The Suns and the Wolves are just hours away from their first round matchup, and we’re in for a treat!

High volume three point shooting, incredible shot making, and thunderous slams, these are the types of plays we’re about to see when you have Booker, Beal, KD, Edwards, and KAT battling in the first round.

But beyond those highlights, what we want to see are high-level minds trying to outplay the other for the right to advance.

Let’s take a quick look into the season numbers and keys for both teams to get to the second round.

Tale of the Tape

Phoenix Suns season averages:
ORTG: 117.6 (10th)
DRTG: 114.5 (13th)
NETRTG: 3.1 (9th)

Minnesota Timberwolves season averages:
OTRG: 115.6 (16th)
DRTG: 109 (1st)
NETRTG: 6.6 (3rd)

The Phoenix Suns swept the season series against the Wolves this year and have done so by an impressive total point differential of 47 points in their 3 games.

For the Wolves, they started their season on a stronger note, winning 8 of their first 10 games. It was the typical strong start by a team that got bounced early from playoff contention in the prior season.

Although they lost to the Suns in all their regular season matchups, the fact of the matter is that they won 7 more games compared to Phoenix.

Anthony Edwards quickly ascended as one of the best two-guards in the league ending the season with career-highs in points (25.9 ppg) and assists (5.1 apg) while having the best defensive rating of a guard.

Keys for both teams:

In a grueling 7-game series, the team who makes the adjustments quickly has the better chances of winning the round. Offense is going to be a key, but the defense will most likely be the theme of this series.

For the Wolves

The key is stopping the Big 3 which is of course, easier said than done.

The Wolves have defended Devin Booker fairly well in their last two matchups with Booker only averaging 18 points on 31.2 field goal shooting and 28.7 3PT%. However, Booker makes his impact in the game with his passing, making smart decisions like the play you’ll see below.

Still, we cannot discredit the Timberwolves’ ability to defend, they have the #1 defensive rating for a reason. In the video below, Booker ran the same play, but this time, Gobert did not over help while Reid just slightly helps to allow Rudy to recover. This action forced Booker to take the ball all the way and ended up attempting a difficult shot.

It will be important as well for Minnesota for their bigs like Towns and Gobert to not be on an island or to be able to keep up to par with mismatches. Kevin Durant loves hunting mismatches, mostly against bigs when he can just do a dribble pull-up in the mid range. In the next video, we see Town doing just enough to stay with Durant and force the miss.

Ultimately, a chunk of Minnesota’s chances depends on how well they defend Phoenix’s Big 3 as the trio can make their impact in more ways than one. Coach Finch and Co needs every trick in the book for this to happen.

For the Suns

Their focus should be continuing what they have done in the last three games against the #3 seed.

Anthony Edwards should still be the main focus, while also trying to limit Gobert’s impact in rebounding and KAT’s abilities to shoot or take the ball inside.

In the three games against the Suns, Anthony Edwards only averaged 14.3 points on a 31% shooting clip, Towns at 17.5 points and Gobert being limited to only 9.7 points and 7 rebs.

The Suns cannot hope that Edwards is going to shoot that way in a long series, they have to think that at some point, the young superstar is going to get his.

So far, though, the Suns really held it against Edwards, making life difficult and they have made sure that there’s someone there to at least bother him. In the play below, Grayson Allen let Edwards go to his left and use his off hand, and Beal and KD was right there to bother him enough before he takes off resulting in a Wolves turnover.

Limiting Edwards will not be an easy feat. But it could certainly help their chances if they do. But Edwards is just one part of the issue that needs solving, and he’s next.

Jusuf Nurkić will have to play his best defense and rebounding in his career against the towering Rudy Gobert. So far in their three matchups, Nurkic have out-rebounded Gobert by only a total of 4 and that needs to continue.

In this season, we have seen how Nurkic fair against top centers, most notably against Jokic. We’ve seen him become a monster in rebounding the ball recording 5 games with 20 or more rebounds.

To add to the rebounding, it will certainly help the Suns to not put Eubanks on the floor when Rudy is. In their last matchup, Rudy became an issue grabbing offensive rebounds, getting into the line and overall scoring 15 points in that 3rd quarter. If the Suns are to win this series, they cannot allow Rudy Gobert to beat them.

Lastly, KAT is one of the most versatile big man in the league. In his two games against the Suns, he averaged 17.5 ppg and shot 47.7 in the field, looks decent but he only shot 12.5% from three in those 3 games as missed the one game due to a knee injury that kept him sidelined for a month.

Like Edwards, the Suns cannot afford to take the chance that KAT will continue to shoot poorly and have to take advantage on maybe having to force him to defend more knowing that he just came back from a knee injury and is still probably rusty.

Just as mentioned earlier, KD loves hunting mismatches, and this is the matchup that he can take advantage of.

The Suns can as well pressure Towns to force him to throw away the ball. KAT averages almost 3 turnovers this season, the second highest in their team behind Edwards.

On this play, you can see that needlessly passed the ball behind his back causing the ball to slip out of Edwards’ hand. He kind of traveled too before the pass.

There is no question that the Suns are legitimately good and can beat any team in the playoffs. They just have to stick to their gameplan, and be disciplined.

Prediction:

The Minnesota Timberwolves have shown the league what they can do with Anthony Edwards leading the way and Towns as his co-star, and coach Finch has done a great job engineering and driving his team to the top three, however, I believe the Suns just have a bit more in terms of offensive power, experience, and just enough defensive ability to get past the first round and win in 6 games.

For the other things that we want to see the Suns do in the playoffs including limiting turnovers and increasing bench production, check out this link for my debut story.