NBA Conference Finals Preview

 In case you were wondering, we're just going to skip over the Leafs games this weekend. There's enough doom and gloom articles much better written than I can  for you to find if you're interested in that. We've got maybe the most up in the air conference finals I can remember in the NBA. Any of these 4 teams could be the champion at the end of the season and I wouldn't be shocked. Now that the Leafs are out, I can focus fully on basketball and watch these series in their entireties! I am excited for it to start and have fully thought out my predictions: 

Timberwolves vs Thunder

I said it was a tossup, and I still think that, but my prediction at the end might ruffle some feathers. The Thunder are coming off a hard fought 7 game series against Jokic and the Nuggets that was capped off with the Thunder winning a blowout on Sunday. The Timberwolves are coming off their second straight 5 game series and have been resting for nearly a week now after disposing of the Curry-less Warriors on Wednesday. Normally I would say rest is a pretty significant advantage this deep in the playoffs, but the Thunder are a young springy team who hasn't shown signs of injury yet through the playoffs. The Thunder are a tough matchup for what the Wolves want to do. In the previous series, there wasn't really a go to guy that could guard Ant without taking away from offense at the other end. The Thunder have Lu Dort who will start on Ant and give him hell, but if that's not working they can go to Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, Jalen Williams or even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who are all great options. They have rim protection at the back line with Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren, unlike the past teams the Wolves went up against. All of this is focused on what the Thunder can do to slow down Ant, which they definitely do have, but I am more interested in how they can potentially shut down Julius Randle. We saw by the end of the Nuggets series Alex Caruso did an amazing job guarding a much bigger Jokic. Randle isn't close to the player Jokic is, but he's a similar style of player playing out of the post and looking to score through you or make the next pass. The Thunder forced Jokic into 4.4 turnovers per game in the last round, up from 3.3 per game in the regular season. Julius Randle isn't exactly known for his ball security, I think the piranha style of defense led by Alex Caruso being a menace guarding in the post is going to cause all sorts of issues for Julius Randle. Randle has been awesome in the playoffs for the Wolves so far, this will be a big test for him. If he's turning the ball over or succumbing to the pressure of the Thunder defense, this will be a short series. If he's making the right play and continuing to be an elite second option then the Wolves have a real shot.

I spoke a lot about the Thunder's ability to guard the Wolves, but the Wolves have similar matchup advantages against the Thunder. Jaden McDaniels is maybe the best player to throw at Shai in the league. I have faith that Shai is going to be good no matter what, he's likely the MVP of the league for a reason, but his job isn't going to be easy. Rudy Gobert still has claim to be the best rim protector in basketball and he'll force the Thunder to make tough decisions with their rotations. They can play Hartenstein and give someone for Rudy to help off of as a non shooter, or they can go smaller with Chet at the 5 and likely give up offensive rebounds. Rudy has notoriously not been able to punish his opponent on the offensive end for going small, but we saw in the Lakers series that might be behind him. The Thunder's supporting cast has also been shaky at best and was a large reason why that series went 7 despite the Thunder having a more talented team on paper. Ant is going to talk a lot of trash and try to disrupt JDub at every turn. If he can keep his composure and play smart basketball the Thunder should take care of business here, but that's a lot to bet on. Beyond this though, I expect Shai to hunt Mike Conley, Donte Divincenzo, Naz Reid and Rudy Gobert at every opportunity. These guys aren't just pushovers and they're going to give effort, but I'd be surprised if Shai doesn't have his way with them. The Thunder are going to have the luxury of digging deeper in their rotation for adjustments where the Wolves are pretty set with the 7 guys they have. Ant will be awesome but I think the Thunder have so much they can throw at Randle that it'll end up being a big series for the Wolves' role players. Whether or not they perform all series will be the difference. The media and social media is really high on the Timberwolves, but I think this is a really tough series for them and I bet it'll be surprisingly short. So short, I am expecting a surprise sweep. Come back to this post and call me a moron if I am wrong. 

Prediction: Thunder in 4

Pacers vs Knicks

I've loved watching each of these teams in the playoffs so much that I am almost sad one of them has to go home after this series. Both teams are coming off surprise upsets of the 1 and 2 seed, they each have a former prominent Raptor and they each have a superstar point guard running the show. The Pacers have the Canadian advantage with Andrew Nembhard and Benedict Mathurin so I will start with them. I heard a podcast say that the Pacers are the biggest text the Knicks defense will face, even larger than Boston because of their ball movement and pace, and I couldn't agree more. There's no good solution for Tyrese Haliburton who might have claim to best passer in basketball right now. He's going to relentlessly hunt down Brunson and KAT on switches and I expect those possessions to result in basically whatever the Pacers want. The Pacers have spacing all over the floor and the benefit of a Myles Turner is you can keep spacing on the floor without your rim protection suffering. The Knicks have the 1 on 1 defenders to deal with that, but Bridges will need to fight over a ton of screens to avoid the deathly matchups I mentioned earlier. OG Anunoby is maybe the best defender in the world, and perfectly built to take on Siakam. Spicy P will still get his in the post against switches and is still going to be a menace running the floor, but in the halfcourt I expect OG to give him problems which could help drag the series out longer. Beyond that, the Pacers just have a bunch of role players who can hit an open shot and defend like hell. I've said countless times on here that Andrew Nembhard is a baller who plays even better when the lights get brighter. I expect Brunson to spend some time hiding on Nembhard so it will be a big series for him to continue taking what's there for him. The Pacers run and are active for entire games. There hasn't been a team who could catch up to their energy level yet, but the Knicks do have the long rangey guys to fit that bill.  

The Knicks offer matchup nightmares the other way for the Pacers as well. We just saw that despite the series win, Donovan Mitchell got basically whatever he wanted as a guard getting downhill against the Pacers. I'd argue that Brunson is even better at that despite having less bounce and if the last series is any indication, Brunson is going to have a big series. I am super intrigued by the fact that Brunson went up against Ausar Thompson, then Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, 3 of the best guard defenders in the world, and came out of it averaging 28.8/7.7/3.9 while hitting clutch shots and holding his own on defense. The Pacers have nobody of that caliber on defense, although Nembhard and Nesmith are good on that end. KAT has been up and down through the playoffs but he poses a threat the Pacers haven't had to deal with in the playoffs yet being a stretch center. It will be interesting to see if the Pacers start with Turner on KAT or if they have Siakam try to chase him around while Turner roves off of Josh Hart. The other guys on the Knicks are a total role of the dice. There will be an OG Anunoby offensive game in this series and a Mikal Bridges game too, but how many will be the question. I think the Knicks have more to throw at the Pacers defensively, but the Pacers have more to throw at the Knicks offensively creating a series where I have absolutely no idea who is going to win. Since the Pacers have more Canadians my heart is telling me to go with them and so I will cautiously do just that. I can't wait to see this one though. 

Prediction: Pacers in 7

And that's that! A Pacers Thunder final would be pretty crazy, is that the smallest market NBA finals ever? I hope it happens.