On Tue.'s No Dunks, the guys preview and predict the NBA Conference Finals. Out West, it's the No. 1 seeded Thunder vs. the No. 6 seeded Wolves. In the East, it's the No. 3 seeded Knicks and the No. 4 seeded Pacers squaring off for the second consecutive postseason. What are some things to watch for in each series? Potential X-factors? And who wins?▶️ Join No Dunks on Playback : https://www.playback.tv/nodunks👕 Fix up, look sharp in some No Dunks merch: https://nodunks.com📈 Subscribe to No Dunks on YouTube: YouTube.com/nodunksinc𝕏 Follow No Dunks on Twitter/X: https://x.com/NoDunksInc🥶 Cold open: @lifelikecharlie: https://www.instagram.com/p/DA6okoRNC2U/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What are the key matchups in the Thunder vs. Wolves series?
You know, Nas Reed's making it happen, 44% from three in the corner. Jay McDaniel's doing all right himself at 38%. There's guys that can do it, but will Anthony Edwards be that guy to start zipping it out? Because OKC's defense, I think, will be better off than when they started against Denver.
I think what they got going for them is that there was eight days off before they played Denver in game one. They only have one day off here. I think that benefits them. They will just be ready to go. This is a freaking young team. I think they'll be spry and ready to fly against OKC this season. Anthony Edwards only shot 36% from the floor, 31% from three. Regular season doesn't really matter.
I think it does because OKC is just going to bring all those guys around. They're going to bring that toilet defense. They're going to start swarming him. How will he react? How will he react? He's got to start better, I think, than against the Warriors team, which was a far, far inferior team.
Even though you've compared him before a little bit to LeBron, how Anthony Edwards does seem to feel out a game, feel out a series, or at least that's what he's shown us. And it's worked out, obviously, getting to the conference finals. But yeah, they just have so many perimeter guys to throw at them. You're going to start in the torture chamber.
So you got Lou Dort on you, but of course we're going to see Caruso on him, probably Kaysen Wallace at times, maybe even J-Dub. I guess in theory SGA could get matched on him at times. There's a lot of great perimeter defenders, and this is an elite defense. So Ant is a big one.
Ant is the number one thing to watch, specifically his decision-making. This is the biggest test yet. L.A. was a pretty easy series for Anthony Edwards, all things considered. He knew where the automatics were going to come from. Six turnovers in five games. That was incredible. Golden State was more of a tale of two halves.
He played pretty poorly in the first half of every game and then dominated the second half of every game is really what it felt like. You mentioned they've got tons of options. on the OKC side for who could stick. Edwards, they're going to be messing around with the schemes as well, and it is important and imperative that Anthony Edwards does not turn the ball over against OKC.
Minnesota turns the ball over quite a bit. They're 11th in turnover percentage. in the playoffs. Only 16 teams made it. They're the worst remaining. Oklahoma City is first in forcing turnovers.
We saw in the second half of Game 7, they just turned Denver over time after time after time, getting easy buckets on the other end, getting Jalen Williams going, Caruso running wild out there, Cason Wallace looking like the fastest guy on the court. That is the best source of offense for OKC, is going from defense to offense. Their transition game is unstoppable. So...
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Chapter 2: What is Anthony Edwards' role and performance expectations?
So both really good road teams, so maybe that gets us to a long series here. Everyone I've seen predict this series, I've never seen somebody go in five for one of these teams. I've seen a couple when we were talking about the West. You know, there's some people saying...
you know thunder and five or maybe the wolves overpower them whatever but this one everybody i see is like six or seven feels like it's going to be that i am going to go nixon seven i i love what they've gone through here in these first two rounds that piston series definitely making them maybe a little tougher physically mentally obviously what they did to overcome the defending champs there they got helped with the tatum injury but they were up 3-1 when that happened if we're being completely honest so would they have taken one more even if tatum's playing i think so
so I'm going Knicks in 7 and maybe we get a Madison Square Garden game 7 again that's what they did last year and there was a lot of injuries to the Knicks last year the Knicks still got it 2-7 now different teams and got smoked and got smoked in that game that was like the insane shooting game from the Pacers in that one yeah I do have a question, though, with this one.
How do you think Tyrese Halliburton trolls Knicks fans in this series? Any creative ideas?
He's got to do the Brunson three-point celebration.
Okay, so stealing a celebration. I think he might steal an old Steve Novak double discount check celebration, like the Aaron Rodgers doing this. Because I say that because, you know, we got the Halliburton Brunson WWE angle. So you got the championship belt. I think he'll do that. What about this one? Halliburton shows up to a game dressed as Willy Wonka to get in Timothee Chalamet's head.
He would do it.
You think that's the key is throwing Chalamet off his game? I think Halliburton's crazy enough to do it. He dresses like a book character a lot. That's what I'm saying. Often Inspector Gadget. Yeah, right.
You think he's just going to apply some chocolate from his pocket and just hand something to Chalamet? Wonka, great movie. Underrated movie. People don't talk enough about Wonka. It's a great movie. People don't talk enough about Wonka?
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