Three Things I'm Watching in the Western Conference Finals

Hit the jump for the WCF edition of Three Things, starring Anthony Edwards, the Thunder looking themselves in the mirror, and the bench units.

Anthony Edwards, through the gauntlet

Edwards has spent some time being defended by some pretty good defenders in these playoffs. But he's also spent a bunch of time being defended by some really bad ones. His two most common defenders have been Dorian Finney-Smith and Gary Payton II, but after that, it's been a slew of negative defenders outside of a handful of possessions here and there.

In other words, Edwards is about to be in for quite the change.

He is almost surely going to spend the significant majority of his time on the court defended by Lu Dort. In the regular season, Dort defended him on 144 halfcourt possessions. The next-closest player (Jalen Williams) did so on 29. And that is going to be both annoying as hell and incredibly difficult to deal with.

Dort is one of the rare wing defenders in the league on whom Edwards will not have a significant size and strength advantage. He has the foot speed and quickness to stick with Edwards on the drive. He has great hands. He's able to be physical while mostly avoiding foul trouble. He's as good of a wing defender as we have in the league.

And when Edwards gets a break from Dort... he's gonna have to deal with Alex Caruso, who is somehow an even better defender than Dort. He doesn't have the same size or bulk, but he is somehow just as strong. He somehow has even better feet and he somehow has even quicker hands.

And when Edwards gets a break from Dort and Caruso... he's gonna have to deal with either Cason Wallace or Jalen Williams, who each present challenges of their own. Wallace is basically mini-Caruso, who is not quite on the same level as the vet just yet because he hasn't had the requisite time in the league to pick up the tricks of the trade. And Williams has the size and so so so so so much length to bother just about anybody.

I want to be clear: Edwards is capable of absolutely smoking all of these guys. He is an elite, three-level scorer. He is capable of getting any shot he wants at just about any time almost regardless of who is in front of him. But he has to be as good as he ever has been in this series, both in terms of decision-making and execution.

The postseason so far has tested his decision-making, and he has aced that test. But Oklahoma City tests you far more than any other team, and is able to take advantage of mistakes at a high far higher than any other team. If you hesitate even a little, or if you give the Thunder even an inch, you are dead. And they will just keep coming and coming with different looks and swarming you with bodies and limbs until you break. But Edwards, in this series, absolutely cannot break.

OKC's offense, zoned out

There's already been a lot of talk in advance of this series that, because the Nuggets forced the Thunder to struggle in the halfcourt, and because the Timberwolves have a better defense than the Nuggets, the Thunder are likely to struggle in the halfcourt in this series. And that might indeed happen. But I do think it's important to note that it's not quite that simple.

Denver had a fantastic scheme and executed it as a high level. That scheme included a ton of zone defense: The Nuggets played 208 possessions of zone defense in the series, according to Second Spectrum. And it worked really, really well.

Minnesota's base defensive scheme is not a zone. In fact, the Wolves played zone this season at a bottom-10 rate in the NBA. They are a Rudy Gobert team, and accordingly they are one of the heaviest drop coverage teams in the NBA. They're not always in a deep drop, and Gobert is better these days at switching than he used to be, but that's still the scheme more often than not.

And that's not necessarily an ideal defense to play against the Thunder. Among the 31 players who saw at least 500 possessions of drop coverage against their ball screens during the regular season, only one (Tyrese Haliburton) generated more points per possession directly out of those pick and rolls than did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He is uniquely able to succeed from the areas of the floor to which drop coverage sends ball-handlers, but he's also able to still get to the areas of the floor that drop coverage tries to prevent ball-handlers from accessing in the first place. If the Wolves come out in the drop, it won't be long before Shai tears it apart.

They could, of course, then try to switch and make SGA and J-Dub and everyone else attack their bigs one on one in space. Gobert held up much better in switches than was reasonable to expect — especially in the first round against Luka Doncic and LeBron James. SGA is obviously a little bit different, and he's much more likely to use his space as a runway to drive than to work himself into a stepback jumper. How Gobert and Naz Reid and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Julius Randle, handle that responsibility is going to be huge as well.

If all that fails, that's where the zone comes in.

Minnesota's 158 zone possessions during the regular season were fewer than the Nuggets played in just seven games against OKC. Granted, a bunch of those zone possessions came in two games against the Thunder, when the two teams played a home-and-home back-to-back in February. But all of those zone possessions were concentrated in back-to-back games where the Wolves didn't have Rudy Gobert or Julius Randle. Jaylen Clark started both games. Terrence Shannon Jr. and Rob Dillingham got a ton of minutes. It played a huge role in Minnesota's massive comeback in the second of those two games, and Mark Daigneault after the game admitted that it bothered his team.

So, even though Minnesota barely played zone during the regular season and has essentially not played it at all (three possessions) during the playoffs, it's reasonable to expect to see more of it here. And that's where we need to see if the Thunder have better answers than they did against the Nuggets. Because if the Wolves do go zone, their personnel means they should be able to execute it at an even higher level than did Denver. Whether that actually bears out, we'll see, but in theory, it could be even more challenging to crack Minnesota's zone. And OKC is going to need to find ways to get inside the zone more often than it did in the previous series.

The benches, dealing wild cards

Both of these teams bring really impactful players off the bench, and those players seem likely to have outsized importance in this series due to the matchups.

For Minnesota, it might have to be a big series for both Naz Reid and one or Donte DiVincenzo and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. The Timberwolves' base defense, as mentioned, is not one that is necessarily designed to give the Thunder as much trouble as the Nuggets did in the last series. If Chris Finch decides they need to throw another look out there, Reid suddenly becomes extremely important. If the Wolves are struggling to access the paint — as everyone does against the Thunder — and need to get more shooting on the floor, Reid again becomes extremely important. If Mike Conley is getting hunted by OKC's guard-guard screens and becomes unplayable in a way he hasn't been so far this postseason, then Donte or NAW is going to have to step in. And if Conley isn't hitting his shots, then Donte or NAW is going to have to step in.

For OKC, we know what they're getting from Caruso and Wallace: absolutely smothering defense, timely cuts, capable shooting. We've seen through these playoffs that Mark Daigneault is not afraid to go to one or both of them in place of Dort or Isaiah Hartenstein or even Chet Holmgren for important stretches of the game. The Thunder will get those same things from Aaron Wiggins, and they know they can turn to Jaylin Williams for stretches of physical defense, which could be useful against Julius Randle.

All of these guys are going to have a massive impact on the series.

For discussion of all this and much, much more, check out the latest episode of the Double Dribble podcast with Matt Moore.