive he was, which an aggressive Jaden is a good thing. I don't want a high usage Jaden. I don't think we'll ever see it. I don't want him to be hunting a shot, but if he has a mismatch or he's a one on one, if he attacks a reckless closeout, that is a good Jaden. And that is what we saw mostly in this game. I thought he played well enough to be a stud. So I'm going Dante Rudy and Jaden as studs in this game. I don't have any duds. I mean, Conley wasn't great, but he ended up only playing 23 minutes. I don't think he actively hurt them. I know he was a minus in his minutes, but it, you know, when you look at the grander scheme, it's not because of Mike Conley. It was because of the ball stopping, mostly aunt, a little bit of Randall. It wasn't Conley, right? Getting Conley off the floor was more about than ultimately playing a little bit quicker, playing with pace. Also with Ant off the floor and Ant ended up with a positive plus minus because he ended up back in the game with a lot of those bench guys that were playing the right way. And then Ant is still the culprit of slowing things down a bit. It's one of the reasons why I think individual game plus minus can be misleading, but it could also tell a story. Ant was the only starter in the positives, but he played the worst of anybody this side of Conley, like Randall McDaniel's go bear. All had better games than Ant. But plus minus also tells us Dante, even Chenza was a plus 23. Nobody else is better than a plus six and that's exactly right. Dante was great in this game. So it could be misleading, but it can also kind of, when it's that drastic, it shows you just how good even Chenza was. But then you dig a bit further and you realize that Ant was on the floor with the starters and was part of the problem. And he was on the floor kind of along for the ride with the bench guys that were playing so great. And that's something else we'll cover later in the week is as we continue to kind of evaluate different lineups at Chris Finch rolls out there and lineup combinations. So that's something we'll cover. We'll talk more Josh Minett. Didn't get to him today as much. We'll talk about him on Tuesday's show. We'll talk rotations. We'll talk Josh Minett. He was good in this game. Saw rotation minutes in both the first and second half, I think for the first time this season. So really, really impressive game. Really impressive win all the way around in a fun game for the Wolves. So a lot to get to on tomorrow's show will also set you up for Wolves Thunder on New Year's Eve from OKC. So that'll be a topic on Tuesday too. And then we'll be back of course Wednesday on New Year's Day with the post game pod from Wolves Thunder on Tuesday night. A big thank you for making Lockdown Wolves your first listen every day. Of course, this shows free and available everywhere. That includes YouTube as well as all of your favorite audio platforms. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find Lockdown Wolves. You can also watch on the Lockdown Sports Minnesota app on Roku and Amazon Fire TV. And you can follow an X. Outlockdown T-Wolves and also at Bee Beacon with HuBees, two E's, C.K. Ian, a reminder about the Lockdown Wolves daily newsletter. It's one stop for ultimate team and league coverage. Let me write you a box. You can sign up for free right now at LockdownDaily.com. Again, LockdownDaily.com. Of course, the Lockdown Wolves podcast is part of the Lockdown podcast network. Remember, the Lockdown network is your local experts on all the biggest stories. Once again, I'm Ben Beacon. This is the Lockdown Wolves podcast, and we'll catch you next time. [MUSIC] Hey Prime Members! You can listen to this Lockdown podcast ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. 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 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.
The Minnesota Timberwolves blew another large lead but came back to win late, holding off Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs behind strong games from Rudy Gobert and Donte DiVincenzo.
