This loss was truly unfortunate! And the injuries to BOTH of Nurkic and Beal at the worst possible time in the season are just the sunsiest things ever to happen!! But there are key points of concern to focus upon in this game that have been discussed for awhile now throughout the season:
1-
The overall lack of urgency and professionalism. This loss much like all the lesser teams that we've let beat us all season reflect a delusional and misplaced arrogance wherein we take our situation for granted believing that we'll just coast through games to a win just on the basis of being superior on paper when IN REALITY (which our team isn't living in apparently) no win is guaranteed, and you must bring the full effort every single game because at the nba level, any team can beat you on any given night.
2-
The same lack of basic basketball fundamentals that have plagued us the entire season have not been addressedAgain, since the beginning of the season we've carried these glaring issues and done nothing to correct them all season. And now unfortunately, we really don't have any time left to correct things. These players are NOT INEXPERIENCED ROOKIES HERE! These players have been playing basketball their entire lives and should under no circumstances be making such very basic rudimentary mistakes. And be making them over and over again repeatedly. These things to me at least reflect a passive, indifferent non chalant mentality that allows them to not focus and delude themselves into believing they are just better than everyone else and don't have to put in the work or effort to get better continually. Now a fair amount of this could be exhaustion with a top heavy roster right now, as well as lack of fully developed chemistry amongst a ragtag constructed roster. But the lack of focus and effort are inexcusable given our fully und4rstood stated expectations of this team.
3-
Giving Away games to lesser teams consistently all throughout the seasonI know this sounds somewhat redundent to the previous issues mentioned above, BUT this is more about understanding how critically important it truly is to NOT GIVE ANY GAMES AWAY and bank as many wins as you can early on! This very situation that we find ourselves in currently is reflective of not securing those wins/ tiebreakers early on with more effort and urgency. They should fully understand first that our team is built with an aging and injured core with a VERY LIMITED WINDOW OF CONTENTION at best and no legitimate future to look to due to b eing overzealous in what we gave up to try the gimmicky super team scheme with no depth contingency plan in place. I say this meaning that they needed to have a consistent "do or die!" "no tommorow" type of mentality. They needed to play with heart and passion, but haven't shown yet to have either. When you give games away so casually, it will come back to bite you!! And this lesson is one we never seem to learn.
4-
The roster construction and value exchange from the trades doesn't equate to a legit contenderThis has clearly been historically documented that superteams with no depth just don't win championships. And our front office glaringly ignored thse well documented facts and still opted to go "all in" without fully/ diligently planning for any supportive depth to sustain our team even from the jump or visualization of this premised strategy. Our front office has PERENNIALLY made gross errors in judgement in terms of valuation of assets, have intentionally IGNORED our roster weaknesses year after year that have been repeatedly exploited by the opposition each year, and they arrogantly try to continue doing the same minimal moves expecting a different outcome. There needs to be serious reflection on this roster construction and why our people in charge of this roster construction sat on their hands fort so many seasons letting opportunities repeatedly pass us by and then we come up short as a direct result. Serious changes must be made! And department upgrades need to hapopen ASAP!