I have not been in Minnesota in probably 20 years. Bring gas. These guys survive the David Conner of Tiberuels basketball and live to tell about it. It's Flakrid House.
OK, we got the sports dad, Judge Olgad in the house. Phil Mackie here. It's the morning of Western Conference finals game two. Tonight's going to be rocking.
They've got a big block party planned downtown Minneapolis. The TNT crew, Charles Barkley has just been spotted all over. He was at Red Cowell yesterday. Pictures in like selfies or whatever.
Are these like Photoshop? He was at the downtown target apparently last night. I think they're all real. It's hilarious.
I think they're all at first. I thought that they were fake, but I've seen enough now. I think they're real. And what's incredible is he's consuming some really top quality food.
But here's my question. Like you look like he's he's read Cal for lunch. I'm not sure about you. But if I go read Cal for lunch, I don't think I can do hoits for dinner.
Was he at Hoyts last night? So he was at Hoyts last night. I think it was at Manny's a couple nights ago. He was.
But rather during the day or a cow during the day. Or a cow during the day. Yes. But that's my point.
Like if I do Cal for if I do a burger and you know things for lunch, right, I'm probably going to very light dinner. Well, you could do like you could get like a salmon Caesar for dinner at JD Hoyts or like black some blackened Cajun catfish or something. He's buddy ball all the way. Oh, yeah.
He's for sure, buddy ball because he's an Auburn guy, right? Yeah. He's like, oh, yeah. So he's down there.
That's body ball territory for sure. Oh, he's body ball all the way. So he's I love how he's owned. He's been bashing the wolves for like two or three years.
You can't play with two bigs and he's howling on TV. Now he's back to the Mavericks, but he's he's downtown. So we just figured let's jump on here. We've done these a couple times where they play tonight.
So you know, there's not like a ton of shelf life for a flagrant house episode, but it's fun talking about this team. Chris Finch said some interesting things yesterday. We got some feedback Friday stuff. So we're going to hit you with a little Friday morning episode and send you on your way for game two tonight.
Let's start here. Chris Finch, not happy with game one. He talked about how it's the most disappointed he's been in their effort, their energy in a long time. So as proud as he was after game six, game two and game six in the Denver series, he said, basically told the team, it's been weeks since I've been this disappointed in my basketball child, you guys.
And the quote that's been gaining steam nationally is Chris Finch said, the Western Conference final started. Not sure our guys got the memo. They did today during the spirited film session. What did you make of that?
So first of all, I love this. Second of all, this is potentially a hot take. I think Chris Finch has taken the game one loss by the Wolves and potentially turned it into a bigger positive than a win might have been. And here's why.
First of all, it's a close game. It's my opinion that most coaches, if you get blown out, especially in the playoffs, it's hard to rip your team because they're already vulnerable. Like if you get, you know, like the Wolves did you notice when they got drilled by the Nuggets, you never ripped into them? Like the game three, right?
Yeah, yeah, because they're vulnerable, because they know they sucked and they were awful and they got done. And the scoreboard basically was the pie in your face. This is a game at the Wolves. Could have won.
They lost by three points. But when you look at the box score, they play just bad enough for things that are easy to nitpick and go after. And I actually think that Chris Finch is doing a potentially genius job of taking what could have been just a negative and flipping it into what this is my chance to pounce on these guys and remind them they're not nearly as good as they think. Yeah.
So I love this. You could have gone one of two directions. Well, actually the players went in one of the directions, Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Townsend, led by Anthony Edwards was saying, yeah, we were just, we were tired coming off that Denver series. Just our energy wasn't there.
We were tired. And you could have definitely gone down the list of excuses or just like logical reasons. And I'll give you the stat that I gave Kyle on yesterday's episode because there is a long standing trend that if you finish a seven game ruling series and then you're this deep in the playoffs, game one is almost impossible to win. So like those are viable reasons for why the Timberwolves didn't win game one.
But Chris Finch said, I'm not going to go down that path. I'm not giving them the out to your point. It's almost like when they lost game 82 to the Suns and then they get the Suns in a seven game series, the whole week he got to tell them, he got to humble them the entire week saying, listen, man, you guys got your asses kicked three times by this team. We've got some adjustments, but you have to look inward.
Look into your basketball soul. So that it's in a different way. Like they didn't get smoked by the Mavericks, but it felt like a really good thing to galvanize around if you're the coaching staff that they got beaten game one. And if you were calling with, they got beat by the Suns in that last in game 82, he spent the whole time publicly, basically sort of fine with it.
Like it was a very odd calm because I think he knew if I drill him now, I'm going to make him up tight. I actually think if they have lost game one by 20, he probably goes with some version of the, we were pretty tired. Like it showed, but I think the score, the closeness, the fact that the wolves led this game late, gives him the perfect ammo because, you know, when you look at this game, there's a lot of things that can be fixed. And if you're a player, I think if you're a wolves player, you're thinking, we were close here.
It's not like we got blown out. And so I think what Finch is saying is, this is my perfect time to pounce and to say, and to publicly say, you know, the Western Conference Finals started, I guess they didn't get the memo yet. It's absolutely to me, a genius tactical move. And when I say that the opportunity to do this might be more valuable than a win.
Yes, a win would have been great, but think about this, these series are all pretty long, and the playoffs are very long, and it's all a pendulum thing. And so what can you do to take this loss and turn it into a positive? What you can do now is say, hey, when you guys don't play your best, when we don't play the right coverages, when we get away from the game plan, you see what happens? So I actually think in retrospect now, going back and not just watching that game, but hearing his comments, I think it glues together very nicely to send a message going into tonight's game that if you don't listen to what I want, what we want, then this is what's going to be the result.
And this is the first time, you know, Finch, he could be salty Phil, but this is the first time I think in the playoffs that he's gone down this path. He's been pretty good about backing off and or just being positive. So this is, you can't, you know, you can't drill him every time. Like players tune that crap out, but you can drill them every once in a while.
I think this is a perfect place for a job. Yeah. And there haven't been, to the world's credit, there haven't been that many opportunities to really, like light them up, against Denver, R-entry, you know, games four and five, like as a fan, you're thinking what the bleep is going on? Or no, no, no, games three, four, and then five.
And I don't remember him going, you know, he was, he wasn't happy, but I don't remember anything publicly, even approaching this. Yeah, no, and then to add to it, we talked about this on yesterday's flag in house, but I don't think you and I have talked about this. Credit to email or Dan Craft for sniffing this out on one of the ESPN shows. According to ESPN stats and information, since the 2011 NBA conference finals, teams coming off a game seven win in the semi final round, the second round, teams coming off a game seven win, are now 0 and 14 in the ensuing game one.
We're not counting the times where two teams come off a game seven. It's one team comes off a game seven win, and the other team doesn't play a game seven. Those teams are 0 and 14 in game one, going back to 2011, which is insane. So the next logical question is, okay, well, how many of those teams then came back after falling behind one game to none?
And the data is not that promising for Turnbull's fans. Those teams are two and 10. So there's the reason that math doesn't add up to the 0 and 14 is because the wolves are stealing question. And the Pacers won a game seven and then lost game one.
So they are stealing question, but of the other 12 teams going back to 2011 that fell behind 1-0 after winning a game seven in the second round, they are two and 10 in the series that followed the conference finals. Now many of those losses were against like the Dynasty Warriors over the past 12, 13 years or Lebron's Heat or Lebron's Cavaliers. I was looking some of this up. So it's, but I think on one hand, you don't want to be down one to two of the best offensive players in the world.
It's not a great position to be in. On the other hand, losing game one was historically inevitable after climbing that seven game mountain against Denver. That's absolutely shocking. Yeah, I wish I would have known that going into game one because I would have been like, oh, they're losing like, they're gonna lose.
So everybody will know. You would think that like of the 14, like let's just say three of them would have ridden momentum of the game seven high into a win in game one. That is absolutely everything. I think what happens though is, I used to be a big NASCAR fan back in the mid to late 90s.
And at the end of these races, sometimes you are like, like you're trying to decide, should I skip going in for new tires and skip going in for gas and just risk it? It's just literally, literally empty the entire gas tank around turn four at the day, 2500. I think a game seven in the playoffs, you're playing more minutes, your stars are exerting more effort. The other team is also, it's like both teams are exerting more effort than they have the entire season.
And it's just exhausting if you do it right. And you, especially if it's a close game or in the wolves case, you're down by 20 on the road in altitude, defending champions. And this all sounds like excuse making, but it's more explaining why these teams have such a hard time in game one, but okay, that's game one, 48 hours off, game one and the Denver series don't matter anymore. You now need to beat this Mavericks team four times in the next two weeks.
You gotta figure it out. Who in your opinion guards Kyrie in game two? So that's what's really interesting. I don't think it's again.
I think Ant's gonna be on him sometimes, but you can't have Ant do everything. I'm out there. I'm gonna, it's like, okay, right. Maybe pick him up to start the game.
Like he did a couple of times on Jamal Murray, just to set a tone and say, hey, I'm here, I'm competing, and then move him off. Here's what I would say. If Anthony Edwards is out there with Mike Conley, I do think, cause you want Jade McDaniel's pestering Luca Donchitch. So really like, if Anthony Edwards and Mike Conley are out there, you probably need Ant to be on Kyrie Irving for X number of minutes.
But every waking second that Nikhil Alexander Walker is out there, I want him on Kyrie Irving. If I'm Chris Finch, I mean, I feel like Nikhil Alexander Walker's existence in this series is to pester Kyrie Irving. But you, but the other conundrum here is like Mike Conley, even not at 100% is such a great facilitator of the offense and getting the different actions to work the way that they're supposed to. And not struggling right now.
Like you gotta get to get a shot back. Yeah, so that's the other thing. Nikhil is not nearly as good of a floor general. He has grown a lot in that area and he's cold from the three point, which means he's probably going to hit three of them tonight because he's due to hit some, but you gotta play that balance of Nikhil's defensive prowess is really important with these two superstar offensive players.
But you can't just like take Conley off the floor for long stretches because he organizes things. So yeah, that'll be interesting. And by the way, like Luca unbothered seemingly by Jade McDaniel's throughout the duration of that game, especially in the second half. So are there strategic things the Wolves can do to just make Luca a little more uncomfortable?
He's still going to get his 27, 30 or 35 or whatever. Can you just make it a little harder in the second half? Kyrie and Donchich on in Game 1 combined for 63 points. I'm not sure about you.
I think taking Kyrie away is more important. So I think if you sort of go a little bit of joker on Donchich and just say he's going to get his and we're not gonna give the him his points, but I think it's more important than the fact that individually Kyrie got 30 and Luca got 33. I think you've gotta take one of them away more and I would prefer Kyrie because I feel like, I feel like he's the guy that sort of has the ability at least in the first half in Game 1. He's the one that just came at you and he got to the rim a lot and there were things I saw there that I'm sure should not be as easy as they looked, no matter how good he is.
So I think that, and I'm not like a basketball exes and knows tactician here, but I think what you could start doing is you could start blitzing him off screens more often. If he's gonna call for a screen, can you run a quick double at him so that the ball gets out of his hands and now you're in rotation. On the Luca front, what was interesting is, they sort of decided when he called for screens, they decided with Jaden to sort of shadow him over the top. So like once he picks up the screen, Jake McDaniel's just kind of fighting him from behind and leading him into Rudy, which for a lot of other teams, like Jamal Murray, like that's the right strategy is, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna guide you.
I can block a shot from behind if I'm Jake McDaniel's and I'll just guide you into Rudy and then he will make your life difficult. But Luca is so great at making those little drop passes. I mean, how many little like lives and drop passes did he make? So the other strategy the wolves could implement is going underneath screens and just letting him shoot off of screens if he calls for a screen.
He's only shooting like 30% from three point range over these playoffs. Now in the regular season, he shot 38% on 11 attempts per game. So if like, that's what's hard about this is ordinarily, you wouldn't want to go underneath the screen of a guy who shoots 38% from three on a volume of 11 shots per game because he's just gonna hit a ton of threes and dagger you. But the way that he was able to probe and get in the lane and make passes for automatic dunks or get his own little floaters from like 10 feet, I would probably gamble and say, you know what man, if you want to shoot the lights out, I guess we can live and die with that.
But we can't give up 62 points in the paint again. Right. So I don't know. We'll see what happens tonight.
Let's get to some, we got some feedback Friday questions here before we go in about five or 10 minutes and a shout out to our friends at EcoFun as well. So EcoFun has two locations in the Twin Cities area, Forest Lake and Burnsville. And EcoFun Motorsports is your summertime fun headquarters, as you can see on the YouTube channel, endless amounts of scooters, motorcycles, ATVs, side by side, electronic bikes, top premier brands like Yamaha Kawasaki, Bintelli, for all your summertime fun on the pavement and on the water at the Forest Lake location, they've got a fully stocked line of 2024 Kawasaki and Yamaha Watercraft that you can get yourself into. That's the Forest Lake location for the watercraft.
You can hit either location for the pavement craft, I will call them Forest Lake and Burnsville. EcoFun Motorsports.com, tell them score north sent you ecofun motorsports.com. Okay, let's see your feedback. Brad and Vadness Heights says, is Anthony Edwards okay physically?
He hasn't shot or played the same since he landed hard on his tailbone in that game six win over Denver. I think he's, well, I think he's banged up. I think he is probably incredibly tired. I mean, he's 22, so he's got youth on his side.
But if you think about the amount of basketball he's playing now and hell, then a lot of these guys are playing. It's unprecedented. Keep in mind too, to his credit, Ant doesn't take games off. And I don't mean mentally, I mean literally he doesn't take games off.
So do I think that Ant is anywhere near 100% zero chance? I don't know if I personally have noticed like a drop off since the tailbone thing, which wouldn't shock me, but I mean, he definitely is banged up. Like you look at the amount of times he gets up slowly, right? You look at the amount of times he gets banged up.
So I would say that if he looks like he's tuckered or he looks like he's slowed a bit, it's because he definitely is. Yeah, and he just, he's not really complaining about it. It's funny like Jamal Marayat every turn in the last series. Oh my elbow, my this, my that, like my calf.
Like, okay, yeah. I mean Anthony Edwards has had, you know, any number of different things too. And Carl Anthony Town's knee is not 100% of me where he's playing late May basketball for God's sakes. So yeah, I don't, I think it's fair to say he's not 100%.
I don't know that that's the reason why he hasn't necessarily played or shot well the last two games, but yeah, something to keep an eye on going into game two. I believe it's pronounced, Pasach Weinberg, Pessach Weinberg, long time listener here. Been with you guys since the 1500 ESPN radio show days. Just wondering if you tried to hook up the players from the Dallas market to try previewing this series.
Just thought it'd be interesting to get some insight from the other team's perspective. So, you know, whether it's Purple Daily or Flagren Hollis, we've sort of seen like, we kind of see the numbers and generally the audience doesn't love preview content or opposing markets. We used to do on Purple Daily a weekly, like bringing an opposing beat writer in to talk about the team on Thursdays or whatever. And like it was consistently the least popular thing that we did cause I don't know, it's preview content about the opposing team.
I'm sure some of you would enjoy that. If there are entertaining people in the Dallas market or if they get to the finals, you know, the Boston market or, I mean, I think for Indianapolis, we probably just bring our guy Grady on because he's an Indianapolis native, probably still keeps close to the team. Well, that'd be tough for him. Yeah, I don't know if he's like, he grew up a fan for sure.
I don't know if he like still is a fan. Definitely rides with the Wolves now. But I don't know, like if that's something overwhelming that you guys would enjoy going into if they get to the next round, then we could potentially do that. Rick Berry, the legendary Rick Berry or just underhanded free throws?
Rick Berry? Well, Ray Plank, Golden State Warriors, whoo. Says, who was better? Prime Kevin Garnett or Prime Tim Duncan?
Oh my God. I'm going to have having seen them both play in the era. Highly controversial, fake. I'm going to say prime to him, Duncan.
So I mean, Duncan has more accolades, more MVPs. Yeah, the big fundamental. So I mean, I'm very biased here. I think Kevin Garnett was the more overall dynamic, talented player.
Duncan was, I mean, KG was born into a poverty franchise. You know, Flip Saunders was there to kind of save the day, but he was born into this still relatively expansion franchise that had won nothing before. You know, even like some of the Glenn Taylor stuff, the bumbling around with the Joe Smith contract, the front office, whiffing on a bunch of chances to put a secondary superstar next to KG after Marbury left. There's just a lot of poverty things there in like the late 90s, early 2000s.
Meanwhile, Tim Duncan was born into a royal family of basketball, Greg Popovich. David Robinson was still there. I mean, the Spurs were like one of the best teams in the Western Conference throughout the 90s. Robinson gets hurt for one year.
They luckbox their way into Tim Duncan. So he's just like, he didn't get drafted by some crappy franchise. I think if you were to have taken KG, put him on those Spurs teams, he gets Tony Parker, Manu Genobly, Kawhi Leonard toward the end of his career, right? KG probably has more than one championship.
Oh, probably, yeah. For as dynamic as KG could be, I think because Duncan, as far as a personality, he was really, really boring. We don't talk about it much. And if you played for the Knicks, clearly that also would have been different.
But yeah, I would probably say, Tim, and the thing too is coming out of Wake, I mean, you know, KG, it's sort of a weird thing because he came out of high school. I think he was at the time the first player since 1973. He was alone in the league. They had changed that rule to come out of high school in play, but I mean, he literally had to learn on the job.
Duncan came in a polished product, so it gets a tough call. But I would personally say, Tim Duncan. Yeah, KG was more entertaining for sure. Oh, it's not even.
I mean, Tim Duncan was purposely a bore ass. Yeah. It's funny now seeing I saw him on Richard Jefferson's podcast, Richard and Larry podcast, where he's sitting next to the Larry O'Brien trophy. Yeah.
Yeah, he's got like the great. Yeah, he, I think there was a lot there. I think he wasn't going to show any of it. And it's San Antonio.
I don't know that people really cared. Yeah. Well, they just, they wanted championships. And they got champions.
They got them. I got them. And then Robbie B says, stupid basketball question, off of the cat goaltending situation in game one. Why is the offensive goal tending rule in place in the first place?
Like, why is it even a rule? I understand the defensive side of it. But the offensive side doesn't make sense to me, because the cylinder sounds like a ball that's going to go in, right? Like a ball in the cylinder is going to go in.
So why does it matter if it's a put back or not? This might be the dumbest question ever for a guy trying to learn basketball. No, it sounds like a nonsense rule. No, no, no.
It's a great point. And I believe FIBA doesn't have it. Yeah, I found the FIBA rule here, by the way. So FIBA is once the ball strikes the rim, any player on either team can play the ball.
They can swat it. They can tap it. They can put it back in. Obviously, in American college basketball, in the NBA, there is essentially a made up hypothetical cylinder that goes up to the rafters of the arena.
And the NBA put out the propaganda machine of like, here's our Hawkeye technology. Did you see though? So they're saying if the ball, if any portion of the ball is in, like a very small portion was left, the whole ball is not there. Most of it was out of the cylinder.
And there was a fraction of the ball inside. And they said, if there's any fraction of the ball inside there. So basically the shot, the NBA is saying, even if the shot is not going to go off, because it's coming off, it is, that is not a stupid question. It's a great question.
And it is a dumb rule. I would love it would be major advantage Tim Rolves with Rudy Gobert and Carl, like just their size. And Anthony Edwards and Hawkeye, he can jump. If they went to the FIBA version of this rule, which is once it hits the rim, you can knock it off.
Like think about the shot that like a ball goes off the rim, off the backboard. Rudy comes up, swats that thing out of there. So Robbie B, as you learn basketball, this is a safe space for your not so dumb question. It's a fantastic.
I love this point. Yeah. So yeah, we'll mix in some more feedback Friday, probably next week, if they are still alive here, we'll see what the landscape looks like next week. But Game 2 tonight, Target Center, you and I will be live on the Scorna with the YouTube channel from Inside Target Center, Win or Lose will either be your therapy as the Wolves dig out of a hole, or we will celebrate the Wolves tying the series at one.
I think the atmosphere is going to be crazy tonight. And I look forward to taking in the vibes. Yeah, I think they're going to be tied up one late tonight. Here's a hot take.
I think they are more likely to win by 18 or 20 than lose. I think they're more likely to come out with their full version, their full punch, and even the series in a blowout fashion than full behind Two Games tonight. Down 3, 2, you believed. Who am I to doubt you?
No, that's right. And I'm not just blindly believing here. Like this team is awesome. This team is better than the Mavericks.
This team, I think, has much more left from their game win performance than the Mavericks do. Now the Mavericks were cold from 3-point land, and that is something to keep an eye on. Like they're at some point they're probably going to hit 15 threes in a game, so we'll see. But yeah, this is Flagren House.
That's the sports dad, Judge Zilgad. I am Phil Mackie. This is a Timrall's lifestyle podcast.