Joe Wolfond

Welcome to the latest edition of "Pound the Rock," an NBA podcast hosted by Joseph Casciaro and Joe Wolfond.Find the show on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Spotify.Topics for this week's episode include: Joel Embiid comes alive in Game 3 ... after almost getting himself tossed AD and the Lakers are no match for Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets How Aaron Gordon is killing the Lakers from the dunker spot Jamal Murray remains the ultimate postseason performer The Thunder's biggest flaw is a worthwhile trade-off Did starting Wendell Carter over Jonathan Isaac actually make a difference for Orlando? Why is Milwaukee using Brook Lopez to guard a red-hot Pascal Siakam? Luka brings the magic against the Clippers, but Maxi Kleber and Ivica Zubac are low-key X-factors in this series Phoenix's defensive strategy against Anthony Edwards, and why we're so impressed by Ant Are the Suns destined to let go of the rope? Was Miami's Game 2 upset in Boston anything more than just a hot shooting night?

A year removed from their own bitter disappointment, perhaps the Timberwolves can empathize with what the Suns are currently feeling - even if their future didn't feel as bleak as Phoenix's does now.

Five games in, the Eastern Conference quarterfinal between the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers has been one of the most compelling, most delirious first-round series in recent memory. Four of the five games were decided by seven points or fewer. Each team pulled off a miracle victory after trailing by at least five points with under 30 seconds to play. And we've seen legendary individual performances from the matchup's biggest stars, with Joel Embiid pouring in a playoff career-high 50 points in Game 3, Jalen Brunson popping off for a Knicks franchise playoff-record 47 in Game 4, and Tyrese Maxey going for 46 - including seven in the final 25 seconds of regulation! - to engineer the second of those miracle comebacks and extend the Sixers' season in Game 5.Those three are the defining players of the series, but it's everything going on around them - the ways their teams have helped unleash them and the ways each defense has tried to keep them under wraps - that's made these games so fascinating. The series has featured fun tactical wrinkles and some stellar role-player performances, though the latter have mainly come from the Knicks' side.Embiid and Maxey were the best players in the series over the first two games in New York (when Brunson shot 29% from the field and 17% from deep) but the Sixers still came back to Philadelphia down 0-2 because their supporting cast was thoroughly outplayed. Since then, Brunson's become increasingly comfortable, averaging 42 points and 9.7 assists in Games 3-5. But Embiid and Maxey have taken turns donning the superhero cape for the Sixers in those games, while Philly's complementary players have worked to close the gap with New York's. So back we go to Wells Fargo Center for Game 6. Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBA / Getty ImagesIn an uber-physical war of attrition, the Knicks' role-player depth has shone through. Julius Randle never suited up, Bojan Bogdanovic went down midway through the series, Mitchell Robinson missed most of Game 3 and all of Game 4, and still this team's threadbare rotation grinds on. Josh Hart, Isaiah Hartenstein, OG Anunoby, Donte DiVincenzo, Deuce McBride, and the odd cameo from Precious Achiuwa have all come through with vital contributions at various moments.The Sixers have gotten very strong defensive work from Kyle Lowry, Kelly Oubre, and Nic Batum (the latter two have handled the Brunson assignment with aplomb). Still, Maxey and Embiid have gotten comparatively little in the way of supplemental offense. Their two-man game has been the lifeblood and also the bones, organs, and tissue of Philly's offense.Some of that discrepancy has to do with the teams' contrasting defensive approaches. Though their help has gotten less aggressive as the series has gone on, the Sixers, in accordance with Nick Nurse's M.O., have been more willing to let their shell get bent out of shape and to put themselves in rotation. They've shown Brunson plenty of traffic on his pick-and-rolls and drives, giving the rest of the Knicks some big gaps to attack.The Knicks, by contrast and in accordance with their own coach's philosophy, have mostly trusted their on-ball defenders to fight over or "ice" ball screens and handle the Maxey assignment without an abundance of gap help. That assignment primarily fell to Anunoby in the first three games, but Tom Thibodeau switched things up after that and gave the matchup to Hart (with a dash of DiVincenzo and McBride) in order to unleash Anunoby as a weak-side rim-protector who could roam off of Oubre or Tobias Harris. That worked out well in Game 4, when Maxey had his worst game of the series. Less so in Game 5.Both star guards have spent the series trying to shed the long wing defenders dogging them and hunting for more favorable matchups. That often means hunting each other, though Brunson has also really enjoyed attacking Harris. The Sixers' most successful actions are double drags that force Brunson to defend the first screen, which usually results in him switching onto Maxey and then trying to navigate the second one. But even when Brunson or one of their centers gets switched onto Maxey, the Knicks have been reluctant to commit extra defenders until he breaks the paint. They've also played a lot of Embiid's post-ups and face-ups in single coverage with either Hartenstein, Robinson, or versatile Anunoby, though that started to change after Embiid's 50-burger. Down the stretch of Game 4 and for a big portion of Game 5, New York hard-doubled Embiid in the post, even when it meant helping off of Maxey from one pass away. The tactic seemed aimed at wearing down the reigning MVP, who was already compromised by a balky knee, partial facial paralysis, and migraines. It worked, in the sense that Embiid shot 7-for-19 with nine turnovers in Game 5. But that coverage also directly led to four of Maxey's seven 3-pointers in the game, and helped Harris get going for the first time in the series.In essence, the Knicks slowly ramped up their defensive aggression while the Sixers slowly scaled theirs back. Early in the series, Philly was especially liberal helping off of Hart, parking his defender (usually Lowry) at the nail and sometimes having him intercept whichever Knicks center came up to set a ball screen, which allowed Embiid to stay out of the action and lurk near the basket in a one-man zone. When the Sixers double-teamed Brunson and zoned up the weak side behind the trap, they were comfortable either ignoring Hart entirely or offering a perfunctory stunt rather than a full rotation.As such, three games into the series, Hart hoisted more wide-open threes than anyone in the playoffs and punished the defensive negligence by shooting 9-for-16 on them. When he wasn't bombing threes, he was beating the nail help by zooming into the diagonal lane off the catch, driving for layups or kickouts or laydown passes. Or he was exploiting the inattention by crashing for offensive rebounds. (Despite standing 6-foot-4 in a matchup featuring three 7-footers, he's the leading rebounder in the series, hauling in 12 boards a game.)He did so much damage in those first three games that the Sixers decided to hew more closely to him off-ball and to dial up the pressure rather than laying back when the ball was in his hands. That adjustment resulted in Hart shooting 0-for-7 from the field and committing five second-half turnovers in Game 4. It also helped free up Brunson for his record-setting scoring outburst. Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBA / GettyHartenstein has also benefited greatly from the attention Brunson draws. The Knicks' backup-turned-starting center is consistently able to slip into the soft underbelly of the Sixers' tilted defense to hit high-arcing push shots and mash the offensive glass. He's 10-for-14 from floater range in the series, the best conversion rate of any player with at least 10 attempts from that zone so far in the playoffs. But with Embiid mostly sitting in a deep drop when he screened, Hartenstein too found his offensive impact muted in Game 5. (Embiid was more willing to meet Brunson near the level when it was Robinson screening.)The Sixers still found occasion to send waves of help at Brunson and even sprung the odd trap on him - McBride hit what appeared to be the series-clinching dagger after flashing to the nail underneath one such trap - but they were more committed to keeping his primary defender attached and keeping everyone else at home. Oubre and Batum were instrumental in making that work, and they've done a great job on Brunson all series, Batum in particular. The 35-year-old blocked Brunson on a drive to preserve the tie at the end of regulation, then forced a crucial turnover in overtime with a textbook side contest that forced Brunson to panic-pass out of a step-back 3-point attempt.Brunson put together another monster game anyway, but he was visibly gassed by the end. And crucially, with the Sixers more attuned to putting bodies on his teammates, the Knicks were only able to grab six offensive rebounds after averaging 15 over the first four games. Embiid, despite barely being able to get off the ground and seemingly struggling with his vision and coordination, came up huge on that front. Give it up for the Rebound Rabbi.There's no telling what twists and turns this series will take from here, or who'll be left standing when it's over. Five players are averaging over 40 minutes a game. Hart sat for a total 13 minutes combined in five games. Embiid gutted through 47 ugly ones Tuesday and had enough left in the tank to dominate defensively in overtime.This is real playoff hoops. Somehow it's still only the first round. What a series. Bring on Game 6.

Five games in, the Eastern Conference quarterfinal between the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers has been one of the most compelling, most delirious first-round series in recent memory.

Lats summer, the Dallas Mavericks drafted Dereck Lively II 12th overall after tanking out of the play-in to keep their pick.

A year ago, after the eighth-seeded Miami Heat had bounced his top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks from the first round in five games, Giannis Antetokounmpo

Welcome to the latest edition of "Pound the Rock," an NBA podcast hosted by Joseph Casciaro and Joe Wolfond.Find the show on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Spotify.Topics for this week's episode include: Putting a bow on Knicks-76ers, the most compelling first-round series since ...? Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and the Sixers can hold their heads high as they head into a crucial offseason Jalen Brunson is That Dude, and his supporting cast is full of role-player superstars How does Indiana's pace match up against New York's physicality? What, if anything, can we take away from a lost Bucks season? How should the Heat and Pelicans respond to decisive playoff defeats without their respective best players? What happened to the Suns, and where can they even go from here? How the T-Wolves dominated Phoenix and how they match up against the defending champion Nuggets

There's a reason the Denver Nuggets didn't get very far in the two postseasons Jamal Murray missed with a torn ACL, but romped to the title and followed that up with a 57-win campaign after Murray returned. Defending Nikola Jokic is a head-splitting puzzle on his own, given the way he can obliterate single coverage and double-teams in almost equal measure. But melding his interior scoring and playmaking genius with Murray's supreme shot-making, ball-handling, and off-ball jukery takes that challenge to another level.For the better part of the last 18 months, the deadliest two-man game in the NBA has left opposing defenses scratching their heads. Some teams found temporary success by junking things up with a variety of tactics, but none landed on anything resembling a consistent answer for how to defend Jokic and Murray in tandem. Until now.The Minnesota Timberwolves have the defending champs on the ropes in the West semis, taking a 2-0 series lead back home. And while there are a host of reasons for their dominance, the biggest is that for at least two games, they solved the purportedly unsolvable equation at the heart of Denver's high-powered offense. They even did so without the services of newly minted four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert in Monday's Game 2.Minnesota's league-best defense has held the Nuggets to a comical 97.8 points per 100 possessions, 20 fewer than they averaged in the regular season. And Jokic-Murray actions (i.e. pick-and-rolls or dribble-handoffs, with either of them screening) have produced just 0.94 points per possession after generating 1.12 during the season, according to a source with Second Spectrum access.The obvious caveat is that Murray isn't operating anywhere near 100%, battling a calf injury that's seemingly sapped his explosiveness and probably impacted his jump shot. But it would be foolish to ignore the role the Timberwolves have played in holding him and Jokic to a combined 25-for-70 (36%) shooting with 16 turnovers through two games. AAron Ontiveroz / Denver Post / GettyIn Game 1, the Wolves predictably went with their cross-matching strategy of making Karl-Anthony Towns (and at other times Naz Reid) the primary defender on Jokic, and letting Gobert be a roving helper nominally guarding Aaron Gordon. With the non-shooting Gordon spending most possessions camping in the dunker spot or the corner, Gobert was free to patrol the back line. Among other things, that allowed Towns and Reid to stay attached to Jokic when he set ball screens for Murray, which took away a lot of Jokic's short-roll opportunities.That coverage isn't novel; the Celtics notably used it to combat the James Harden-Joel Embiid pick-and-roll in the playoffs last year, and we saw a bunch of teams (including the Lakers at points in last year's West finals) subsequently adopt it as a counter against Denver. We've just never seen a team execute it as effectively as Minnesota did. Keeping the screen defender in those actions stapled to Jokic concedes driving lanes to Murray. But the Wolves trusted that the rearview pressure from the various on-ball defenders who toggled through that matchup (Jaden McDaniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Anthony Edwards), coupled with Gobert's presence in the paint, would make those lanes treacherous to navigate.Though Murray missed a handful of floaters and mid-rangers that are (for him) very makeable shots, he never looked entirely comfortable with the length of the defenders sandwiching him while the pocket pass was denied. Even when he did score against that coverage, nothing came easily: HOW DID JAMAL MURRAY FINISH THIS?! 🤯 pic.twitter/0eafqIHN90— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 5, 2024 Simply put, the Wolves would rather have Murray make the decisions in those two-on-one scenarios than Jokic. Murray isn't a bad playmaker by any means, but he doesn't have Jokic's vision or manipulative creativity (because nobody does), nor does he have Jokic's short mid-range touch (because nobody does).Even when Murray was able to make the pocket pass and give Jokic those short rolls, the Wolves handled them about as well as possible. Jokic still hit a few of his patented push shots and found Gordon with a couple of lobs, but Gobert generally did a terrific job playing in between them, declining to commit in one direction or another until the last second. On a crucial late-game possession, Murray got two on the ball out of a DHO and hit Jokic on the roll. Gobert lunged out at him, but he kept his weight on his back foot, so when Jokic took the bait and threw the lob, Gobert was able to retreat and break it up.Consistently putting their best defensive rebounder in position to have to play the ball could've hurt the T-Wolves on their own glass. But thanks to Gobert's recovery instincts, and the alertness with which the team's weak-side defenders sank down to cover Gordon whenever Gobert stepped up, Minnesota conceded just three second-chance possessions to one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the league.In Game 2, with Gobert back in Minneapolis attending to the birth of his daughter, the Wolves had to adjust. They kept Towns on Jokic, but without Gobert's back-line help, they didn't feel quite as comfortable ceding the middle of the floor to Murray. They still did on some occasions, especially when they shifted McDaniels onto Gordon and could count on him to serve as the last line of defense.More often, though, they had Jokic's defender show help on Murray coming off screens and engaged a third defender on the back side of those actions. They dialed up the aggression and sprung more double- and triple- teams on both guys. The result, incredibly, was an even more dominant defensive showing, one in which they turned the Nuggets over 19 times and held them to their lowest single-game offensive rating (87.9) since January 2018. This, despite the fact that Denver snared 18 offensive boards in the contest.Part of the reason the shift in tactics worked so well is that after having the short roll denied in Game 1, and facing unyielding pressure, Murray was looking to get off the ball quickly and find the pocket the Timberwolves occasionally conceded in Game 2. That led him to force passes that the defense was sneakily waiting for, or fail to anticipate Minnesota's more aggressive nail help and kill his dribble before spotting the release valve.The Wolves also switched basically every off-ball action that didn't involve Towns or Mike Conley. And the physicality of their switches prevented the Nuggets from accessing their usual array of slips and backdoor cuts, or from getting the kind of separation they're accustomed to on pet plays like Rip DHOs for Murray.More than any team in the NBA, the Nuggets rely on cuts to get to the rim. They ranked fourth in rim frequency during the regular season despite ranking last in drives. But their rate of cuts stemming from off-ball actions has fallen from about 56 per 100 possessions during the regular season to under 48 in this series, and their scoring average on those possessions has tanked from 1.04 to 0.89, per a source with Second Spectrum access. The Wolves are jamming up those cuts and in the process exposing Denver's limitations as a dribble-drive team, especially with Murray hobbled. The Nuggets shot just 34% on drives in Games 1 and 2, with Murray going 4-for-17, per NBA Advanced Stats.This series isn't over, even if it feels that way. Denver will almost certainly shoot better than it has so far. This is one of the best mid-range scoring teams in the league, ranking third during the regular season at 47% on all non-rim 2-pointers. In this series so far, they're shooting 28% on those in-between shots – hitting 30% from floater range and 23% from long mid-range, per Cleaning the Glass. The Timberwolves' length makes them particularly good at challenging shots in that zone, but suppressing Denver's proficiency to this extent is not sustainable. Jokic will find his touch. With three days off before Game 3, perhaps Murray will improve physically and find his, too.The Nuggets could also probably stand to incorporate more inverted ball screens for Jokic, especially those that bring Conley into the action. They could work harder to get Conley switched onto Murray and then run their two-man game from there. (Murray has set just two ball screens for Jokic through two games.) They could also make better use of Gordon as a pin-in screener to punish Minnesota for ignoring him in the dunker spot. There are a ton of things they can do better.But the DPOY is about to re-enter the fray, and things aren't going to get any easier. This is a challenge unlike any the Nuggets have faced over their last two playoff runs. Time to see what they're made of.

One of the hardest things for an NBA team and coaching staff to do is stick with a tactical process when it yields a bad result. Over the course of this season, Coach of the Year Mark Daigneault and his precocious Oklahoma City Thunder have shown a lot of conviction in their principles and play style. But those convictions were tested in their Game 2 second-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks, and it'll be interesting to see if they adjust moving forward.The Thunder won Game 1 with an exaggerated defensive scheme that flooded the strong side and loaded up on Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, and the roll men on the other end of their of ball-screen actions. The intent was to limit what the Mavs' two best creators could do, send early low-man help to force dive men Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively to either finish through traffic or fall back on their underdeveloped short-roll playmaking, and live with the open threes they conceded to Dallas' role players as a result. It worked. The Mavs' offensive rating in the game was an even 100, their lowest mark of the playoffs so far and lower than all but five of their games during the regular season (excluding their last two, when they rested all their starters). They shot just 34% on that buffet of open threes, and committed 15 turnovers. A hobbled Doncic was limited to 6-of-19 shooting. Irving had more turnovers than assists. Gafford and Lively, who both shot over 74% from the field during the regular season, combined to go 6-for-15.In Game 2, that same overload defense was demolished by P.J. Washington, Josh Green, and Tim Hardaway Jr., who combined to shoot 12-of-20 from 3-point range. Doncic also rediscovered his mojo and hit five threes. Dallas slightly tweaked its weak-side spacing, cut down on its turnovers, and finished with a 122.7 offensive rating to even the series.The question now is whether the Thunder should actually change anything or stay the course. Because even in the loss, their scheme worked exactly as intended. Though Doncic got going, Irving finished with only nine points and used fewer true shooting possessions than Washington, Hardaway, and Derrick Jones Jr., which feels like a trade-off OKC can live with. Gafford had a bit more success in Game 2, but Lively continued to struggle on the short roll against the early tags, shooting 1-for-7.At the same time, there were probably a couple of spots in which the Thunder could've afforded to scale back their help. For example, did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander really need to make a full rotation off the strong-side corner (rather than a token stunt) against Irving's drive, pictured below, considering there were already two blue jerseys in the paint? ESPNThe Thunder climbed all the way back from 14 points down, but after Green canned that go-ahead three off an easy kickout from Irving, the Mavs never trailed again. OKC conceded a league-high 12.1 corner 3-point attempts per game this season. In Game 2, Dallas attempted 19. Where's the tipping point?That doesn't mean the Thunder will or should completely reorient their help principles. They do a lot of things that buck the unwritten rules of defense, and that largely works to their benefit. One such rule is: "Thou shalt not help off the strong-side corner," which is a rigidity OKC rightly rejects, even if it occasionally swings too far in the opposite direction. When it comes to defending the pick-and-roll, and specifically tagging the roll man, the Thunder are less concerned with weak side vs. strong side than they are with the number of offensive players on each side, and the shooting quality of those players.Take this possession from Game 1, for example: TNTThe Mavs ran a high Doncic-Gafford pick-and-roll on the play, with Gafford setting the screen all the way out at the logo. With Thunder backup center Jaylin Williams playing a high drop and meeting Doncic at the 3-point line, Gafford rolled behind him and caught Doncic's pass in stride. But Aaron Wiggins, pulling way over off of Jones Jr. in the strong-side corner, was already waiting in the lane.Cason Wallace was the weak-side low man, but he was the lone defender on that side and he was guarding Kyrie freaking Irving. Even with Doncic's left hand across his body, that skip to Irving is a pass Luka can make in his sleep, and it would've been incumbent on Wallace to recover back out after tagging Gafford. Instead, the Thunder still had Jalen Williams to zone up two mediocre shooters in Jones Jr. and Green.The Thunder have tagged from both sides on a lot of possessions in this series - such is their commitment to jamming up the Mavs' central pick-and-roll actions. That was inevitably going to lead to them getting burned on the second side at some point, and Daigneault and his staff had to know that. This team's identity is built on accepting - and winning - various tactical trade-offs.As I've written before, there's a kind of contradiction at the heart of the Thunder's unique roster build. They profile as a small team, because they exclusively play wings at power forward and start a center who, despite looking the part from a height perspective, weighs less than a lot of point guards. At the same time, they don't actually play any small players. Their guards are huge for their positions, and the shortest player in their rotation is 6-foot-4.While there are some well-documented consequences of that roster build, there are more benefits. We're getting a great illustration of one of them in this series, as their low men are tasked with so much heavy lifting on defense. Chet Holmgren's rim-protection has been tremendous, but OKC's "smalls" also deserve a lot of credit for executing a scheme that has Dallas shooting 48% inside the restricted area, by far the worst of any second-round team. One of the big drawbacks of playing an aggressive pick-and-roll coverage - whereby a team brings its big man up to blitz or show at the level of the screen - is that it requires smaller players to serve as the last line of defense, tasked with protecting the paint and cleaning the defensive glass on the back side. Even if a team has a big man who excels at guarding in space and disrupting ball-handlers' progress at the point of the screen, that coverage can be outdone by shoddy or ineffectual low-man work from small guards and wings. With a starting backcourt of the 6-foot-6 Gilgeous-Alexander and 6-foot-8 Josh Giddey, the tank-like Jalen Williams and Lu Dort on the wing, and guards like Wiggins (6-foot-11 wingspan), Wallace (6-foot-9 wingspan), and Isaiah Joe (6-foot-8 wingspan) off the bench, OKC doesn't really have that problem. Holmgren is an awesome drop defender, but when the Thunder are facing a dangerous ball-handler like Doncic or Irving, they can bring him up high - or just have him commit to the ball earlier when he's dropping back - and trust they have enough size, length, and smarts to hold down the fort behind him.In the third quarter of Game 1, during a crucial stretch that turned the contest's tide, Giddey and Gilgeous-Alexander stoned Gafford on the roll on back-to-back possessions. In the second half of Game 2, with OKC mounting a comeback, Lively found himself deterred by Wiggins and Wallace.The aggressive defensive scheme has as much to do with the Thunder's struggles on their own glass this year as Holmgren's slender build does. But they've actually rebounded pretty well so far in this series, and part of that owes to their willingness to completely ignore Dallas' role players on the perimeter. Look at this: ESPNOKC's been particularly dismissive of Dante Exum, despite the fact Exum shot 49% from deep during the regular season. Holmgren could've closed out to the corner on that play, but instead chose to turn his back to Exum and put a third body on Gafford under the basket. Exum missed, and the Thunder secured the rebound.As we saw in Game 2, the trade-offs aren't always going to work out in OKC's favor. But identities are forged through repetition and commitment to principles, especially when those principles are challenged. Few teams have crafted a more coherent identity than these Thunder. They've come too far to reverse course now.

When Shai Gilgeous-Alexander shook loose for 22 second-half points to help Oklahoma City claw out a momentous come-from-behind Game 4 win in Dallas