Minnesota Starting Lineup for Round 1 Matchup vs Portland
PG: Monta Ellis
SG: Kyle Korver
SF: LeBron James
PF: Serge Ibaka
C: DeAndre Jordan
The gameplan for the Timberwolves is to force Portland to operate in half-court offense. We will accomplish this by only sending one man to crash the offensive glass (Jordan, Davis, Ibaka) and allow the other four players on the court to drop back in defensive transition. Forcing Portland to play in the half-court will inhibit their overall offense due to their lack of a natural facilitator. Other than Kirilenko, every one of Portland's starters is a high-usage offensive scorer. Riah has pegged Carmelo as the distributor "when he is double-teamed" which means Jennings and Johnson will be standing and waiting for a potential pass to come their way and Bynum will be under the hoop doing the same. Fortunately, I feel confident in LeBron and Battier giving Carmelo a tough effort defensively throughout the series and a double team won't be necessary. This also means that Carmelo's outlets will be covered by Monta, Korver, and Bradley waiting to pick passing lanes and start fast break offense. I envision Portland's offense will be forced into Carmelo-iso-ball which will be overall ineffective to defeat us.
Offensively, I expect the Timberwolves to feature plenty of transitional offense from forced turnovers and missed shots. James can get to the rim at will, Ellis can find seams in the transition-D, and Korver, Battier, Bradley, and Chalmers can run to their spots on the three point line to knock down momentum changing treys. In a half-court set, LeBron or Ellis will be the primary ball-handler. We have spot up shooters, shooters that can come off of screens, pick-and-roll/lob/pop combinations, and we have LeBron James who can instantly create his own offense.
In summation, I think that Minnesota's attention to defense and gameplan to prevent transition baskets will force Portland into a low shooting percentage and inefficient offense. This plays directly into Minnesota's athletic-transition style offense and I expect this series to easily go Minnesota's way.