2025 WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: #1 Oklahoma City Thunder vs #6 Minnesota Timberwolves (OKC leads 3-1)

[SpurNani]

That was the best shooting game I've seen OKC play all season. If they hit their shots like that against Denver, that would've been a 5 game series as well.

Ant needs a legit starting PG next to him next season. Finch needs to play the younger talent on that team much more next season. Shannon looks like a guy and Dillingham at least has the talent to be a change of pace backup PG.

[Duffman100]

Watched the game recap on YouTube so my analysis may be wrong.

But man, minny needs Gobert to do so much more. Way too many offensive rebounds in his area, 1 block shot, just not enough impact.

You can see teammates visibly getting frustrated with him. Gobert at max effort should easily have 15 rebounds.

[Upperclass]

Finch should get a lot of blame. The G.M. drafted Dillingham and Shannon Jr. and Finch barely played them all season. Both are future starters and should be helping right now. Huge missed opportunity to develop them this season. Connelly needs to move on from Conley and force his hand by not signing a different vet. Conley does absolutely nothing on offense and is barely half the defender he used to be. He''s completely washed and shouldn't be starting at this point and this Finch's fault.

Connolly and the front office ruined those picks. Neither is an NBA rotation player nonetheless a starter. Dillingham has no usable NBA skills as his scoring will be negated by his defense every single moment on the floor.. Shannon is an energy guy only. Also a very porous defender.

[WestbrookGOATed]

Sure thing bud, I'll be back to this comment at about 10pm.

I have a feeling you will not be posting after the game wolves in 6

And so?

I was just gonna be nice and leave him alone

[Shaka_Zulu]

I thought MIN would put up more of a fight. Maybe they do and take game 5.

Minnesota played pretty well. Yes they had turnovers and gave up too many offensively rebounds, but they battled the hell out of this game.

OKC are just a better team and SGA is better than ANT.

It's really this simple. Some games don't need to be complicated with over analysis.

Their best guys showed out, our 2 didn't, rest of the Wolves team were exemplary. Battled their asses out. It was very physical and even game throughout with each time handling the punches handled out. OKCs just landed the last critical one.

[WestbrookGOATed]

This is historically terrible basketball

Refs letting OKC straight up mug people with zero consequences, how is this basketball.

Says the Sonics fan. Enjoy!

[Shaka_Zulu]

I thought MIN would put up more of a fight. Maybe they do and take game 5.

Don't think you watched the game if this is your takeaway.

Minnesota threw one of its best punches tonight. Thunder just threw a counterpunch basically every time. Besides the intentional fouling, Thunder took only 2 free throws the entire second half. Jumpshot after jumpshot, it was elite shotmaking.

Exactly, no one who watched this game should say Wolves didn't fight. It's disrespectful to Naw, Donte, Jaden, Rudy, TS jr, Naz etc.



Wolves team isn't just Ant and Randle, who both came up short.

[Wingy]

It's gonna be a long Summer on social media lol.

Read on Twitter

Never got into the twitter.

I know that’s all a joke, but I did see Shai with a nice turnaround jumper from the elbow last night. Shades of MJ/Kobe in that particular move. Thought that was cool to see as I don’t remember last time I saw that shot taken like that when it used to be a nightly ritual.

[Shaka_Zulu]

Watched the game recap on YouTube so my analysis may be wrong.

But man, minny needs Gobert to do so much more. Way too many offensive rebounds in his area, 1 block shot, just not enough impact.

You can see teammates visibly getting frustrated with him. Gobert at max effort should easily have 15 rebounds.

Watch the full games. Because it's the reverse. Rudy needs HELP rebounding, he has 2-3 guys on him alot down low, so his teammates needs to cover other areas for long rebounds.


Or even worse, alot of the time Rudy plays perfect defence from perimeter to the basket on Shai or Jdub, forces them to miss, but who is there to rebound it? Nothing but OKC players. No other Wolves player.


Same when he overhelps someone mismatched, that secondary long rebound should be fought by another Wolves player.


Ant is litterally only other Wolves player who rebounds reasonably well.



Rudy has terrible hands handling low balls or loose balls up high, but he is doing ALOT out there that gets missed unless you watch the full games. It's easy to miss out on it.


Randle and Naz are busters down low, they never there to help rebound and act like they full time perimeter players. While OKC guards and small wings get to every offense rebound.

[sammo89]

OKC are nice, but they are an SGA injury away from disaster. They need to spend the motherload looking for a veteran guard who can plug that gap once he's inevitably out for an extended period. Could a Harden trade work? Would he accept a sixth man role now that his window is closing?

The Chicago Bulls were a Michael Jordan injury away from disaster.

It's almost as if every team is facing down a disaster if their franchise player gets injured.

My point is that OKC might be in a unique position where they can actually mitigate their key man risk with all their picks, cap space and the Harden situation

[Himothy Duncan]

Did Ant go out like a sucka last night? I think so. Should have shot a lot more.

[Dadouv47]

Watched the game recap on YouTube so my analysis may be wrong.

But man, minny needs Gobert to do so much more. Way too many offensive rebounds in his area, 1 block shot, just not enough impact.

You can see teammates visibly getting frustrated with him. Gobert at max effort should easily have 15 rebounds.

Watch the full games. Because it's the reverse. Rudy needs HELP rebounding, he has 2-3 guys on him alot down low, so his teammates needs to cover other areas for long rebounds.


Or even worse, alot of the time Rudy plays perfect defence from perimeter to the basket on Shai or Jdub, forces them to miss, but who is there to rebound it? Nothing but OKC players. No other Wolves player.


Same when he overhelps someone mismatched, that secondary long rebound should be fought by another Wolves player.


Ant is litterally only other Wolves player who rebounds reasonably well.



Rudy has terrible hands handling low balls or loose balls up high, but he is doing ALOT out there that gets missed unless you watch the full games. It's easy to miss out on it.


Randle and Naz are busters down low, they never there to help rebound and act like they full time perimeter players. While OKC guards and small wings get to every offense rebound.

agree.

if I have learned anything from this series from Wolves side is that Gobert is the real deal and his impact is wayyyy underrated. He's a beast and a huge reason why this was close game yesterday. I really hate Gobert for some of *** off the floor but he's really really good at what he does.

[Duffman100]

Watched the game recap on YouTube so my analysis may be wrong.

But man, minny needs Gobert to do so much more. Way too many offensive rebounds in his area, 1 block shot, just not enough impact.

You can see teammates visibly getting frustrated with him. Gobert at max effort should easily have 15 rebounds.

Watch the full games. Because it's the reverse. Rudy needs HELP rebounding, he has 2-3 guys on him alot down low, so his teammates needs to cover other areas for long rebounds.


Or even worse, alot of the time Rudy plays perfect defence from perimeter to the basket on Shai or Jdub, forces them to miss, but who is there to rebound it? Nothing but OKC players. No other Wolves player.


Same when he overhelps someone mismatched, that secondary long rebound should be fought by another Wolves player.


Ant is litterally only other Wolves player who rebounds reasonably well.



Rudy has terrible hands handling low balls or loose balls up high, but he is doing ALOT out there that gets missed unless you watch the full games. It's easy to miss out on it.


Randle and Naz are busters down low, they never there to help rebound and act like they full time perimeter players. While OKC guards and small wings get to every offense rebound.

agree.

if I have learned anything from this series from Wolves side is that Gobert is the real deal and his impact is wayyyy underrated. He's a beast and a huge reason why this was close game yesterday. I really hate Gobert for some of *** off the floor but he's really really good at what he does.

Nice thanks yall. Good to know.

[dakomish23]

I thought MIN would put up more of a fight. Maybe they do and take game 5.

Don't think you watched the game if this is your takeaway.

Minnesota threw one of its best punches tonight. Thunder just threw a counterpunch basically every time. Besides the intentional fouling, Thunder took only 2 free throws the entire second half. Jumpshot after jumpshot, it was elite shotmaking.

The series dude. The series.

[lethalizer]

I thought MIN would put up more of a fight. Maybe they do and take game 5.

Don't think you watched the game if this is your takeaway.

Minnesota threw one of its best punches tonight. Thunder just threw a counterpunch basically every time. Besides the intentional fouling, Thunder took only 2 free throws the entire second half. Jumpshot after jumpshot, it was elite shotmaking.

The series dude. The series.

I mean, they blew us out by 40+ last game, and were basically a couple of plays away from tying the series.

Winning in OKC ain't an easy task. Only Nuggets have done this during this playoff run and that basically took a miraculous ending to pull off.

There is a talent gap between these two teams. I think Minnesota put up a hell of a fight even if you change it from "this game" to "series".

[MikRay]

Ant seems to disappear in big moments a lot

[shi-woo]

I remember looking at the boxscore with 4 mins left in the half and seeing Ant only put up 1 shot. Couldn't watch the 1s half, but man that had to be some stellar trapping and defense for that to happen. He needed to play better. He came alive a little at the end, but it was too little too late. I didn't even notice Randle once in the 2nd half.

NAW was obviously the standout player, dude was just hitting everything and playing with major heart.

Wolves defense was pretty mediocre in the 4th. Williams had a great game, don't get me wrong, but the way they were guarding SGA at time made his day too easy. Credit for making the shots, but my god did MIN just ignore him on a lot of possessions. It's what cost them the game in my opinion.

As another poster stated, this team needs prime Mike Conley, not old man Mike. This team needs someone other than Ant that can make a play off the bounce from the guard spot to alleviate pressure similar to how Jrue/Nem do it for White/Hali. Mike just can't break dudes down anymore, rushes at the rim, and can get abused on D. Hopefully Rob can come in an help in that regard, or they can find another guy to fill that role.

I don't really like the aesthetic of the modern scoring guard, so I don't have much to say about SGA. He's a beast, and incredible in the midrange, but between him and a bunch of other guys this playoffs, I'm really starting to hate the forearm pushoff, and think it needs to start being a automatic offensive foul. I don't understand how it's legal to literally just punch a dude in the chest and send him staggering 5 feet backwards, but a big man doing the same with his should to create 1-2 ft of space is almost always an auto-offensive foul call. I want to like these new age guards, but their games just have too much sleeziness in them these days between that, foul baiting, flopping, and 3pnt chucking...

[Wolfgang630]

Next game will be a blowout for sure

[bbms]

the thunder just won a game where the opposing bench scored 64 on almost perfect shooting including 12/20 from three.

yeah. i'm not scared about anything anymore. before the season start i didn't want the thunder to repeat that scheme of giving away the corner three that worked vs denver's jokic offense but i didn't think it's necessary vs the timberwolves since ant is not that huge of a threat.

they did it anyway. defense could be more efficient imo. but it's sufficient since, differently from the nuggets series, thunder out executes timberwolves.

[KP Duty]

Minny's 3's kept them in this one. I'm thinking they battle again in OKC.