{"id":140608,"date":"2025-05-21T06:35:49","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=140608"},"modified":"2025-05-21T06:35:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:35:49","slug":"four-okc-adjustments-after-game-1-timberwolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/05\/21\/four-okc-adjustments-after-game-1-timberwolves\/","title":{"rendered":"Four OKC Adjustments to Make After Game 1 vs Timberwolves"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a massive Game 7 victory over the Denver Nuggets<\/a>, the Oklahoma City Thunder charge forward. This time, the young Thunder is dealing with another hungry team – the Minnesota Timberwolves. With Game 1 in the books, OKC seeks to stay in the driver’s seat in the Western Conference Finals. After all, the last time OKC won a Game 1 this postseason, it swept the Memphis Grizzlies in Round 1.<\/p>\n

Four OKC Adjustments to Make After Game 1 vs Timberwolves<\/h2>\n

OKC was feeling its rust and fatigue<\/a> from the Denver series and struggled to start strong. Minnesota, on the other hand, was fresh off a week’s rest and was able to come off with a high energy. The game was a rollercoaster at first. With nine lead changes and six ties<\/a>, it was setting up to be a finish down to the wire. But like many other Oklahoma City game in the 2024-25 season, OKC took advantage of the third quarter and kept stacking to the finish.<\/p>\n

This win for OKC is a great start. This is, after all, their first WCF win since May 24, 2016, and a lot has changed for the team ever since. Despite winning Game 1 handily<\/a>, a few OKC adjustments should do the trick for the Thunder for the rest of the WCF vs the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n

Dominate the Paint<\/h3>\n

To start this series, OKC is outscoring the Wolves 54-20 in the paint<\/a>. That is a whopping difference considering that Minnesota has three paint-dominant bigs in Julius Randle<\/a>, Rudy Gobert<\/a>, and Naz Reid<\/a>. The Thunder were cutting well and finding opportunities, even after a sluggish first half. It cannot be denied that the presence of alternating bigs in Chet Holmgren<\/a> and Isaiah Hartenstein<\/a> by playing them less minutes together has helped a lot.<\/p>\n

However, dominating the paint isn’t all about scoring. It’s all about defense too, and the Thunder lived up to its reputation of having the best defense in the league both in the regular season and the playoffs. Clogging the paint is a great tactic, but now that it has shown its worthiness in Game 1, expect Minnesota to make key adjustments to it.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Minnesota by the numbers:
36 misses threes
0 fast break points
19 turnovers
0 Ant Edwards 4th quarter points
20 points in the paint (54 for OKC)<\/p>\n

— Caysen Brownwolf (@CaysenBrownwolf) May 21, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n