Very good defense.. Miami has a real opportunity to do something an 8th seed never does. I wish we'd had Vogel for our little run, we'd be in the finals right now.
That is ok, the Lakers are not in the championship business anymore. Their new business is grooming rookie coaches. We have become the "next year Lakers". With a whole off-season the Lakers will be elite. "Ham will learn from his mistakes"
The Heat shooters showed up, they shot 48% from 3. They had a lot of open looks in the first game, they missed on most of them. They will get those looks all series, maybe it's by design. We had plenty of them too. Gotta make shots.
Nuggets will take the series without a doubt as Jimmy can't have big scoring games for some time now on that bum ankle . He doesn't seem to have enough left in the tank to takeover in one or a couple of games , something Miami absolutely need from him to win the series Making Jokic a volume scorer and shooter is your best chance against the Nuggets as I keep repeating for 3 weeks plus though
For sure. Ham was a good rookie coach overall, but I emphasize "rookie". Clear coaching mistakes cost us games. We could have and should have won games 1, 2 & 4 if not for clear coaching mistakes. Yes, there were other things you could blame as well, but players not executing is different than a coach making bad decisions. Players can't always physically execute, and face interference from the other team, whereas the coaching decisions were premeditated bad choices that could easily be changed, without interference from the opposition. Painful recap: Despite mistakes like the stupid 3 guard start decision, not starting Rui early enough, not benching DLo early enough, not giving LeBron any rest even with a double digit lead, and overall strategy issues... Game 1 was still a 1 possession game (down 3) with a minute to go. Game 2 was still a 1 possession game (down 2) with a minute to go. Game 4 was a Tie game with a minute to go. Yup. I maintain that if the Lakers had Spo, they would have beaten Denver this series. It was close enough that coaching made the difference. Lakers would have won 2 or 3 of Games 1/2/4 and won the series. Why wasn't Ham smart enough to do this? We just let Joker do whatever he wanted. Yes, let. They didn't go at him hard and make him work on D every play, and didn't wear him down by making him be the primary scorer every game. They didn't need that from Jimmy tonight. Miami can continue to win games with this game plan, Joker is 0-3 so far against this game plan, as referenced above. Yes, so then you do agree, this game plan can beat the Nuggets. And that's a good thing - hopefully Ham is watching this series and learns from this. With the right strategy, Lakers can beat this Nuggets team.
Meh..game plans, strategy, schemes etc. D'Angelo Russell is making 30 million dollars. If he doesn't shoot 32% from the field and 16% from 3, we win that series. Simple as that. He is NOT a role player. Everybody answered the bell but him.
Jokic has big scoring nights only when his teammates SUCK. He sets them up but they miss open shot after open shot. What is he supposed to do? "Fold" and get blown out? Btw, MPJ sucks, he should be benched.
I liked how MIA came back from being down by 15 with 5 left in the 2nd and won on the road. Gutty. Jokic can get 40, even 50, but it seems to be an indication DEN isn't playing all that well. MPJ had a 1-6 night from 3, which I suspect he'll bounce back from. I have no dog in this one, really. MIA was the 8 seed, and a #8 has never won it, which would be cool. Denver has never won a title and I like Jokic as a player and a person. Malone can learn to stop running his mouth, though. Wonder how bad Jimmy's ankle really is. I'd like to see it go 7, what the hell?
Spo isn't the one making shots out there . He wouldn't have cured Lebron bad foot either . Losing 4-0 with Ham or 4-1/4-2 with Spo still mean you lost
The difference is that the Lakers could have and I believe would have WON the series and the championship with Spo. Or even with Ham, if he had made some better decisions. You're missing the point. You can't magically make DLo shoot better or just say 'he needs to answer the bell' and then he does. On the other hand, Ham could literally snap his fingers and choose not to start 3 guards, and we win Game 1. Or get LeBron a little rest when we're up by double digits and we win Game 4. Start Rui earlier, play DLo less, etc.
LOL, true. But he should end up with 10-12 assists easily last night. A lot of wide open misses, like WIDE open. Where was that against us
D'Angelo choked, a player has to be counted on to play his role. His role is to facilitate and score some points. That's why he starts, why he gets paid big money. That was a terrible performance, Beasley was already out the rotation, and Vanderbilt isn't a shooter. We needed D'Angelo to play well, at the least be average, he was neither. We got swept by an average of 6 pts a game. What got absolutely nothing from our 3rd option. Ham went to whatever options he had left, and we came up short. We might have won a game, but we wasn't winning the series, with D'Angelo as a no show.
this has pissed me off across both games. we're up 2-0 on this denver team, and it's not because miami's playing better defense than we did, imo. nuggets just aren't hitting everything like they did against us. edit: btw, i think the nuggets are mentally weak. i think this is precisely why malone waged psychological warfare on dlo that whole series. he knew if someone did that to gordon or mpj, they'd fold like dlo did. it's also why he cried disrespect over and over again despite zero evidence for this--they had to be the underdogs. they're not the underdogs anymore, and the hoop gets smaller with pressure.
Yes, in a perfect world, someone making 30 millions should make their shots. Jordan Poole should make all his too and AD and Lebron and so on. But, we don't live in that perfect world. With your argument, there should not be any coaches, these players getting paid millions should just go out and shoot the ball and make it. I don't know if you have ever managed your own company or department, as a manager (coach) you should know the strength and weaknesses of your workers (players). If you notice someone lacking or not doing well, you have that employee do other things or have someone else pick up some slack, or motivate that employee (player) to do better.
Smh...This isn't Rec League ball, you aren't going to just going to plug in the next guy up, and think that's going to win you a series. Who is doing that? Poole didn't play well, we beat Golden State, D'Angelo played terrible, we lost to Denver. Porter Jr played poorly last night, Denver lost. That 3rd guy is important, you need him to play well, in order to beat a good team in a 7 game series. The coaches job is to put the team in a position to win a game, the players job is to execute and make the plays. The money is always important, the more a player makes, the higher the expectations. If AD put up those kind of numbers ,it would still be all over the news. He only makes 7 million more than D'Angelo. Russell and Beasley, make more than the rest of the team combined outside of Lebron and AD. There weren't any options left, the adjustments we made, are what kept the games compettive. If you run a business, you don’t expect your junior employees, to do the work of their managers, supervisors, foremans, etc. What the hell are they there for? All employees aren't equal, that's why some get paid more than others. If you're highly paid employees aren't performing, you are going to fire and replace them. If you don't, you won't be in business for long.
