Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

I'm starting to doubt your talent analysis skills.

 

For once

 

This was a must win game and the team found a way to win

Rockets helped by shooting 5-28 from the 3 line 18%

Rui 21 pts 6 reb 2 ast 1 blk nice to see him get some rebounds

DA 7 pts 16 reb 1 ast 1 blk

Jake 7 pts 5 reb 1 blk

Smart 7 pts 7 reb 1 ast 2 stl 2 blk

 

strong game from lebron; liked the game-long concerted effort to get him the ball in the post.

smart set the tone defensively, and tbh, reaves had a very good game defensively (tons of deflections/disruptions, good work boxing out), and even rui did a good job there.

going back to letting ayton play sengun mostly without help was good, as was attacking the sheppard/sengun tandem in pick and rolls and isos.

without durant, houston's offense is just fatally flawed, so that helped us. and we finally stopped with the live ball turnovers that led to breaks. only 10 turnovers was the key. meant we got to get houston into the halfcourt, where they're actually pretty easy to stop. this is part of why game 5 was so incredibly frustrating to me.

anyway, i'm pleasantly surprised by the series outcome. good coaching overall, good execution in games 1,2, and 6.

 

I have OKC in 6 games. Lakers put up a good fight but lose to a better team

 

Lakers in 7

 

We gonna get swept, unfortunately.

 

But if we win only one, or none ..... JJ gets fired? A+ take of your's after the game last night.

 

JJ is still a young coach, I would not fire him after the last two years when he has retooled the roster and still won more than others did or would have. He is showing growth and the signs of being a really good coach. That guy gets his whole contract. If we brought in better players and didn't get rid of valuable pieces over money, we would be co favorites to win the ring. I really believe our FO has kept us off the podium.

 

Yeah I’m on your side … it was sarcasm hope you picked up?

 

Yeah, you had the laughing Lebron head, figured it was sarcastic in nature. But there are a few folks around here who would love to see JJ fired.

 

Boils down to this:

We had 4 players ready for tonight - Bron, Smart, Rui, DA

They had 10 ready for the game.


To make it even better:
-We can't shoot from 3
-Tonight's version of AR is a notable downgrade from Bronny James. AR has to give us 25 and be a top 4 player in the series.

 

I thought those 4 were really good and Hayes was pretty good too - that makes 5. LaRavia was MIA. Kennard needs to step up and like you said Reaves was a real disappointment.

I think we did fine from 3, we were 10/30, with Reaves going 0/5. If he hits 1 or 2 more and Kennard hits 1 more, we're at 13/30 which is 40% and what OKC shot.

I'm not sure how much better the good 5 guys from tonight can play. Reaves and Kennard need to pick up the remainder of the slack and even with that and all 7/8 of our rotation guys playing great, it's a tie game. We just don't have enough to beat these guys.

But I'm happy we were competitive.

 

That's the thing though, you have to create an advantage somewhere. Can't play them straight up while being under manned without losing by 20+.

Based on how we're playing, catching fire from deep is the only place we can pick it up against them and i am not sure we can even do that.

They play 10 deep of playoff ready players. They don't make many mistakes but are deep enough, they can absorb a few and then have a Hercules push with a 10-0 run and we can't make up that advantage with only 4-5 players who are ready for this stage.

We were only +1 in FTAs, that's not going to happen again against SGA

-We lost the rebounding battle
-We forced them into TOs, but we still turned it over 3 more times than they did
-Lot of their guys underperformed from 3

I don't know how we can adjust outside of Austin magically becoming the Austin when Bron was out to start the year.

 

We out rebounded them on the offensive boards and were practically level on boards generally (don't think this will be a problem this series).

Turnovers we had 17 to their 14. So not so bad.

FGA were 85 to 84.

I think the problem of this series is, we need to play perfect to be tied with them when they play to this level. We're really missing the firepower of Luka and there's no way to overcome that.

 

Again, that's the issue though. You have to drastically outperform them somewhere. A draw, a hair advantage or being competitive in a game deciding category isn't good enough when you're starting out behind the 8 ball. You have to over achieve, over perform across multiple categories.

Bron somehow was the best player on the court but when the next 3 best are on the other team and you're not the Bron of a decade ago who can put up those same numbers + an additional 20 points, then it's not very promising.

 

It's not promising. That's just the reality we find ourselves in. We played good, we can play a bit better, but we don't have enough.

I can't be mad, I just wanted to be competitive with them.

 

Game 1 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... I thought there was a chance halftime would be 70-32 or some jit like that. It only really fell apart in the 4th Q, because OKC is relentless and we just don't have enough right now, not with Luka out.

I agree with those who are glad we were, for the most part, competitive. This series is gonna be rough, man.