Behind The Coaching Chess Match Of Nuggets-Wolves

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Coming up.

As the nuggets and wolves resume their rivalry, I'm going to tell you the secret weapons.

The David Adelman and Chris Finch are going to have to go to in order to beat one another

in which to be a great first round series.

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On today's show, I want to talk about the chess match between David Finch and David Finch,

Chris Finch and David Adelman and what I think they're they're going to have to get into

in order to decide this series.

So let's go ahead and get into it.

All right.

The biggest thing to me, and I want to start off here now, youtube.com slash lock down

on it.

You can see this graphic.

If you are listening on the podcast, if you head to the YouTube page, you can watch it.

Also, if you just hit me up and you want to see it, let me know and I can show you.

This is the rotation chart via mbarotations.info.

I don't have Ryan's.

I don't he had put them all in a folder for the everydayers club, but to be honest, I

was too lazy to go find it.

So I've used this one and this is the box score from the Christmas day game, the nuggets

one, 142 to 138.

And what it kind of outlines and shows and you'll notice that there's no Aaron Gordon in

this one, which is very important.

It was Yokeach Murray Watson, THJ and Spencer Jones, no cam Johnson in this one either.

I circled two boxes, I circled two squares, I put two squares rounded squares because

I prefer the rounded ones up and kind of wanted to highlight them and the keys are the

start of the second quarter minutes.

So to start the second quarter for the wolves, it was Jaden McDaniel's Rudy Gaubert, Dante

Diven Chenzoe, Bones Highland and Nas Reed.

So what you get here is no ants, but you get Jaden, you get Rudy, you get Nas, you get

Bones and you get shooting with Dante.

So you get defense with Jaden and Gaubert, you get offense with Dante and shooting with

Dante and Nas and you got Bones Highland there for shot creation as well.

And that goes up to start that second quarter against Jamal, Tim Hardaway Jr.

Spencer comes in later, Bruce Brown, Julian Strother and Jonas Valentinus and then later

because they went double big, Adam and Ron have gone to Zeknaji in those couple minutes.

Now again, you'll notice like the absence of Aaron is very important here.

What I want to get to here is the importance of, I talked about this on the Denver Benders

episode, which you should check out.

If you can case you missed it, Adam Mare has Brendan Boat join me and Swypa and Ryan

for a special Denver Benders episode, it's in your feed right now.

Finch has the ability to be more flexible with his rotations than Denver does, okay?

So could just going to play the entire first quarter, he will come back in somewhere between

the eight minute and ten minute mark of the first of the second quarter.

If things are going disastrously bad, he'll come back sooner and have to play 40 minutes.

If things are going well, he will come in around the 18 mark to play 36 minutes.

If you're expecting him for 38 minutes, you know, there's all these kinds of variations.

The key here is that Finch has consistently done this, where what he has wanted to do

is get the best players in the non-Yoke-itch minutes.

And then in the Yoke-itch staggered minutes, because Murray has to stagger, to then hit

you with Ant Go Bear minutes with Yoke non-Murray.

And those combinations are very important as we start to talk about this series.

If you ask me the most direct line of what I think they need to do, it's always going to be,

I understand that you want to make teams adjust to you.

And I've talked about this about how you don't want to be the first team to adjust.

I just think the smart thing to do is to stagger Yoke-itch.

Is Yoke-itch comes out four minute mark of the first quarter.

He sits the remaining four minutes.

He starts the second quarter.

He plays. He sits until he feels rested.

He comes back in and he closes the quarter.

This to me is the best way to go about this.

And the reason is it takes away the wolves ability to do this.

If they have to then back up and be like, we're going to play Rudy all of the first quarter,

along with Nas to end that quarter.

They're trying to shift that into the first quarter.

It gives you more time to catch up versus the weaker line-ups.

The other thing I think that's really important is,

whenever I watched any clips that I did for this,

Jamal and Nicola versus any lineup that had Nas read in it,

where Rudy was not guarding Yoke,

was absolute butter and toast for the nuggets.

Jamal just is able to get downhill on Nas and score on him.

Nas just can't defend.

In the Nas Julius minutes,

it's an outright disaster versus Jamal and Yoke-itch, as you would imagine.

So my concern is primarily the non-Yoke-itch minutes

being facilitated by Rudy Go Bear.

If they just go small.

So let's say that they go the opposite route here

and Finch decides we're going to anchor Rudy Go Bear to Nicola Yoke-itch.

If Yoke-itch is on the court, Rudy is in.

If Yoke-itch leaves, Rudy is out.

If they decide that,

now you get into those Nas read minutes at five,

which have killed the nuggets,

that actually makes it easier for this team,

provided Spencer is back.

You can do it with Aaron,

but I'll feel a lot better if Spencer is on the court.

Because what you're able to do then

is you're able to go just,

we are putting,

we are deploying the small ball unit that we tried for about a month,

had mixed results,

but really was pretty good on the eye test.

And you would roll out Jamal and Tim Hardaway Jr.

Bruce,

maybe,

maybe,

Julian, maybe.

Question mark,

since Peyton's probably that could be available for Game 1,

Courtney Adamara's.

And then you play Spencer at the five.

If you want to,

you can play Spencer and A.G.

I love that even better.

Is Stagger, Spencer,

Stagger, A.G. and Jamal

and have them play with Spencer at the five.

And then all you do with his Nas read line up,

even with Julius Randall,

is Spencer is going to take Nas,

Aaron's going to take Julius,

and you're just going to switch everything.

And if Nas goes into the post,

which David Allen has mentioned,

is that Nas can take smaller guys into the post.

If he gets Jamal on him,

you're going to blitz the ball handler.

And then you're going to try and recover.

And if Nas reads able to get downhill

and you get those kind of executing sequences

without ant on the floor,

that you kind of got to live with.

But the ability to kind of spread them out

with a five outlook,

I think is really good.

If they do the opposite

and they go Rudy,

no Nas in those minutes.

Right?

If they try and attack you with,

we're going to put Jaden on the floor

and it's going to be Julius and Rudy,

staggering and playing in the non-Yokeage minutes.

Okay.

I still kind of want to go small

because if you're able to space out Rudy

to the corner with Spencer Jones,

you're going to be able to create enough threes

to be able to get those,

the looks that you want.

Now Spencer's got to hit him

because he's going to,

he Rudy's going to leave him.

Rudy, I will guarantee you

because I watched it on tape.

Rudy's not scared of Spencer Jones shooting

but if Spencer hits two threes,

that instantly turns those minutes around.

So they have all these counters,

but one of the problems is

you have to be so reactive to the moment

without screwing up your entire rotation.

So getting a sense for what they're going to do,

I think is very important here.

The counter of this is the valve minutes, right?

Because you're worried about,

you're worried about rebounding most importantly

when you go small versus Rudy.

Rudy's going to kill you on the glass.

Yes.

You can probably hack a little here

is just hey,

if Rudy gets an offensive rebound,

put him at the line.

And Spencer will do it.

Spencer will just give the valve

and then you do it that way.

You can probably get away with the valentunis minutes

in these kind of combos

as long as Nause is on the floor.

That's my concern here.

What you can't do

is you can't go into this game

and have Jonas Valentune

just play the backup five

and then they go to Nause.

No Rudy.

If you're in that spot,

you're getting cooked.

Nause will annihilate that coverage.

And IO will tear it out.

They don't even need ant on the floor.

That's like a real concern here.

You have to be a little reactive in the series.

I think this is a big key is that

the balance between making them adjust to you,

your starter minutes,

they're going to have to throw stuff at the wall.

Like Finch is going to have to go deep in his bag

and throw out,

hey, we're going to put Jaden McDaniels on Yokech.

Okay, that didn't work.

Let's try IO.

Okay.

Maybe we put Dante Divenchenzo

as the small ball rotation defender behind.

Okay.

Let's blitz Yokech

when it's an inverted pick and roll

and see what he does with that.

They're going to have to throw stuff against the wall

because quite honestly,

everything that's I've seen on film,

on data, on tape,

and comparing it to 2024

says the walls are in a really big match-up deficit

versus their starters.

And the numbers bear that out this year

when they've had Aaron,

they've killed this team.

But in the non-Yokech minutes,

that's still a weak enough area

that you need to be reactive.

And you need to be very play-by-ear

and match to what they're doing

because the walls have the luxury of being like,

we'll put Ant out there without Rudy.

Okay, now we'll put Rudy out there without Ant.

Now we'll put Ant and Rudy

in the non-Yokech minutes with Nas.

They're willing to do all this

because they know how important it is to win those minutes.

And so that's going to be kind of,

I think, part of the battle

as this goes along.

Come up one more time.

A little bit more about Spencer Jones

and the circle of trust.

I also want to get in Bones Highland,

some of the things that I've seen on tape about him.

We'll talk about that and more.

Coming up on lockdown nuggets.

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Back here on Lockdown Nuggets.

Thanks for joining us and making this part of your day.

Appreciate you guys being with us.

Ryan Blackburn is going to have a special mail bag episode

for everydayers club.

So if you go to Lockdown Nuggets.supercast.com

or if you click on the link in the description below,

you can get in on that and listen to that episode

as well as my end-death breakdowns

on but the offense and defense.

As far as like more programming notes here,

we'll have a show tomorrow after noon.

Between Ryan and Swipeup, then probably one final thing

for me on Friday night,

kind of setting the stage for Saturday afternoon.

We'll have continuing content.

I do no longer live tweet Nuggets games.

I'm in the discord.

That's where I'd rather be with people

that are actually Nuggets fans

that care about the content.

I am in there for every Nuggets game.

Then when post-game content as well,

I will give you guys a whole set of things

off of that game on Sunday.

I'll start breaking down individual sequences

and in-depth stuff to give you an idea

of what we're looking at going into game two

as well as hopefully a hero of the game

and what hopefully will be

Nuggets win in game one.

I was talking about how important game one is going to be.

Yeah.

I was talking about Spencer Jones.

Spencer is still questionable.

He did not.

He practiced but did not in contact on Wednesday.

We'll get another update probably from him

tomorrow.

I'm not going to be surprised

if Spencer gets upgraded to questionable

for the game on Saturday.

I would not be surprised if he played in this game.

Sounds like he's a little bit further along

than Peyton is based off of Adam's reporting.

But he may not go at all.

I am going to be very curious to see if he plays.

Spencer played a huge role on the Nuggets this season.

He started a lot of games.

He played really well.

He made a lot of huge plays.

But the one thing I will say is like the overall metrics

are pretty not damning.

But they are indicative that Spencer

is still a very young player trying to find his way.

And Spencer has never thought he was more than like,

Spencer is very honest about who he is and what he's going to be in this league

and how he understands his role.

But one thing I think is really interesting is,

Spencer, when you watch him, you're like,

oh, what great defense.

And he just gets scored on because he places all the best players

and they're just able to get to these kind of shots.

So much of this is about, what are you willing to live with?

This is always a question I think that every coach has to deal

with in a playoff series.

And in every game honestly,

when you design a defense,

take the nuggets,

who I'm working on this thing about their sliced defense.

I got to do that next.

Wait, am I behind?

I thought that Jared Dudley the other day.

And the big key is he's just like,

you don't want catch and shoot unguarded,

extra pass corner threes.

Those are the most valuable shots in basketball.

We want to take those away.

Okay.

And they actually surprisingly as much as they give up corner threes,

they give up the ones that they want to give up.

They actually do deter.

The Boston Celtics are trying to get you to take mid-range

jumpers.

And actually three pointers quite a bit.

They actually allow a lot of threes.

They want pull up jumpers is what they want.

Nothing at the rim.

No catch and shoot.

They want pull up jumpers.

So you give up what you choose to give up, right?

With the nuggets,

I think a big question is,

what are they willing to give up?

You don't want to give up nozzaried threes.

You don't want to give up Jade McDaniel corner threes.

You don't want to give up.

Anthony Edwards dunks, right?

I think what you want to give up are,

Anthony Edwards pull up jumpers off of crossovers in isolation.

You want to make this as isolation centric a series as possible.

One of the things I think is going to be very difficult is,

you have to be able to contain on the drive.

The nuggets shockingly.

Like again, these numbers,

it's like, I know how bad their defense is.

You guys have heard me talk about it all year.

All year, how bad the defense is and how frustrated I've been

with the mechanics of it and how they execute and what they give up

and all these types of things.

Like it is genuinely has been a bad defense,

even though they are like, you know,

there's a better level that they can get to,

depending on what they want to do.

But the numbers have been really good for their spot up numbers.

And that includes drives.

This slice covers that they give actually does deter those things.

But I think one of the things that Adam will really be hard pressed with is,

if he starts to give up something, how much does he adjust to it?

He is such a patient guy.

I think it actually works in his favor.

On the other hand here, just as I said,

they need to be reactive in protecting the bench unit.

I kind of want the nuggets to be a little reactive in the series

because I think they're at such an advantage is,

the worry is you overreact something and you give up another weakness.

So it's like you move your troops to the left and you expose that right flank.

The nuggets have the high ground in this series.

So I think it's actually important for them to just cut off

whatever is happening now.

If Dante Deven Genzo comes out hot,

don't let him get in rhythm.

Adjust your coverage a little bit.

If Jade McDaniel is killing you off the bounce,

okay, let's put a better defender on him.

All of these, I think, are really important.

And so I think it's a really interesting kind of set

that they're going to have to work through.

I want to talk about this quote from Adam in today,

where he basically said like,

you know, actually having a really good offense is a really good form of defense

and everyone kind of laughed about it.

Here's the thing.

Denver's defense is not set to recover.

They don't have chaotic scramble energy.

They don't have guys that fly around.

Cam Johnson is a very sound defender.

He is not going to recover wildly from the perimeter down low.

One of the reasons the nuggets don't force any turnover

is because if they try to, they're going to give up,

excuse me, they are going to give up worse shots,

like more valuable shots.

So they're very sound in this defensive approach

because the juice is not worth the squeeze in this situation.

And you go, like, you're going to need to create some of those.

I would agree.

You need to be able to be willing to get on the floor

and scramble and create havoc.

But I do think that scoring allows them to get back

and set their defense that they're not confused.

A lot of times, this has been a problem historically for them.

In mid-transition, they get scrambled with bad matchups.

They are just cross-matched.

And they're like, oh, I'm going to take this guy

because I got to make sure he's not open on transition.

And now all of a sudden, everything is mixed up.

You score.

You get to set everything.

And so having a good offense really does honestly help you

be a better defense.

And I think it does matter quite a bit.

Stax says their athleticism paired with their transition

to offense worries me.

And hopefully the nuggets don't turn it over too much

because giving the momentum will kill us nuggets and six.

I'm actually surprisingly a little more worried for the wolves

and their transition defense, which has been below average this season

in both frequency and per possession.

The turnovers have always been kind of a bug-a-boo for the wolves.

It's been a recurring issue for them throughout their time.

Underclass Finch is just like they turn the ball over.

And that's been in a Achilles heel for them.

And much like Denver, they haven't been able to compensate.

Now, the wolves do have the 13th best offense in the NBA.

That's dipped into the top 10 for much of the season.

It kind of tail off late.

But when you look at what their tendencies are,

the wolves are 18th and turnover rate.

Denver is actually third.

They have the third lowest turnover rate this season.

If the nuggets don't turn the ball over,

it's curtains for the wolves.

And I have the numbers actually to back that up.

I will give you this one.

That's in the scouting report as a little sample.

Denver is eight and three since 2022-23.

Since the title season, they're eight and three versus the wolves

when they have fewer turnovers than Minnesota.

When they have the same number or more,

they are six and 11.

Six and 11 when the wolves have fewer turnovers.

Hold onto the ball.

So much about the series is just going to be Denver.

I think 2024 was a colossal battle of the Titans.

And those two teams slugged it out.

Denver was not ready for the first punch thrown.

They were not ready for the second punch thrown in game two.

They thought they were going to come in there and like,

oh, we'll win because we're not going down 0-2.

And the wolves just clobbered him with nozzaried in that game.

They responded, got up off the mat,

fought their way out of the corner, so to speak.

Mixing boxing metaphors.

And way lay the wolves going up three to two.

They give up the game six because it's a tough win

and an elimination game on the road.

They come back home and they're up 20.

And then they just gasped out.

They let their gloves drop a little bit.

Wolves hit him with a knockout punch.

That was two Titanic teams.

This one's a little bit different.

This one is, do not drop your guard

and let them get a knockout blow in.

Don't go for wild haymakers.

The nuggets do not need to swing wild in the series.

They don't need to play tight and conservative.

Be aggressive.

You're still punching.

Work the body.

But if you work the body, they do not have what they did in 2024

to protect themselves enough.

And I think Denver is going to be in a really good position

to advance.

I'll have more on the overall thoughts on the series.

Last minute thoughts.

The boys will have a show for you tomorrow afternoon.

Check out the everydayers club for more content.

I hope you guys have enjoyed the shows this week.

We are less than 48 hours inside of game one

versus the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Denver Nuggets.

We'll see you guys again next time on Lockdown Nuggets.

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