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Contact Mark Ellis at mark.ls at hbi.com and let's talk about how we can grow your business together. I have not been to Minnesota in probably 20 years. And these guys survived the David Con era of Tiberwolz basketball and live to tell about it. It's Flee-grant howls.
And welcome into Target Center here. Judd Zilke had the sports dad, Phil Mackie. This is a live edition of flagrant howls recapping a game to heartbreaking, devastating loss to the Dallas Mavericks. Oh, Luca Donchich step back, dagger three, to put the Mavericks up 109 to 108.
Nas Reed rattles out or clanks out a potential game winner for the Tiberwolz and this crowd that was riled up for two and a half hours probably more like seven hours because the block party started at like two o'clock in the afternoon, goes home disappointed and in an O2 hole going back to Dallas. Let's just get right into it here, Judd, your main takeaway. My main takeaway is that the officiating might have been questionable. We can try and blame that.
I think some will. My main takeaway is that there are a lot of factors here but the most important one is the Tiberwolz two stars didn't do enough in this game. Ants and cat and it speaks volumes. And I mean, I think it's going to be a major story.
And I know there's reasons for it, Phil. But Carl Anthony Townne spent the end of this game on the bench. That's a hell of a place for a guy who's making what Carl is to be sitting or to be standing cheering on his teammates at the end of a Western Conference Finals game that I don't want to call it a must win, but it was certainly a game you could have won despite not playing all that well outside of some supporting cast. But I think Ant and Cat is easily the main storyline.
And really these first two games, what they did not do. And I think that's in a nutshell, and especially tonight, I think that's the story of the series so far. Dallas's two stars have done exactly what you need to do to win road games. And the world's two stars have not done what you needed to do with home court advantage to win even one of two home games.
Yeah. I mean, I will, I mean, the Carl thing, you know, four of 16, he gets in foul trouble early, and then they, I mean, Chris Finch and Mike and Norese, we'd rather have Kyle Anderson in the game for long stretches in the fourth quarter. And Nas Reed, I think, played the final, like, 16 minutes of this game that they'd rather have those guys on the court than Carl Anthony Townne's. But my headline for this game in this series so far, Anthony Edwards has been brutal in this series.
And listen, I feel like I've been driving the Anthony Edwards bandwagon for the entire time he's been here. I thought every ounce of praise was warranted through the first two rounds for Anthony Edwards. But he made two absolutely terrible decisions down the stretch. The turnover, the wolves are trying to close this thing out, 13 seconds left.
Just get a shot up, get something, get to the foul line, get any sort of look right to go up by two possessions. And he throws a pass off target out of bounds. Nas Reed, he's trying to hit Nas Reed on the wing. Mavericks get the ball back, Luka hit the step back dagger three.
And on the possession before that, the review of the people, I mean, they took like a half hour to figure it out. I thought it went, I thought it went off the Mavericks. And I don't know, we're sitting here in the arena, and it was tough to get like a perfect angle. But even just looking at Twitter, I thought it was a bad call.
Maybe some people in the comments can tell us if you saw it more closely watching on your 70-inch flat screen TV. But the pass that was made by Anthony Edwards to Jay McDaniel's put him in just a terrible spot on the baseline to have to tip toe and make something happen. And so I mean, you got two of the best offensive players in the world on the other side in Luka Doncic and Kari Irving. And they meticulously dissected the Timur wolves defense throughout the entire second half, starting toward the end of the second quarter when they shaved an 18-point lead down to 12 to give them some life going into halftime.
But you saw two fully formed adult superstar players in that second half on the road dissect the Timur wolves. And you saw a 22-year-old Anthony Edwards, who at least on this night and in the first two games, wasn't ready to carry his team. And Carl Anthony Jones was on the bench, but even able to do anything to carry his team, which says a lot as well. And that's what's huge, too.
You had one of your two superstars on the bench. And yeah, Ant has made about probably five or more passes in the first two games that have been as irresponsible. I mean, what was there was time I got a shot clock? What was he even doing there?
Why are you rifling the ball there? And explode it. Like, just slow it down. You're in control.
It's a tight game. You could have gotten out of here. And I say it like it was a wolves road game, which was not. But you could have gone to Dallas at 1-1.
And yet somehow you get so over your skis. And look, we can talk about the wolves nearly won this game with the supporting cast, like Nas Reed's spectacular. Mike Conley, first half spectacular. They had contributions defensively and from the supporting cast that they could have won this game.
But you do not win championships. And the wolves proved this through two rounds by having your supporting cast carry you. You would championships by Ant either going off. And you know what these first two games, the thing that really gets me is this.
We defended Ant and I think we correctly said so. We defended Ant on the basis of, hey, he didn't have great scoring games. Game two against Phoenix. A couple of games against Denver.
But what did he do? He did a hell of a lot of things. Like, he looks at the box score line and you're like, OK, that's where the contributions come. These two games, and I know he's tired, and he might be hurt.
And a lot of guys are, I mean, Luke can barely walk. Now, he's not going to play defense, so I'm not sure he even cares about that. But I mean, the dude is banged up. And he's still doing what you have to do.
So yeah, this is really disappointing. Because as you've talked about a tonne fill, there is a path here that at least gets you to the finals. And it's a pretty clear path of, because I mean, this is evenly matched. It's not like you're being blown out.
It's not like you're being completely outclassed. And you've sort of hit this wall now. And yeah, Kyrie. And OK, Luke was great.
Kyrie did not, until the second half, he had five first half points. So he was not great. You had every chance to win. This is a very hard to swallow loss, in my opinion.
It's brutal, man. Yeah, I mean, by the way, when you're ready for some positive fill, I know I think that we're seven minutes in. And I think people would rather have to savage this team right now. They've lost you really close to nail-biter games.
They blew an 18-point lead at home. They now have to come back and win a bunch of games in Dallas. And so there's a bunch of things to gripe about. And trust me, we will.
Let me know when you're ready for positive fill, because he is in the building. And he does have some thoughts. Maybe some silver linings here. I'm going to give you one more.
I'm going to give you one more. Great. Sure. And then I'm going to tell you.
I got more too. I'm going to give you one more. I said to you as the second half began. And the wolves in control, 15-point lead.
I think they got up to 16. I said to you, this is a very pile. The positive fill is not a clown. Remember, the wolves were down against Denver.
And we all said they're dead. And popped and won. You all didn't want to hear from positive fill when the left restrades to Denver. Get out of here, Phil.
It's interesting, because if I remember, you did come through on a stilts with a big nose on, right? Well, you can come back. So anyway, my last gripe for right now is this. I said to you as the half began, game seven in Denver is a great lesson here, right?
Because it's fresh in your mind that you were down by 15. And that game sort of looked on. And what did you do? You hung around, and you came back, and actually won by 10 points.
But my point is, like the reference point was right there for you. You created the reference point. Very, very mad. Anyway, positive fill.
Go ahead. OK, here's positive fill. All right. So the wolves, again, they lose this by one point tonight.
At one point, they had an 18 point lead. They had several different chances, even when the nuggets were the nuggets. The Mavericks whittled it down to 11 or 5 or whatever, right? And they had a bunch of chances to sort of widen the lead again.
This is the most incredible statistic that tells the story of this game. The Timmer wolves tonight missed 13 shots at the rim. 13 shots at the rim. And I'm on cleaning the glass right now.
So that's point blank. The Timmer wolves missed 13 point blank shots. That doesn't count. Anthony Edwards missing about three or four and one opportunities at the rim.
Or he's up there. He's getting fouled, going through contact. And the ball bounces off the backboard off the rim, right? If you count, the amount of times the wolves could have finished and won.
It was probably more like 15 or 16 missed shots at the rim. If you want to go to the next level, which is called the short mid-range, those little bunny shots from inside the paint, kind of within three to seven feet, the wolves missed 17 shots. Not counting at the rim. 17 shots in the short mid-range.
You added all up, Judd. The wolves missed 30 shots from either point blank range or within right around the restricted area, the short paint area. Now to Dallas' credit, they got a couple, especially lively coming off the bench, is incredible, gaffered. They've got some dudes in the paint.
They just make it harder for the wolves compared to Denver, compared to Phoenix, to get what they wanted the rim. Anthony Edwards has to go through the trees much more in this series than in the previous two series. But I mean, you're getting to the places on the floor that you want to. They clearly made an effort tonight.
So we ain't shooting 49 threes tonight. We are going to get to the rim, get to the paint, get to the free throw line more often. And we're going to play our game. So to miss again, 30 of those shots, is that something if you keep getting those shots?
Is that something you think is going to continue? So you know what? Dallas is just that good. Lively and gaffered are just a couple of de Kembe Mucumbos in the late 1990s, wagging their fingers, and there's no way the wolves can make those shots.
Or do the wolves just need to do a better job, making those shots to end the possessions as they were designed? That to me, that's a silver lining. It's also a gripe. Why are you missing 30 bunny shots in a two and a half hour basketball game for God's sakes?
But if you clean that up, you win this game by 10 points. Yeah. Well, and I mean, the game plan worked out well, right? Because Chris Finch made it abundantly clear, something almost 50, 30 point shots was correct, not acceptable.
And so and what's really maddening about the whole thing is the wolves got to the rim, right? You know, the ball was tipped off, and they're going to the rim, and they're making them. And it's like, OK, uh-huh, here it is. This is the game plan, and it's going to work.
And it dried up, but I think it gets back to the main point. If Ann is either hurt, struggling, or just off, it's over. Because that's the guy he, if he can't do what he did through two rounds, you're toast. And the Carl thing is a story too.
See, I'm not going to excuse the Carl thing completely. I'm with you. Ann has had two very disappointing games. But I mean, you betched.
You know, that's not meant to words. You betched Carl Anthony towns in this game in crunch time. That is such a statement. So basically, your one star was having a second, second, second of really bad game.
And your other, in air quotes, are, was so unplayable that you betched him. So I think that's part of what you're talking about with that stat. And I will say this, if those guys don't come around, this thing might last five games. And I certainly did not see this seismic of shift coming with Ant playing like this.
And the coaching staff, which is going to long way towards trying to make Carl feel good about Carl, essentially pulling the plug on the guy. Yeah, he was getting frustrated. He was doing his sort of stray voltage drives. And not as great as this game.
But, you know, this is not his best offensive game of the playoffs, knocking down seven, three pointers. So he finally shows up to the party on offense. But yeah, let's drill down on the Carl thing for a second here. This was much closer to the bad Carl games that we saw way too often in the Memphis series two years ago, last year, the five game loss to Denver in 2023, where he shoots 25% from the field.
Stray voltage drives foul trouble early, played off the court late, winds up only playing 26 minutes in this game. Like this is, it's very telling in a war, in a brawl of a basketball game, back and forth, haymakers, once the Mavericks brought the game to within five points, what late third quarter, whatever it was, like this was going to be a war for the final quarter and change. And for Carl to just be relegated to the bench, where you need offense, you need size, you need something, right? I mean, that was, boy, for as great as he's been, and for as much as he has sort of changed the way that people talk about him in the playoffs through these first two series, I don't think we're right back before we started because there's a game three, there's a game four, but not good, dude.
Like not good when you can't, do you think the Mavericks at any point in these playoffs, we're thinking about, would we be better off without Luca for these final nine minutes? Would we be better off without Kyrie Irving for these last nine minutes? No, they weren't talking about that. Okay, so tell me this, if you're Chris Finch, Mike and Ory, what is your strategy in game three for stopping that Mavericks backdoor cut because the Timberwolves have size, we all know they've got size.
You run that effectively three times, it's like, okay, that's cool, now stop it. They will run it effectively, I would say the entire game. Yeah, how about this, by the way? So I don't have the shot chart in front of you, but Daniel Gafford made eight shots out of 10, and Derek Lively made six shots out of six, so those guys combined to go 14 of 16 from the field, I'm pretty sure all of those were dunks, right?
Like those dudes, they're not shooting threes, I don't remember them doing any sort of like bunny hook shots, I'm pretty sure Gafford and Lively combined for 14 dunks in this game. Mostly I need their backdoor cuts or that little slip, slip sort of down the paint with Luca at the top of the key, I feel like they opened the third quarter with like three consecutive of the same play. And we can have the Rudy conversation here too. What's interesting is the wolves were actually a plus one when Rudy was on the court tonight, so they did win the Rudy minutes by one, but as many people pointed out, how many times did you see the Mavericks at the rim throwing down a dunk or a lob and Rudy is standing there flat-footed?
Why is that happening? Well, he's caught between, and this is part of this is like on him to be more decisive, and part of this is the wolves have to go back to the drawing board strategically and figure out how to stop this. He's caught constantly credit to the Mavericks too, between stepping up and contesting those shots or leaving his guy for a wide open drop pass and a dunk. So he's thinking, if I step up right now, Luca, who's one of the best passers in the league, is just gonna throw a little bounce pass to Daniel Gafford or to Lively, and it's not a matter two points.
But then like, you know, sometimes he's just stuck in No Man's Land and he's not contesting anything. So I almost feel like you need to cut the whole thing off at the pass way before it starts. Like you can't let Luca just get in within seven feet of the rim. He's either gonna float one in, get fouled, and one, or drop it off for an automatic two points.
Way too many times in this game. It's funny, they did actually cut down on the points on the paint by like 10 points, the Mavericks, but way, way, way, way too many uncontested, easy buckets and that's the point of having Carl Anthony Townsend really go bare on your team, is that you got these two gigantic trees that are supposed to make those shots a lot harder, and the Mavericks have found a way to get more easy buckets than any team so far against the Tyndall Wolves in the playoffs. And I guess what confuses me about that is they did that in the first game, they started to do it again tonight. At some point in time, where is the adjustment from the coaches?
Like in-game, between games? I don't care when it's made, when is it? Where is it? Cause I mean, that play, you would have thought the Wolves were playing small ball the entire game.
It was just remarkable and maddening because like from our perch up here, which is behind the basket that the Mads were shooting on in the second half, you could see that play developing fill how many times, like you could see what was going on, you could see the cutting, you could see it coming. And at no point in time did I think, okay, now the Wolves got this. At every point in time, I thought, oh my God, it's gonna work to perfection again, and it just continued to. The other thing that's just different for this Mavericks team, like the Wolves just don't have this is even if you play perfect defense on a possession.
And there were a lot, like the Wolves had some stretches where they were playing great defense. They're blitzing, Luca blitzing, Kyrie, you know, they're putting the Mavericks into sort of scramble mode. When there's three seconds left on the shot clock, Kyrie Irving can still just like weave his way in between the trees and traffic and just float one off the backboard and get to two points. Or Luca can just step back over to Fender and hit a game-winning three-pointer as he hobbles back down to high-five his teammates.
I mean, they just have a couple of guys that can get whatever they want, even if the Wolves play great defense. The Wolves had to work for everything. I mean, really the only Wolves player that can do that to some extent is Anthony Edwards, but even he's not as good at that yet at age 22 as Luca and Kyrie. And so kind of back to your point about, if Anthony Edwards is gonna play like this, what does the series look like?
Well, it's a sweep or a gentleman sweep the other way. Now, if playoff ants from Phoenix and Denver and the previous Denver series last year shows up and he's finding a way to get his own 29-30 points and he's finding a way to get his teammates open looks, they can still fight back, man. Like you said, they're not overmatched. They're essentially getting beats in the end game, which isn't entirely shocking because Dallas is one of the best clutch teams in the league.
The Wolves have struggled mightily over the course of the year in the clutch. When the Wolves are up by 18, the sin is letting it get back down to a two-point game and now you're at the mercy of two of the best clutch players in the league. When you take a lead like that, you have to lean on it, you have to make sure it stays double digits and that was their mistake, letting Dallas back in that game, basically going into the fourth quarter. So the first two rounds were intriguing because we didn't have a lot of, if in any, what I would call, nail-biting close games, right?
Like some of the games were close, but they weren't like this. Like tonight was edge of your seat. In some ways, as a fan of the sport, it's awesome. But if you're a Wolves fan, it's not.
But here's my question for you, okay? Because we've seen this in both games and the Wolves struggled in the second part of the season and this goes back to also the flip side is the Mavericks are excellent at this. I want to talk about the end of the first halves and the end of the games, but the end of the first half too. So the Wolves were, I don't think it's a hot take to deem them in complete control as the second quarter was winding down.
And then as they did in game one as well, they started to come apart. And Dallas, I think, now it's interesting because the Wolves came out and Carl hit his first three on the Wolves first possession of the third. So the game was not out of control at the time, but Dallas started to get some confidence and went into the locker room on a run. My question, and I guess my frustration is this, what is that?
Because this is a seemingly mentally tough team. Most of the time, perhaps not tonight, they're pretty well coached, I think. So what the hell is that? Because in basketball, to me, that's death.
Because that's where you are doing the opposite of what you said, which is what you needed to do is put your foot on Dallas's throat. What you did was, especially late in the second quarter, is you sort of gave them oxygen. Yeah, I think what happens with Dallas, for instance, at the end of quarters, end of halves, everything gets tighter, you're operating with, you're trying to run some clock sometimes, like things just get a little bit more crunched at the end of quarters and end of halves. And Luca and Kyrie know exactly where they want to get their shot off.
They know exactly how to manipulate screens and personnel to get what they want. Like they know, we talked about this when Chris Paul and Devin Booker were together with the Suns for a couple years, and they would make the deep run. They would play against the wolves. You'd watch these end of game situations.
It's like, man, Chris Paul knows how to get to the elbow and just get that elbow jumper. Devin Booker knows how to do this. And you could say the same thing about a bunch of other players in the league. The wolves, Anthony Edwards specifically, aren't as comfortable getting what they want when they want.
OK, we're going to bleed the clock down to here. And we're going to run this action. It's going to lead to this. It leads to that.
And it's mass confusion at times toward the end of these quarters. And another theory I saw some of the wolves beat writers. I can't remember if it was Jack Borman or somebody speculating at the end of the first half is the wolves, oftentimes when they have their worst end of half sequences, it comes on the heels of some of their best quarters, end of quarter sequences, where they're exerting all of this energy and then they just sort of let up. I don't know if they see the finish line of the quarter or they're just like out of gas a little bit.
I mean, someone said, Anthony Edwards was apparently taking oxygen from an oxygen mask for a couple minutes. Yeah. In the tunnel. I mean, that's kind of wild, right?
Have you seen that? Is Luke going over there and getting oxygen? Only in Denver. That's crazy.
Yeah. So another thing too is a couple of people pointed this out for our feedback Friday edition of Flagren Howles earlier today. Since Anthony Edwards in Game 6 took that nasty fall in his tailbone and stayed down for like five minutes without moving. That he has been atrocious offensively from an efficiency standpoint.
His shot isn't falling as often. He's not able to convert at the rim. You know, I don't know. Is he still in a lot of pain and sort of hesitating when he's going up in the trees?
Worried about coming. He has not looked the same offensively since he took that fall. Not an excuse. I'm just looking for reasons for why he's playing like this.
But unfortunately, unless he's hurt to the point of he almost shouldn't be playing like Donchich is a mess. His knee, you can tell. Like I know he's not in great shape and I know he doesn't run like a gazelle. But that dude is like walking up and down the floor as much as possible.
And so like that's where when you get this deep into the playoffs, you're going to feel like crap. Like that's the thing about it. And so unless you almost just shouldn't be playing, which I'm not going to suggest for for Ant, it's like you got to work through that. I also don't think that Ant's tailbone possibly being bruised or worse affects the fact that the last two games, he's just sort of played dumb basketball at times.
You know, rifling these passes like he's doing some, I'm not going to get some negative feedback for saying this, but he's doing some pat like things where he like loses his mind. It's like you don't need to rifle that pass. I believe it was to Jaden late in the game that led to the possession where Donch is hit the three pointer fill. There's no reason to throw that pass.
Like you're protecting a lead. You're in no hurry to try and like score. You're just protecting that lead. So it's very weird.
It's almost like in some ways, and this is going to be sacrilege to say because in the first two rounds it was so far from the truth. It's almost like the spotlight has gotten a little bit too bright, which is he's 22. Yes, Bernal, you are correct. But it's just weird to see the change from the first two rounds to this because the first two rounds were so damn impressive.
And I think just to the hey, the commenter said he's 22, let's chill. I think there's room for a couple of different macro and micro opinions here. Macro, he has a crazy bright future ahead of him. He's not going to peak for like four or five more years.
The version you see now is not even the best or even close to the best version of Anthony Edwards. We will see that when he's 26, 27, 28, like other star players. And so like on the macro, Wolves are lucky to have this dude on their team. He is absolutely a franchise leading and changing personality and player and skill face of the NBA caliber talent.
And he's showing his age a little bit in these last two games. I mean, this is high level basketball calculus here. This in terms of like two months of playoff grind, mentally, physically, everything. I mean, he looks a little spent.
He looks like a 22-year-old going through his first long NBA playoff grind. Can he snap out of it? In time for the Wolves to win four games before the Mavericks win two, it remains to be seen. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, just to be clear, 30 minutes in this podcast, I am not closing the door on this series for the team of Wolves.
I still think positive Phil coming back here in his little plaid shirt at Target Center. Nice plaid shirt. Hey guys, positive Phil, the Wolves can still win this series. But they're gonna have to dig a lot deeper.
Just like Denver, by the way, this happened to Denver. Denver falls, they lose the first two home games. They dig deep, they fight back, they win two on the road. They take a lead in that series, then the Wolves came back over the top.
But I do not think Jada this series is over yet. I'm not ready to bury this team yet. No, and if Ant and Cat step up, they'll actually be fine because they're not being blown out. This is not an uneven series.
This is a health book 2004. Phil is a moron. The audience does not wanna hear from positive Phil, right? But I do like your shirt.
It's a very nice shirt. But if those guys come around, then yes, it's going to be, well, it's already competitive, that's the wrong word. Then the Wolves have a good chance to actually win some games. We're getting a bunch of questions about Go Bears roll on the last play.
I did not see from our perch here. I saw the offensive player, the Luca three. I believe they're talking about the offensive play. I'd have to watch it back.
I do not see it close and we don't have a unfortunately. Did you replay in the arena of the Wolves clanking the game? Yeah, we didn't get to see that. So I'm not quite sure.
But yeah, I mean, I think to go back on Go Bear, the the inefficiency of being able to stop the Mavericks at the basket has to be reversed. Like if Ant and Cat can't step up and the Wolves can't stop that, they're still in huge trouble. If you wanna know Pychart right now, of things that have to change starting in game three, I think it's pretty clear. Don't you?
Yeah, I mean, it's very clear cut. It is well, I'll give you what I think it is. The Mavericks are dominating at the rim and point blank range, getting whatever they want. And the Wolves literally missed 30 close range shots.
Mavericks are getting dunks at the rim. Wolves are either missing layups, dunks, or not trying to dunk or dribbling off their foot. So by the way, the Mavericks tonight, here's the numbers. The Mavericks at the rim, 71% tonight.
Wolves at the rim, 51%. The short mid area outside, just outside. Like in that little bunny range, Mavericks, 42% Wolves, 32%. And that's on like, each team took like 50 attempts, almost, yeah, the Mavericks had 50 attempts, the Wolves had 52 attempts.
This is a one point game, man. And the Mavericks made six point blank shots that the Wolves missed. So I mean, to me, that's the series, man. Like the Mavericks getting whatever they want inside and the Wolves not being able to make anything.
Here, before we keep diving in here to this game to recap, couple things, if you guys haven't already, please click the like button and the subscribe button on the Scornorth YouTube channel. We're doing post game recaps, flagren howls. Recently this week was charting seventh on the national Apple basketball podcast chart. So thank you.
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Also, Judd, I'm not sure if you see what I have, tonight right here, but this is the legendary golf apparel hat that I stole from you. I thought you gave mine to Kyle? Well, I was going to. I'm going to give it to Kyle after.
You tweeted, you gave it to him. Well, I took it back so I could show it here on the post game podcast because. It's a poor hat. Because a bunch of people, so people asking like, where did you guys get these hats?
It's legendary golf apparel. And we have struck a deal with them to offer you the audience a 20% off discount on everything store wide, including these awesome howl hats here. Promo code howl, H-O-W-L. When you go to lgndy.co, lgndy.co, they have all sorts of amazing things.
By the way, this is a veteran owned and family operated company. They donate a portion of all proceeds to veteran organizations. So check them out at lgndy.co and use the promo code howl at checkout for 20% off your order. We'll get you the black version of this.
I think you'll look good with the whole version. Hold on a second here. I'm going to show you this. Here's the donch it shot as go bare switches onto them.
Just hit the golf again. And you'll see it. OK. So they switch go bare onto him.
Step back. So they basically just hunted. If I could watch that again, I guess. They hunted go bare on the screen.
And the wolves switched it so that Luca would, I don't know, man, you're going to have to ask a basketball tactician. Can you turn your mic back on by the way? I'm sorry. Oh, there we go.
I tried to mute it because the sound was on. Yeah, that's sort of like he literally looks like he's been put on skates, though. Because he's trying to cut her Luca down. It's not that that will be a very interesting response.
There's a few things post game tonight. And I don't know if the quotes will finish or start at the Cup of Crochet. But there's a few things that are going to be really intriguing. The cat thing, super intriguing.
And that switch is very, very interesting. By the way, Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns are combined shooting 30% in the Western Conference Finals in two games. So on one hand, you could say the Mavericks won two nail biters despite the fact that Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Town shot just 30% in those two games total. Or you can look at it and say, well, the Mavericks are making life so hard on Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns that they are just getting contested looks on all these shots and they're having an impossible time.
I don't know. I feel like there's some positive regression. Nobody wants to hear from positive Phil. I get it.
OK. Well, I told you what was going to happen after they lost three straight to the Nuggets. And you guys want to be off the show forever. Positive Phil just out here telling you the truth, which is the series is not over yet.
But that's fine. Whatever. That's fine. Yeah, go ahead.
I was going to say, I was going to say, if Ant can come back, which I think he can, I'm positive. I'm far more positive. The cat thing has me way more flustered. You took him out of the game, like ants ruddling, but he's playing through it, right?
You benched Carl. Yeah, it's bad man. Is there OK? We're getting way ahead of ourselves here.
But let's say the series ends in four or five games. And Carl doesn't really turn it around. And you just kind of hit this Mavericks roadblock. Hit this conversation in Denver.
Yeah, in Denver. What is the percent chance they would consider trading Carl if he doesn't snap out of it and be playable at the end of games here in the series? For a chance they would decide to trade. I think it goes way up, right?
Well, and what if he is, now I'm personally guessing that this was a one game thing, but if it happens again, he might be very amenable to a trade as well. Like it's one thing for a guy to struggle. It's another for a guy that highly paid to just be taken out. So this is a very, we are.
By the way, he was not showing signs of distress after the game. Like he was asked about getting essentially benched for Nazarid and Kyle Anderson. And he said, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, yeah, I mean, it was the right move. I have no problem with it, whatever.
I don't know, he was seething mad. I mean, I'm not going to be in a situation where you've got to be mad either at yourself or at the coach. I would think, I mean, if you're an alpha here, trying to help. He was standing out.
Like he was because I kept waiting for him to check back in. He was standing out and cheering his teammates on. So it wasn't like he was sitting there with a towel on his head brooding, but still a very, very intriguing thing. I just saw a comment as well that, and I don't know if we approached this before or not, someone wants us to approach the challenge on the McDaniel's on the out of bounds play by Dallas late.
That's the other end of the floor. It sure looked like on the replays that we saw, but that ball went off the maps. So we touched on that real early on. And yeah, I mean, it was an odd decision, I thought, but we also don't exactly have the best view of it here.
Yeah. So let me go through here. What else do we have? I feel like there's a couple of other things here that we, I mean, Nasri, we kind of touched on him.
Nasri was a huge positive. By the way, OK, here's one. Here's one. Just going through my notes from this game.
Nikhil Alexander Walker hasn't made a three in, well, May 16th, so eight days. The next time they step foot on the court, it'll be 10 days between Nikhil Alexander and May three point attempts. And they ain't contested looks, Judd. In some ways, this offense, especially when because I would give Ant this credit, when he's not throwing missiles out of bounds with 13 seconds left, he is creating open looks for teammates.
And Nikhil Alexander Walker has had about 10 of them over the past three games in these playoffs. And he has bricked every single one of them. So if he's streaky, he could just as easily follow up with two consecutive games going four for six, five for eight, whatever it is. But if he's not knocking down those threes, it's going to be a real tough man to keep up with what the Mavericks are doing on their end.
So that deserves to be called out. Yeah. And unfortunately, Jaden who had a great game in game one tonight was 0 for three from three. So the nod Jaden combo platter 0 for five on threes.
And Jaden, who was just absolutely a glue guy, and outstanding player in game one, had two points. He was one for six. So like there were guys that could have contributed more. I just find it hard to harp on them when your superstars didn't do their job.
Yep. Another one, Sue, just going through notes from the game. That is probably the most frustrated I've seen Mike Conley in a basketball game. There was that one possession on the far end from where we were, where he's getting hounded.
I can't remember if it was Kyrie or somebody else, but he's getting hounded as he's dribbling the ball past half court. And he rifles a pass to his right to whoever the nearest teammate was. And immediately during the possession, turns to the referee and starts pointing at him and getting in his face and arguing with the referee during the middle of a hard possession. Parked at him.
Yes. And he's usually the most cool calm player in the world's rotation. And then there was a couple other ones, too, where there was the illegal serene they called on Dallas. And then they went and reviewed it.
And they wound up calling a foul on Mike Conley instead. And he was exasperated. But there was probably four or five times where he was just out of his mind talking to officials in this game. So that's a side of Mike Conley that we haven't seen a whole lot of in the last couple years.
Yeah. And perhaps of all of the egregious calls here because the ref you suck chance, the worst non-call might have been the push off on the football pass down here in front of us, where the Mavericks player, not so subtly, nothing subtle about this one, put his hand in what Jay McDaniel's back, I believe. And Drew Pearson, then he pushed off of him, caught the ball, made a great basket as he was falling down. But the referee saw the whole thing from the side.
And I don't know. That's one I don't get because that was as blatant and clear. It didn't come in traffic. So it was not obstructed one bit.
That's a basket that should not have counted. Yep. Yeah, I know the refs were such a conversation in this one. And there were a couple really high leverage calls that did not go the wolves away.
But I think if you're ranking the reasons why the team was lost this game, the refs were not in the top three. For me, I'm not going to sit here and be blame the refs guy. When Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Townsend are shooting 30% in the series so far. So we're 45 minutes into this thing.
So we can put a bow on this. Thank you for the 2,000 people still hanging out with us at 11 PM Central Time on a Friday night for wolves therapy. I was just going to say that. It's wolves therapy time.
But we're going to see my final headline takeaway. We are about to find out if 22-year-old Anthony Edwards has hit a temporary glass ceiling of, OK, well, this is the natural point in your career progression, where you run into just a bigger, better, more mature foe on your way to eventually winning a championship someday. And you're going to have to learn from it. We kind of thought that the Nugget Series might be that, maybe this is where he just takes his late 80s Jordan Pistons speed bump moment.
And now he has to see the all off season and just get better and come back on career. So it's either going to be that. And he'll use it as fuel going forward. Or we see 22-year-old Anthony Edwards scale another mountain, like he did against Durant and Booker in the first round, like he did against Yo-Kitch and Murray in the second round.
And based on the fact that they are now down two games to nothing going on the road, this suddenly Judd has become an even bigger mountain than the one they just climbed in round two, based on circumstance. Well, and what's intriguing about this is the Mavericks too are a tough team. They're a veteran team. They're disciplined.
And they play as hard as the wolves do. I would say Denver did not. I would say that at the end of the day, after seven games against the Nuggets, if you looked at that series and were checking boxes in retrospect, the Timberwolves worked harder. They were more disciplined.
And the Mavericks are as or more disciplined tonight more than the wolves, right? So your work literally is cut out for you now, because the Mavericks are going to basically butt heads. I mean, this is, as you turn to me and said, in the second half, you're right. This is a war.
Like the Denver series was really weird and intriguing. This to me is a playoff series. You have run up against guys that know what they're doing, and they are going to pay the price. The other thing, too, keep in mind, is if this is going to be a series and not a sweep or a five game win by Dallas, how does Cat respond?
Like there's onus there as well. In my opinion, it's on both of them. It's on Ant and Cat. How does that start with?
It starts with Ant. But Cat, who got bench now, and I think he's notorious for getting in his own head, how does he come back now? It starts with Ant, but you've got to get something from Cat. And we have not discussed this a ton yet.
It's also coaching. Like there are certain things that Dallas is doing that you have to have an answer for. And I'm a little bit disappointed that through two games, they have not. And so there's a lot of things here.
I'm with you. It all starts with Ant. If Ant can't do it, they're going to lose. But there's a lot of subplots here that I am really interested in starting Sunday night to see what is the response now.
Because this game tonight can go one or two ways. It can rip your heart out like a teenager in love. Heartbreak, rip your heart out, and you're going to go home and cry, or you could say, you know what, screw it. Screw it.
We had them and we blew it. And we're not going to allow this to define us. Like we're about to find a lot out about the resiliency. And the mental toughness.
Because Dallas will punch you back now. So the question is, if you come out punching on Sunday, Dallas is going to hit you right back. What do you do then? This is a handle of a test coming up.
Yeah, this is a brawl. By the way, Jason Tim from the volume notes that Anthony Edwards has only made two shots in the restricted area in the series so far. He's two for eight. And this is one of the best freight train downhill players in the entire league, right?
He is the second coming of Duane Wade going downhill and finishing at the rim. And he is two for eight in the restricted area. Now he has picked up some files. And he's made some free throws.
So that's helping to sort of weather things. I will end with positive fill here. So if you don't want to hear from positive fill, I'm going to give you five seconds to click out of this podcast right now. I'm going to do you the courtesy.
If you'd rather just go to bed or go to the bars, seating mad, positive fill is going to put a wrap on this here. OK. Just wait for people to clear out if you don't want to hear from positive fill. The Dallas Mavericks have won two games by a thin little hair.
Despite the fact that Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Townes are shooting 30% in the series, Anthony Edwards has made two shots in the restricted area the entire series. And the wolves missed 30 layups or bunnies in this game tonight. And they lost by one. OK.
So process wise, this is not a mismatch. This is not like Phoenix, Minnesota, and the regular season. Oh my god, like you're getting drugged by 20 points in every game. How could you possibly come back?
This thing could turn still. All right. Bucks were down in the finals two games to none of the Suns. Just a few years ago, they came roaring back.
Bucks and six. So I'm just saying positive fill is here to tell you. The series is not over. Very frustrating.
A lot to criticize, but the series is not over yet. Strapping. 48 hours, Judd. 48 hours, we get game three in Dallas.
It is time for this team to remove their heads from their rectums and play complete basketball. Starting with Anthony Edwards. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. I agree completely. Starting with Anthony. OK, that's a wrap here on this sort of therapeutic episode of flagrenhalos, man.
These poor fans were just I think these fans thought. It was a Friday night. They were came into it. This place was packed.
They deserved more. And they almost got it. That's incredible thing. But this is the playoffs.
Like we are now in the meat of this is where you put your big boy pants on and come to work and you get hit. I feel like the playoffs don't really start until your favorite team is down to 0 or 3 1. And you got to sack up. And everyone's on the floor rolling around.
Mike Conley's bitching at officials during the middle of a half-core possession. No care to you so far. That could change on Sunday. How did he not get one in that moment?
He went right at the official. As you said, they were going half-core. The game's going on. And Mike Conley just belied at the official.
Yeah. So I think by the way, my favorite highlight of the night running into a bunch of random former NBA NFL players was I literally came around a corner during halftime and ran into Greg Oden. Seven-foot-tall Greg Oden. I am fairly certain.
And I texted you when our show started this. I'm fairly certain that there were a bunch of Vikings in the sweep behind us. And I think that was Harrison Phillips. And we were literally positive.
We were clicking start on this livestream. And I looked up and there was a gigantic 300 pound dude just standing above me, serving. And he doesn't look like a guy that looks like a lot of guys. That's Harrison.
Horrible hair. He was here. So all right, that's a wrap on our game 2 recap here. The sports dad, Judd Zulgad.
Positive fill. Positive fill is here for you guys. And this flagren howls is a Tim Rolves lifestyle podcast.