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The all new season of the Kardashians premieres May 23rd streaming on Hulu. We're pleased to welcome Matt Moore who's just finished up his responsibilities covering this game seven in the Mile High City. I mean, we could go back to game six where the Nuggets got blown out in Minneapolis, so it's not just game seven.
What the heck, Matt? It's important here before I talk about the Denver side of it to give the Wolves all the cred in the world. This is the best defense that I've seen in 20 years.
This is an all-time defense. They compete for every dribble, every pass, every possession, and they deserve all the cred in the world for pulling off the biggest comeback in the game seven in NBA history. The Nuggets ran out of gas. They pushed too hard in the first half. They played Joker an incredible amount of minutes in that first half.
They disrupted his normal rotation. And Nikola Jokic was out of gas in that second half. And you saw it with the number of threes that he took. You saw it with the number of passive positions that they had.
And both he and Jamal Murray did not have enough in the tank. This Nuggets team has always been a team that would dig down and find more energy to outpace you, and they could not because of the amount of energy the Wolves took from them in the second half. And so they looted this huge 20-point lead. They got away from their offensive process. And the turnovers that they experienced are a product of one. Again, the Wolves are awesome, but also that's mental fatigue from how much had kind of been put on them. This Nuggets team came out of the All-Star break, tried to make a push for the one seed. We're like, we can do this. And then when they started to tail off a little bit, and you could tell they were getting tired, they still kept pushing. And that took something from them.
And I talked about it a lot of like, hey, probably pushing a little too hard here. You need to be healthy and completely rested for the playoffs. But they had to push all the way to the end. Still didn't get the one seed, wound up with the two, really looked unimpressive versus the Lakers, and now get beat by the Wolves in game seven with this massive collapse. And I think it's a lesson that sometimes you have to choose between, are you going to be your best when the playoffs come, or are you going to fight for seeding?
Because sometimes you don't get to have both. The Wolves themselves have been fairly schizophrenic at times. We saw them drop three in a row in the middle of this series.
So why are they so spotty when it comes to that defense? You know, I think the defense was really good, but part of it was just like, Joker was incredible in game five. They got a good Jamal Murray first half in game three.
And I think a lot of it, honestly, the story of the series is that neither of these teams could handle prosperity. So the Nuggets come in as the reigning champs after being the Lakers in five, like, oh yeah, it was hard, but whatever. And the Wolves came in and punched them in the mouth. And then the Nuggets go down and everyone buries them. And they spend three days, everyone spent three days praising the Wolves and talking about Anthony Everett as the face of the league. And the Nuggets punch back like champions do.
And they take three, four, five. And then in game six, okay, you know what? Nuggets are back and they've solved Minnesota and they've got it under control. Well, Minnesota comes out and they throw as much as they can at the wall to get that win. And they pulled a lot of levers in that game to get that win. And it's one of the reasons why the Nuggets were able to build a 20 point lead, but then right when Everett goes up 20 in the final frame of the series, once again, can't handle that prosperity, took their foot off the gas. And I was in Ant's press conference after game two and they were like, are you surprised that you're able to dominate like this?
What are you expecting from game three? And he said, he was like, they're going to punch back, man. He's like, they just miss shots.
They're going to punch back, but we're going to punch back and we're both going to keep punching and we'll see who comes out of it. And that to me is the story of the series. The wolves kept punching and eventually Denver didn't have anything left to get their gloves up.
And that's why the wolves are moving on. Speaking of Anthony Edwards, man, he himself had a struggle in the first half as Jamal Murray is going off for 24 points in this game seven, and then he catches fire and the energy, it seemed like it was sparked by the defense. He really has been a story in and of himself in this series.
Yeah. I mean, he's been sensational and it's cool to see these players arrive at this stage. And, you know, honestly, for me, a lot of it is him trying to figure out as the nuggets adjusted to him, he'll probably be better, you know, in the series going forward. I'm not sure, you know, we'll see how the Mavericks match up with them.
But this is the first experience of him having this level of attention. The nuggets were sending four defenders at him when people were like, where's Ant in this game? I was like, he's being surrounded by four guys. And the nuggets said anybody but Ant has to beat us. And Karl Anthony Towne and Jayden McDaniel stepped up and they made plays. And after the game, Karl Anthony Towne talked about how, you know, that's Minnesota Timberwolves basketball.
That's not just about Ant, it's not just about me, it's about all of us together. When you have those types of teams that play that way, that's how you can make a run. You have to be more than just the sum of your parts. You have to be more than just your best players. And that was a gap between, honestly, this year's Nuggets and last year's Nuggets. And it was a gap this year between the Timberwolves and Denver. Longtime NBA insider Matt Moore with us from Denver, where apparently Joker doesn't need to work out after game seven. So a little quicker in his postgame comments. Speaking of postgame, Matt, we got salty Mike Malone. What was it like in that room as he's kind of putting the eulogy on the Denver Nuggets run? Yeah, I mean, it was an emotional moment for Malone.
You have to understand, there's some context here. His response was unfair to Ben Durando from the Denver Post's question. And Ben is cool because Ben is pro and he's fine with Malone's response. But Malone comes in, probably didn't take long enough to wait before doing these press conferences. Malone lost his father to start the year and that kind of held over this entire season for him. And you could tell that that was really difficult.
And then to go through this entire season and then to hit this point. And then also, by the way, the Nuggets press conference room, yeah, it shares a wall with the visiting locker room. So Malone had to do the entire press conference while the cheers, screams, hollering and music and dancing of the Timberwolves was bleeding through the wall during his press conference.
It's a pretty tough scene there. Malone honestly like overreacted in that moment but then fell down and kind of gave better answers. It's a tough moment just kind of shows you Malone. One of the things about him is he really does care. He wants to win and he could tell how heartbroken he and the rest of the Nuggets were after this loss.
What did Joker have to say when he got into the room? Well, we'll see. As he always says, we'll see. We need to get better. You know, they're the better team.
I think whoever wins the best of seven series, you play seven games, they're the better team. His usual non-committal like, oh well, we lost. You play some games, then you lose. The best thing about Joker is that he doesn't take anything too seriously.
He's never really heartbroken anymore. And the worst thing is like sometimes it can come off as like, yeah, whatever. And that was kind of Joker's response. Whether that's how he actually was in the locker room or not, don't know because that's what he shares with us is a very much like, well, you know, we'll see. You play, you give your best and you hope it's enough.
It wasn't good enough. We'll have to come back next year and be better. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence as we have a pair of game sevens on Sunday. One in the west, one in the east. We now know the NBA's final four.
Matt Moore is with us from Denver. So how do the Timberwolves match up with the Dallas Mavericks, who had their own rally on Saturday in stunning fashion against the top seed Thunder? Man, it's going to be a fascinating series for a number of reasons, including the emotional aspect. The Mavericks were just overjoyed to win that series. They talked about how hard that series was. It was this series so hard.
And I kind of looked at that and was like, guys, really? Because like this team's like a college team with how old they are. They've never done this before.
It's about to get a lot harder. However, I'll tell you on the other side, same thing here tonight where, look, the Wolves have measured themselves against Denver all year. That's how they have measured themselves. Rudy Gobert has said repeatedly that they inspired him, the Nuggets inspired him and late in the season called them the best team in the league. Like there was an unending amount of respect from the Wolves to this Nuggets team. And that's why winning meant so much. So now it's Sunday night, you play Wednesday in a Western Conference Finals where the team hasn't been in that spot in 20 years. And so now can the Wolves kind of center themselves and get back to the place where they're hunting again? Because it's very easy to be like, yeah, we beat the champs.
It's all a breeze from here. No, Luca and the Dallas Mavericks are not done yet. And that's going to be a defensive battle. There's a lot of interesting cross matches. I also think both teams don't match up great defensively with the other. I think they're going to have a hard time guarding one another. As good as the Wolves defense is, they don't have a good counter for Luca Doncic. And as good as the Mavericks defense has been, especially protecting the rim, this is a whole other deal when it's Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Townsend, not Reid. So it should be a fascinating series from a matchup standpoint, high defense. Every shot's going to really matter. Kyrie Irving versus Jayden McDaniel should be great.
Anthony Edwards should have a much easier time honestly in this series. But it's going to be, I think, a really great matchup. The Wolves are rightly favored, especially with home court.
But I'm not going to be surprised at all if the Mavericks take this series deep, deep into a number of games. Coming up on Tuesday, the start of the Eastern Conference Finals, Celtics have been sitting around. They're waiting. What do we know about KP, if anything? Still no word yet. I think they're probably going to hold him just because, to be quite honest, I don't think there's a lot of expectation that the Pacers are going to be able to put up much of a fight.
Now that can change very rapidly. But if they can buy a few extra days to get KP back before the Finals, that's probably the right approach to take. We won't really hear anything about KP until he'll pop up as questionable. We'll get a report from one of them, from Major Moisarowski or Shomstaranya, and then he'll be good to go. But they're going to keep that pretty much under wraps because teams really don't want to reveal anything. They're never going to show the hand with these injuries. That's just how this goes. Well, speaking of injuries, Jalen Brunson breaks his hand, and the Knicks were already shorthanded.
They run out of gas. The Pacers shoot the lights out in their Game 7 on Sunday, even if they get overwhelmed by the Celtics. What impresses you about Indiana's run to this point? Man, they've just been so fun. This has been the most fun team this year.
If you watch Indiana, they were just a blast to watch. And they've gotten breaks. Giannis got hurt. Dane got hurt. The Knicks' pets' heads fell off, basically. Everyone got hurt in that series. However, the Pacers still had to take it, and they came back from being down 3-2, defended home court, then went into New York and beat the breaks off the Knicks in the Garden before Brunson's injury. Odeon and Ovi's injury was obviously massive, but Indiana's taken it to them, and they have so much firepower, and they play so free. And their game plan, they are one of the best teams in the league at sticking with their game plan.
You made a basket? Don't care. We're running right back at you. We're going to try and score. And that's going to be a challenge, I think, for Boston, especially with the fact that Boston sometimes can get caught with shot variants. This is not a team that you want to go shot variants with because the Pacers have so many offensive weapons.
This is the No. 1 offense versus the No. 2 offense in the league this season and in the playoffs. The Pacers, believe it or not, are the No.
2 offense in the playoff so far. It should be an offensive scorefest. When the Celtics win, they're going to win by a ton. When the Pacers win, they'll win by a little. We'll see how many the Pacers can steal, but this is going to be, I think, a pretty good challenge for the Celtics, even though they're almost definitely going to advance. Where are the Celtics vulnerable?
On the interior. So I think you're going to have a lot of problems with Pascal Thiokam and Miles Turner, and Porzingis helps with some of that, but he also switches a lot on the perimeter. The Pacers, you kind of think of them as Tyree Talbert in shooting and all these corner passes, but they're really good at attacking the rim. They're one of the best teams that attack at the paint in the league, and they do a lot of cuts and drives and flips, and the Celtics are kind of weak there. And when their offense bogs down, it really bogs down. Now, Indiana's defense is obviously suspect in a number of ways, but they do have some guys that can get after it.
You saw that in that Knicks series with Aaron, with Neesmith, and Nembhard to a certain degree, and Thiokam. So if they can just find enough levers to pull to give their offense a chance, I don't think Indiana is completely dead in the water here. I don't see a lot of scenarios where the Pacers get out of the series to make the finals of the sixth seed, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a little bit more competitive than maybe we think it's going to be based off of who the Pacers will face. Matt Moore is with us from Denver following a pair of game sevens on Sunday.
The final four is set. Meanwhile, business continues around the rest of the NBA. We've heard some weird rumors about what might happen with the Lakers and their head coaching job.
So Matt, what's the right fit there considering they seem to have tried everything over the past couple of seasons? I think the right fit is whoever LeBron wants. That's the situation that they're in right now is LeBron, his postgame comments after the loss of the Nuggets, and all of the reporting afterwards has been, yeah, he's going to exercise the option in his contract, and he's going to be a free agent, and they're going to have to give him everything he wants. He's going to want the contract, the money, the surrounding players. If they decide that he and Brony want to play together, they're going to need to get Brony, and they're going to need to get the coach. And that's one of the biggest reasons, obviously, why JJ Redick, his podcast partner, is considered such a favorite to get that job.
I don't know if that's the direction that they'll wind up going, but I do think it's going to be difficult. If the Lakers front office decides to take a risk and be like, no, we're going to hire our guy. You won, you risk alienating LeBron further, which could be a real problem. And two, even if you do resign LeBron, do you want him going head to head with an inexperienced coach?
There's not a lot of big names in the market. There's just not a lot of those guys that are available out there, which is why so many Lakers fans are hoping for Tyronn Lue to wind up somehow with the Lakers, but that doesn't seem likely. So I think that this is a very tricky situation, and the Lakers, once again, are going to kind of be trapped between trying to figure out next year and the end of LeBron's career and being a caretaker of the end of a legend career and doing what's best for the franchise going forward, where they could use some ingenuity and a new voice. But that's hard to have when you have LeBron James on the roster. It reminds me a bit of the end of Kobe Bryant's career with the Lakers.
A little bit. Yeah, there's some parallels there for sure, where you're trying to take care of the end of this player's legacy because you're the Lakers and you're where legendary players go. That's how you get them is you're known as the place where these players go and are taken care of. But at the same time, there's been so much, so much behind the scenes conflict between clutch sports and the Lakers front office over the Russell Westbrook deal and what's gone on since the championship in 2020.
It's okay. They're functional, but it's tense and everyone around the league is kind of watching to see how this is going to play out. Everyone assumes LeBron's going back, but how much do you want to give him? I think it's going to be a tough question for the Lakers. Mavericks and the Wolves in the West, which is kind of fun. Celtics and Pacers in the East and Matt Moore will continue down the road toward a champion.
You can find him on Twitter at HP basketball, Mile High City in game seven. Matt, always good to catch up with you. Thank you so much.
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