Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

i'd been saying that minny was better than people thought. seems like we weren't ready for the intensity--luka aside--which is disappointing after the rhetoric this week about being ready, etc.

i remind myself that i didn't even expect the 3 seed after we made the trade. the teams we're competing against--gs aside--have basically had the same guys/system all year. it's a tall order to just pull it together and beat them, even when you employ luka doncic.

nevertheless, i expect better showings from here on out. but we punted HCA on night 1 in a game that wasn't close, and there's no way to spin that as a positive.

 

Right - won. First quarter up 19. Typical Luka on fire first quarter, Gabe was decent. Austin and LBJ in double figures.

Bad - Minny simply looks like the better team. IMHO, they have outplayed us in both games. They’re taller, faster, stronger, longer, and deeper. They’re way more physical and it shows. If the Lakers couldn’t get behind their own crowd in these two games, I’m afraid of what happens to us in games 3 and 4. I’d love to eat crow though.

 

Lakers play D and win Game 2 to tie the series at 1-1, 94-85.

MIN's 18 point win in 2nd Q of Game 1 was matched by our 19 point win in the 1st Q in Game 2.

Differences between the two games: after going 21 of 42 from 3, MIN was 5 of 25 (20%) in Game 2. Law of averages? Yea, but the Lakers just contested way better and hustled to change that number so drastically.

Our 3s were atrocious as well, with Lebron/Luka/AR going 3 for 19.

At times it looked like MIN's game plan was to throw forearms into Laker players' throats. I counted at least six, some of them called. The refs missed some plays, but I really thought they saw how physical-verging-into-vicious this game was looking, and were concerned with not letting it get out of hand.

To me, this indicated that MIN thinks they have to muscle the Lakers if they want to win. When MIN's eatin' home cookin' we may be in for some really rough play.

Julius, Naz and Jaden were particularly...I'm gonna say dirty, in this game. They managed 85 points. They scored 32 less points than they did against the too-relaxed Lakers of Game 1.

If we play D at this level in Games 3 and 4...and hit some 3s...I think we're gonna be okay, but this is already a ridiculously physical series.

This is Round ONE of the playoffs? Man.

 

Sadly we shot 20.7% from the 3 line which is really bad

AR 0-6

Nice to see the team bounce back and get the win

Time to close this out and not take any games for granted

 

Lakers made 20 for 20 FT
I don't remember when was last time that they didn't miss

 

I LOVED our defensive effort.
We need to play this tough from here in out to beat this team.
It most definitely is time for JJ to give Kief some burn just to lay down some hard fouls on Minny.
It’s also time to give Luka the Superstar Whistle he deserves and stop treating Randle like he’s the MVP.

 

Too many turnovers and our guys were gassed the last 5 minutes of the game. We’re not beating them with a 7 man rotation.

 

Especially with 2 of the 7 being complete boneheads (rui n vando)

 

The TOs were a big one, 19 TOs is way too much. Lots of those were self inflicted, I counted 10 at least. We also missed 7 free throws.

If we clean up just half of them, thats 10 points off of turnovers to Minnesota. The toughest one to watch was when Lebron dropped the ball on a long pass by Luka. We had an opportunity to take the lead instead they came back and scored a 3 on the other side. That was at roughly 4 mins. After that we just didn't have any good offence and Ant's penetration off the dribble led to two 3pt shots back to back. That was game.

Onto the next one.

 

Game was done with Luka feeling sick. He looked like a shell on both offense and defense compared to particularly his last game where his defense was solid
(They took Gobert and ran a 5 out attack with Ant going at Luka which sucked for the Lakers and was ball game)

Lebron sensational outside of some old man etc plays

AR was really strong at times but didn't finish well

Rui was lost a lot on D

The effort on the defensive glass was awful

End of the day Luka being sick blew a hole in the defense to close the game as they matchup hunted him with Ant (should have blitzed IMO or just gone drop and not give. Up the switch).
And on offense they kept going to Luka to close when he just didn't have it.

I think I run more Godwin and less Hayes. Godwin gives you the defense and better rebounding then Gabe and Vando and is still a threat on offense

Lakers in 6

 

Bad - luka sick/luka bad game. No attention to detail in a large part of that 3rd quarter. Turnovers. missed FTs.

Good - idk, lebron 20 point 1H? Austin good game.

 

Agree on most everything.

I actually don’t agree on the rebounding, they’re a huge team and we had 38 rebounds each. 9 to 7 offensive rebounds in their favour, but that’s nothing major. I felt like we fought as a team for rebounds and did well there.

But you can’t give a team 19 TOs and almost 30 points off those turnovers and expect to win. Lots of cheap errors too;

- Rui and Reaves had 3 off the foot dribbles
- Lebron and Reaves passed it to two players out of bounds
- Luka had 3 bad long range passes that were picked off or led to turnovers
- I counted two instances where we rebounded and couldn’t secure it to only go out of bounds
- There was probably another handful of bad offensive plays where we went at Gobert and couldn’t convert at the hoop

Too many unforced errors

 

Something fishy about the game
Tony Brothers,big Drake bet...
And of course Luka is sick

 

Fantastic NBA playoff game. Teams looked as evenly matched as I thought.

Maybe refs gave MIN too much home cookin' but I'm not blaming our loss on that.

MIN 116
Lakers 104

And it was really closer than that.

Luka hit a baseline shot to tie it with 4:37 left, but he was sick AF (not in the "good" way of "sick"), and MIN was able to execute better than we did over the last 4 mins.

We turned the ball over 16 times. Luka was illin' in the worst way. Reminded me of Kobe against SAC in the playoffs.

MIN's length givin' us fits. Lack of a big defender down low is hurting us.

Lebron and AR: 10 for 20 from long. Can't complain about that. Just a few botched plays and we lose.

Rough loss. I feel wrung out after that one. Kinda game where, if we pull it out, we're high on our own supply of Euphoria. But it was not to be.

We played well, except for the turnovers. Also: our FT magic in Game 2 disappeared. Made 13, missed 7.

Too bad we took them lightly in the 2nd Q of Game 1. But, to quote Lebron James, it is what it is.

 

Possession game has killed us all year long, no matter who’s playing. They got up 13 more shots; same number of fts.

Luka’s illness was obviously a factor.

This is why you don’t show up unprepared in game 1.

 

It's pretty simple .

Lakers have to double the POA and Sota is putting some pressure on the rim and Randle is playing physical

Sota don't have to double the POA and the Lakers is just shooting 3s even with Gobert on the bench .

It's the Wolves series to lose

 

This series is over. Minnesota has exploited our lack of size and depth. We have to play a perfect game in order to win.

Minnesota is clearly the better team and it's not even close.

We'll need to get bigger in the off season.

 

I could point out multiple plays but a lot of it just looked like our guys were gassed. I know they weren’t playing well but don’t agree with not going to our bench to get a couple of minutes rest for our guys.

 

Yeah that feel out game or whatever was bad. You don’t give a game away in a playoff series.