The What's Your Mount Rushmore Podcast. There's two things that I think I am almost always. It's hungry and tired. I spend, I seriously probably spend 80% of my life, my waking life, being either hungry or tired or both.
I will mirror that, but I will add a third one. I'm always also gassy. Yes, you are. There's no doubt about that.
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Bring you ass, sports, Dad. You're going to bring you ass to target center tonight with me for game one of the Western Conference Finals. It's yah, right? Bring you.
I see some people doing you or yo, it's YA. Bring you ass. And it almost flows almost in like it's one word. Yeah, bring you ass.
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merch. You got break, break every record. Wolves culture. We have all sorts of fun stuff to celebrate this deep run into the Western Conference playoffs.
Had to get that cheap plug out of the way here early. Yeah, I checked in with our guy, Ross, to make sure that I could reserve to bring you ass T-shirts. Did you grant you that way? Yeah, he said he wasn't quite sure the day yet, but he said I can get you too.
Yeah. So let's do a couple things here. This is we did a big episode with Jim Peterson and Michael Brady yesterday. If you missed the Craig Kilborn episode or even the game seven recap, just a flagrant house has been a blast this week.
Kyle Teige. So I figure let's just jump on here for like 20, 25 minutes. It's middle of the day here before game one before this series starts. I have for you, Judd, the top 10 players in this series ranked one through 10.
Okay. And I want to run it by you now. Dallas looks different than when the Wolves played them earlier in the season. They made a couple key trades at the trade deadline.
They play much better defense now than maybe previous iterations of these Dallas Mavericks teams. It's a very top heavy in terms of like the two superstars. You have two of the best offensive players in the world in Luca Donchich and Kyrie Irving. And then you have a bunch of guys that are going to be it's interesting to see like what the rest of that rotation is going to look like from series to series.
You might see more of someone or less depending on matchups. And that's the beauty of game one. We're going to see these two teams. We kind of knew how Denver and Minnesota were going to match up with a couple of different twists.
Game one is going to be a whole open story for us to follow and then adjustments on the way in games two and games three. But I ranked one through 10 the top 10 players in this series. Okay. And you tell me if you wildly disagree with any of these if I'm way out of line here.
We'll start the top. I'm putting Luca Donchich's number one. Just like I put Kevin Durant number one before the Phoenix series and Yokich number one before the nugget series. And of course by the end of those series, Anthony Edwards had gone toe to toe with all of those players.
I think in the NBA's pecking order of players, he passed Devan Booker and Kevin Durant with that first round thrashing. I still think Yokich is a three time MVP at the end of the day is higher up like not that much higher and we'll see what happened in the next two series with Anthony Edwards. Luca Donchich just how dynamic he is and much like Durant and Yokich in the previous two series. I'm going to say Anthony Edwards go take that number one spot.
Go prove that you are. You're down here. You're down here. I'm not going to crown him until he does the work and earns the count of the series.
Well, why don't you start a tone and they've won both the first two series. So you're going to continue that. I see what you're doing. I see right through it.
So Luca Donchich number one. I have Anthony Edwards as the second best player in the series. Especially playoff and playoff and is a real thing man. You look at his regular season even down to we talked about this after the Phoenix series.
His pull up jumper numbers are wildly better in the postseason career by the way, not just this year compared to regular season. His points go up a handful of points per game. I think even just like his patience and willingness to take in the double team make the right pass distributing his defense locks in. I mean, he put the handcuffs on Jamal Murray in the third and fourth quarters of game seven.
So playoff and different level than regular season and he comes in as the number two player in the series. Playa van shows up. It feels like pretty much for every single game. There's 82 of those other games.
You can't you know, you get him like one in every five. He'll give you a good. I'm good with nine points tonight. Yeah, exactly.
But that's what the great ones can do sometimes. So and you know what in his defense, the one thing he does he plays. Oh man, like he's old school in that way regular season and plays. There's a lot of guys now who would and could and could probably alleviate himself of the headache of those nine point games by taking nights off and that dude does not take nights off.
Yeah, there's some nights where it's like he limped off the court or something and then they got it back to back and he plays anyways when almost everybody else would do the low team loves them off the court, though, man. But then he just like shakes it off and comes back when he landed square and is still going in game six. Oh, but I mean, he's gotten some things where I'm like, is he really hurt and he'll go off in pain and come back and be fantastic. So he's number two, number three, Kyrie Irving just absolutely one of the best offensive players in the world in terms of efficiency to man.
Like he shot 50% from the field this year, 41% from three shooting seven threes a game. If you thought Jamal Murray and his ability to get around a corner and just hit a ridiculous falling away, 20 footer, a three pointer was annoying. Kyrie Irving is a better version of Jamal Murray and Kyrie Irving has done it in the NBA finals at the highest level. You know, he's become, I think, just a much better fit and a better leader for that team because he was bouncing around and had some weird stuff going on off the court, but he's dialed in.
He's a great player and you're gonna have to figure out a way to keep him in check with any number of different matchups. So he's number. So basically what I'm saying is Dallas going in on paper has two of the three best players in this series. Yep.
And I think the thing about Kyrie that is intriguing to me is if you recall when the Mavericks got him, there was a lot of consternation about how are he and Luca going to be paired together? How's that going to work? And I think there's a lot of people surprised it's worked well. It's worked very well.
Because it didn't seem like on paper, it seemed like it could have a lot of problems. Yep. Like a couple of weird personalities, a couple of guys who are very heavy usage or ball-hogging type guys, but they find a way. Number four, playoff Carl Anthony Townes, at least this particular playoff iteration of Carl Anthony Townes.
Man, if you look at him so far through two series, on the defensive side, he drew Kevin Durant largely in the first series, which is a sacrificial land assignment and same with Yokech. He made life. Those guys are going to get there to some extent, but he made life hard on Durant and Yokech defensively in those first two series. And then offensively, he's shooting 52% from the field in these playoffs, 44% from three point range.
He's grabbing big rebounds. He's blocking some shots here and there. He's making the right plays out of post-ups and double teams more often than he has in previous playoffs. So you're seeing the best playoff stretch of his career.
And if we're getting that version, I think he's the fourth best player in the series. The Wolves are sitting on their couch right now if playoff cat does not show up in game seven. Agreed. They just don't win.
Yep. I don't care what they did in the second half. They do not win. And he played a key role there too.
But I mean, it's funny, Phil, when you think about the Wolves run so far, if you just look at box scores, you don't get a fraction of the story. No. That's the beauty of the playoffs, man. Like there's so many games within the games.
There's so many little chess matches happening from quarter to quarter. And cat was a huge, huge piece to the chess game going in the way of the intervals. Okay. Number five, the fifth best player in the series, Rudy Gobert.
So I tweeted this out earlier today just for all the, a lot of people, a lot of Rudy Gobert hate and slander. I feel like he's a lot of people. Yeah. Some of it's like personality and whatever.
But Rudy Gobert is a plus 111 so far in these playoffs. So the Wolves, when he's on the court, and by the way, he did not play in the game two blowout. He could have racked up even more pluses in that game two blowout, but he was, his, his guy was having a baby. So even without that padding, the Wolves are a plus 111 points with Rudy on the court in these playoffs plus 40 in games six and seven to close out the nuggets.
If you take every player who's played in the playoffs so far and their average plus minus per game, Rudy Gobert has the second highest average plus minus of any player in the playoffs behind only Jason Tatum of the Celtics right now. So it's like, it's hidden value a lot of times. He's looking at what he mean. He only has like 13 points or he only grabbed 10 rebounds and had two blocks.
But look at how many times he is altering what the offense does. Those never minds where somebody dribbles in. His help defense, if it's cat who's on yolkits, right? Hands in passing lanes.
There's just so many things that he does that aren't going to show up in your typical back of the basketball card box score. And you're seeing it in the overall numbers through two series here. Defensively, if if Carl is playoff cat, go Bears outstanding. That's why that game five, I think it got really confusing because Rudy got dumped on.
Yolkits just making him look like a fool. Yolkits is, well, first, I mean, go back and watch that game. The Wolves one just didn't play well. But two, think about the match ups that that were created and then think about the adjustments that the Wolves made.
Like, yes, if you ask Rudy to guard the Joker without any help without Cat, it got dicey. But when Cat was playoff cat, Rudy was fine because he's a rim protector. Yeah, they're like that game five stuff. I don't know, man, like maybe it's just the perception you have.
But when I see clips of of Nicole Yolkits doing these hakeemalize you on like pump fake here, pump fake there, spin pivot and go Bears right there every step of the way and then puts a hand in the face, a hand at the point of the shot and Yolkits just like falling on his ass, banks went off the top of the backboard and in for a ridiculous jumper. Like, I look at that and I say, well, that's one of the greatest players in the world, greatest players of all time, just like doing a great thing. Other people look at it and say, Oh, go Bear got cloned. You know, like when Jordan was doing it to guys as a guard in the 90s or people saying, Oh, look at the defender just getting his ass kicked.
Craig, you know, Craig, you know, worthless. Yeah. Wow. And his and go Bears friend, Draymond didn't help things at all.
Draymond, by the way, is going to be part of the Western Conference Finals panel. He's going to be here part of the panel TNT. Yeah. All right.
TNT, by the way, officially as of this morning, according to Business Journal, so it's over for them with the NBA rights ESPN is it Amazon and then NBC after 25 or 20 year hiatus, NBC gets the rights back. So there's a year left on the contract. So at least the inside the NBA crew gets to go out with a good buy for a season. But yeah, it's unfortunate.
But we will land somewhere. The only question is where and how much. So okay, I saw, don't ask me how and why this popped up. I think I follow both of the goal.
So Mike Golick and Michael, you go junior used to be a friend of our radio show. So Mike Golick's wife popped up in my Twitter feed. She tweeted ESPN should blow out their entire, yes, their entire NBA pre and post game show and basically do the Mac if you think like hire the inside the NBA crew with full full autonomy for them and let them cook. Oh, God.
Yeah. But early won't leave. I think he's staying there. Like he's just, he's, I think he's from Atlanta.
He likes it. They still do it from Atlanta. 100%. Well, that's what they should do.
But I was just going to say if ESPN forget the entire crew, if ESPN gets Barkley, brace yourself for layoffs because that's what they do every time. But what would they do? So it'd be Steve, Steve and Ann, actually, Steve and Ann Barkley would be a fun. Yeah.
I think it'd be fun. Some people would want to moderate. That's the most important thing. Yeah.
Because that Amalika Andrews job, like in Greenie Handblad, I mean, that's a big job. And you'd have to get it right, man. Because those two would eat you alive. Yeah.
Okay. Six through 10 here. Number six, the sixth best player in the series, Jayden McDaniel's second team all NBA defense, best perimeter defender in the series. You're going to rely on him to put the clamps on to the best offensive players in the world.
And when he's giving you the offense, he gave you in spurts, like these little 18 20 point games. That's a game changer for this team. I've been saying, if you get instead of getting the Bruce Bowen version of him, which is great, like just like just lock down defense and not much more, which they need, if you get the diet co-ilentered version and he's given you 15 to 20 points and three level scoring, this team wins the championship. So I'm putting Jay McDaniel's is the sixth best player in the series.
I feel like when he gives you what he did in game seven against Denver, though, his defense improves. Like, if you can tell his engagement in the game, you can immediately tell. If he starts to shoot and makes a couple, his defense, which is always solid, but I think it takes off. It becomes so important to me, especially to be a championship team to have Jamie doesn't need to pour in a ton of points, but he's got that corner three.
It's a really nice shot. If he can pop a few of those early, it feels like he really gets into the game. And when he's completely engaged, he can make a huge difference. Yep.
It is a man that corner three is so important because when the Wolves are going to one of eight and they're missing like Nikhil in game seven, missed like five wide open threes, they still win. They can still win when they're not hitting those. It is like off to the races, 20 point victories oftentimes. Okay.
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The sixth best player was Jay McDaniel's. I think the seventh best player is Nas Reed. So we're on a little run here where through seven, we've got two Mavericks, one in three, and we've got Timber Wolves at two, four, five, six, and seven. Now Nas Reed, he was excellent in the fourth quarter of game seven.
He had the huge putback dunk. He had a couple of blocks on Yoge. She was excellent. But I don't think we've seen anywhere close to the top peak version of Nas Reed yet in these playoffs, which is kind of a scary thing if you're facing the Timber Wolves.
Like what if peak Nas Reed shows up at some point? So I'm ranking him seventh, but if he's playing at his peak, you could argue that he's like up to six or maybe fifth when you're getting the full version of Nas Reed. Yeah, I don't think we have seen a complete game from the sixth man of the year yet. The fourth quarter was phenomenal.
And again, I think played a huge role because Kat was out at the time with five bowels. But yeah, he is. It feels like the three's not going down for him or has not certainly consistently in the playoffs. And I'm waiting for the game because he's got that he's got a nice stroke there.
I'm waiting for the game where that three starts to fall consistently because I mean, he can easily go for 20. Yep. I could see it happening at some point in the series. Okay.
Number eight's back to the Mavericks here. The eighth best player in the series according to me. He's a six foot seven forward who was acquired via trade from Charlotte just plucked from obscurity and put right into the Western Conference files here. But here's the thing about PJ Washington.
He's not a great shooter like historically, like he's like a 30 to 34 percent depending on the gear three point shooter, but he's shooting 40 percent from three in the playoffs. So if we're getting like this playoff version of PJ Washington, then you're getting like he's the third guy on that Mavericks team. But I suspect you might see a little shooting regression from him. I don't know that he's going to keep shooting 40 percent from three point range, especially with the closeouts that the Timberwolves are going to give him.
So we'll have to see what version of PJ Washington shows up. And obviously these are like the biggest games that he has played in. I'll buzz through these two. Number nine, Mike Conley.
Okay. Just an absolute floor general, a guy that he's going to be kind of an interesting piece because the Mavericks might go hunting for him offensively and try to put him in situations that he's uncomfortable in. So are the Wolves going to have to take him off the court, put Nikhilin maybe more often than they want, but then the Wolves sacrifice offensive organization and spot up shooting. So like keeping Mike Conley on the court is going to be a key here for the Timberwolves.
And then number 10, it's kind of a toss up between the two Mavericks bigs. Eric Lively is the, is the seven foot rookie out of Duke who can rebound. He can block. He's just a, he's just a big seven foot one body.
I also thought about putting, so Daniel Gafford is six foot 10. He's actually been starting the games with Lively coming off the bench, but just a couple of six foot 10, seven foot bodies that they don't stretch the floor like cat and Nas Reed. They don't shoot threes, but they can make it harder for you. They can pack the paint, make it harder for Anthony Edwards to get layups and just force the Wolves to make shots from outside.
So number one, look at Donchitz number two, Anthony Edwards number three, Kyrie Irving number four, Carlin, Thee towns number five, Rudy Gobert six, Jade McDaniel seven, Nas Reed, eight PJ Washington, nine Mike Conley and 10 Derek Lively. That gives you six Timber Wolves and four Mavericks, your top 10 players in the series. What's your assessment of the coaching matchup? Man, I mean, Jason Kidd, more experience, I guess.
He's been around forever now. And as a player, I mean, like you want to championship as a point guard. So he's definitely unfazed, but I mean, Chris Finch is one of the best tactical coaches in the NBA. Yep.
So I would, I would, it's funny because I would probably give in terms of like overall depth, Timber Wolves, top heaviness of roster. If you're getting peak and peak Carl, it's kind of a wash. But as of right now, I'm saying Mavericks have the more top heavy with Luca and Kyrie. Sure.
And I would give a slight edge to Chris Finch, I guess, over Jason Kidd right now. So it should be advantage, Timber Wolves. But there's going to be so many, you kind of knew what you were getting into with Nuggets and Timber Wolves. Both teams have played each other a million times playoff series, like it's similar rosters as to last year.
This is totally new man. Like this is a different Mavs team than when you played him in the regular season. Everyone's mostly healthy. Except for by the way, Maxi Cleba is the, he's the big like six foot 10 stretch forward that can knock down threes.
He would be a really interesting lineup chess piece for the Mavericks, but he's out for the, at least for the first part of the series, maybe for the whole series. A guy that I didn't mention who maybe could jump into the top 10 is Tim Hardaway Jr. Volume three point shooter. He's a guy that if he's going to be opening corners, he's going to potentially kill you in a game.
But how do all these pieces match up? We have to wait and find out game to game as we saw. How many different varieties of adjustments were there in the Wolves Denver series? I mean, yeah.
And like our both teams going to try and double Anthony Edwards, double Luca. Are you going to try and if the Timber Wolves can find defensive players. Shane McDaniel, Nikki, Anthony Edwards to guard straight up on Luca and Kyrie Irving and then stay home on some of the other guys. But I don't know if you're going to be able to do that for all seven games, even with some of the great perimeter defenders that get the Wolves app.
So right there you go. Good stuff. Get ready for tonight, man. This is going to be, this is, I was telling you on Purple Day, this is the, the deepest Minnesota sports team, a men's team has ever been in the playoffs.
And I've been in attendance for a game because the Vikings have played like a road NFC championship games. The last time the twins went to an American League championship series was 2002 as a kid in high school. I did not go to those games. I'm fired up, man.
All right. 20,000. Are you serious? 20 grand, huh?
On the Bernard show when I did my appearance. Wow. Kevin was saying he and AJ found 20 grand listed. So that's listed.
I wonder if there's some over, I wonder what they're selling for on the secondary market. Maybe it is 20 grand. I don't know. I mean, courtside might be 20 grand.
I think upper deck is what high two's low threes. Yeah, just to get in. It's crazy, man. So yeah, for those of you who are going to be downtown at Target Center, if you see the sports dad or me wandering around the arena, say hi.
And thank you for supporting flagrant halls, a Timber Wolves lifestyle podcast. We'll see you post game on the score on YouTube channel live from Target Center.