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00:00How's it going, y'all?
00:02It's Dalton Trigg, Editor-in-Chief at DallasBasketball.com.
00:05We are getting very close to the Dallas Mavericks tipping off the Western
00:09Conference Finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
00:12It'll be the Dallas Mavericks' second Western Conference Finals in three years.
00:17They got there by defeating the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, and
00:21the Timberwolves are coming off a thrilling seven-game series where they
00:25knocked off the defending champion, Denver Nuggets.
00:28So, it's gonna be a good one.
00:30It's a matchup of two high-level defenses.
00:34The Mavs, despite being a number five seed in the West,
00:38that label isn't exactly correct for them.
00:41Because if you go back and look to how they've performed since making trades for
00:47Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington at this season's trade deadline.
00:51If you go back to that point through the end of the regular season,
00:54no other team won as many games as the Dallas Mavericks did,
00:59except for the Boston Celtics.
01:01So, you have a team that was essentially the second best team in the NBA
01:06in the second half of the season that just made up for
01:11what they didn't have before the trade deadline.
01:14And they ended up as the five seed, and they beat the Clippers in six.
01:17They beat OKC in six, and now they will face the Minnesota Timberwolves.
01:22And look, when you have Luka Doncic on your team,
01:25when you have Kyrie Irving on your team, when you have the depth and
01:29the defensive grit that this team now has,
01:32I don't think they can be counted out against anybody.
01:35They have the real look and feel of a title contender.
01:39And Anthony Edwards is amazing.
01:41Rudy Gobert is the defensive player of the year.
01:44Jada McDaniels made all NBA, I think it was second team defensive for
01:50him on Tuesday, so they have a lot of good pieces.
01:54Carl Anthony Towns, can't forget about him.
01:57But the Mavs star power is greater than the Timberwolves star power.
02:03And this series is gonna come down to the swing pieces,
02:06which are the role players.
02:09Can PJ Washington have as hot of a series as he did against OKC?
02:13He was arguably the Mavs' first, and if not first,
02:18definitely second best player in that series.
02:21He carried the Mavs, and can he do it again?
02:25Can Daniel Gafford and the rookie big man, Derek Lively,
02:30who had an outstanding plus minus of 71 against OKC.
02:36The Mavs were plus 71 with him on the court, and
02:38minus 71 with him off the court in that OKC series.
02:42Can those two big men have the same impact against the team
02:49that has some really, really stellar big men in Gobert,
02:54Katt, and even Nas Reed coming off the bench?
02:57Because OKC wasn't that big, they didn't have that many weapons
03:02in the front court to throw against Gafford and Lively.
03:05So it'll be interesting to see.
03:07Obviously, the Mavs have a shot if Luka and Kyrie are both healthy,
03:13which they seem to be.
03:14Luka's been battling that nagging knee sprain since the first
03:20round against the Clippers in game three, I believe, is when he sprained that knee.
03:25But hey, in games five and six against OKC, he looked like the Luka Doncic
03:31that finished third in MVP voting.
03:34And guess what?
03:35He is the only of the three finalists for MVP that's still in the playoff.
03:39So the Mavs, they have a great shot.
03:42The national media, if you ask them, they don't have as much of a great shot
03:47because the Athletic put out a piece asking an NBA scout, a coach,
03:53and an executive how he thought the series would go.
03:56Every one of them picked the Timberwolves in six.
03:59ESPN put out their predictions piece where they asked 15 analysts
04:05what they thought was going to happen in the series.
04:08Nine of them picked the Minnesota Timberwolves.
04:11Six of them picked the Mavericks, which was kind of surprising to me,
04:14given how those things usually go over ESPN.
04:17So, but overall, the Mavs are considered underdogs in this series.
04:23And like I said, given how they finished out the regular season,
04:26given how they've played since that trade deadline,
04:29having the number one defense in the final 20 plus games,
04:33having the second-best record next to the Boston Celtics,
04:38and just dominating teams with their defense, despite Luka being hobbled,
04:43I feel like the Mavericks are being overlooked a little bit
04:47as we head into this Western Conference Finals.
04:49This is going to be a different feel for Luka Doncic and the Mavericks
04:54in these Western Conference Finals than it was in 2022 when the team
05:00that was starting Dwight Powell at center was facing a Golden State Warriors team
05:04that had ample experience, and they were going for their fourth title in eight years.
05:10This is a different animal against the Timberwolves, very talented team.
05:13They're very capable of making it to the NBA Finals,
05:16but they just don't have the experience this Mavericks team does.
05:20And we'll see how big of a factor that plays in the Western Conference Finals.
05:24Again, I'm Dalton Trigg, Editor-in-Chief at dowsbasketball.com.
05:27Stay tuned to the site for extensive pre-game and post-game coverage,
05:32including our Mav Step Back podcast.