I wouldn't put Gordon over Ant (too quickly) and leave Jokic with Rudy, if you put him over Towns, wouldn't this take him away from the paint?PistolPeteJR wrote:shrink wrote:I always thought it’s Minny, because they are best at negating the things at negating DEN’s match up advantages.
MIN plays Towns on Jokic. Nobody stops Jokic, but Towns length helps reduce his passing ability, and makes Jokic more of a scorer. That allows Gobert to protect the paint while he guards Aaron Gordon. For most teams, that means if they use their PF and C this way, Porter has a big size advantage on his defender. The Wolves though are loaded with quality players 6-9 or taller, with Jaden McDaniels, Naz, and Kyle Anderson. In fact, MIN likely has the size advantage in the match up, because DEN’s bench bigs aren’t as deep as MIN.
Next, Jamal Murray is an under-rated player finally getting his due, and a lot of that credit goes to receiving great passes from Jokic. But MIN is showing that with defenders like McDaniels and Ant (and Nickiel Alexander-Walker), they can really limit perimeter scorers, like Devin Booker.
On the other hand, how does DEN handle Ant? They don’t have Brown this year, and the only player that could maybe defend him is Gordon. However, Gordon is the ONLY option they have to defend Towns size and scoring ability. Towns shoots over smaller guys, and drive past bigger, slower defenders.
I’m not saying MIN is better than DEN, and they should be favored. I am saying that MIN’s team composition (both built by Tim Connelly) create a lot of match up issues for the Nuggets. I wonder if Connelly realized that for the MIN to have high level success, he needed to build a team that could match up with with DEN, and that influenced him to pay such a high price to acquire Gobert?
I hear what you’re saying about Minny and largely agree. But I wouldn’t put Gordon on Towns if I’m Malone.
Gordon on Ant
KCP on McDaniels
Murray on Conley
Jokic on Towns
Porter Jr on Gobert
I’m not 100% sold on this but I would start with this. Letting Ant go rampant off the bat is a bigger disaster.
KCP...Ant
Gordon..Towns
Murray..Conley
Porter.. McDaniels
Jokic...Gobert