Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

AR and Luka (even with 35 points) were awful. I hope there weren’t any residual effects from Rich Paul’s comments. Stuff like that splinter a locker room and team chemistry fast.

 

i skipped the second half because i saw the first, but i didn't think luka played badly. he argued with the refs instead of getting back on defense three times. but all three times were legit missed fouls. then when he did get back once (only guy on the whole team on that play), they called him for a ticky tack and-1 on a break. i don't know; i feel like if he's officiated normally, he has his 40 on efficient shooting. reaves was the guy who looked completely out of sorts on both ends. he's played like this before, and we later found out he was playing with an injury. i'm guessing that's what's happening right now.

we're a quarter way into the season, and the issues that worried me in september are the ones that worry me now: we're too slow to be a good defense in the modern nba. this will have to be fixed via personnel change. we can definitely play better than last night on defense, but when you see a team with speed on the perimeter coming, you know we're not stopping anyone. we actually had a pretty solid offensive night as a team--made 17 threes on high percentage, shot well overall, only 11 turnovers after a rough start there.

i'll spam this thread (in addition to the others) with "let's play the two young guys" until we can find the right trade to get some speed on this roster.

 

We had the most athletic player dressed in a uniform on either team and JJ managed to play him one whole minute vs a team that was young, fast and running us out of the gym. Would’ve been nice to at least see what Thiero could do in games like this early in the season.

 

thiero went from being first off the bench to nailed to it in one game, right? feel like jj will be asked about it.

it was bad team defense (as lebron indicated) that led to the zillion wide open threes, but i would argue that you have to rely less on "the string" when not every single one of your defenders is a threat to give up penetration. again, apparently i was watching a different game than others, but luka was actually the guy putting up the MOST resistance in these cases. well, him and smart, of course.

like, can nick smith at least keep ballhandler in front of him? if so, get him out there. gabe's not doing it.

 

It goes back to last season. The higher stakes the game is, the tighter JJ’s butt cheeks get, and the more risk adverse he becomes. It’s a pattern now.

 

do you think this was a high stakes game, though? we'll see what happens in our other game, but the winner here got the right to play an okc team that is just thrashing everyone right now (and has already thrashed us). iow, not sure anyone's too bothered by the loss. you could tell by how lazily we played in the first half!

anyway, i would like to hear why thiero fell out of the rotation after the boston game. nothing to 20 minutes to mop up duty.

 

My concern is more that when we lose we LOSE. Just completely mopped up in several of these games.