jbk1234 wrote:JonFromVA wrote:jbk1234 wrote:
We're not always going to shoot well, especially against good defensive teams. What you do have some control over is defense and rebounding.
We shot well enough in the second half against that same team and it's not like we made our comeback .vs. their garbage lineup.
Fact is it's not as easy to single out Niang as much as you'd like to.
Our team is built to bury opponents with our shooting, the trick is figuring out how to do that for closer to 48 .vs. the top teams and not coming out like "slugs" in the first quarter would go a long ways.
Planning on burying your opponents with shooting every game is a bad plan for the playoffs. We've seen the limitations to that approach the last few weeks.
It's not the only strategy, but in this day and age it's the primary strategy. Offensive systems can stay ahead of defensive systems UNLESS you let the defense cheat and ignore some of your players because they're not a threat to score.
The good news is our offense was working well enough in the second half, the players just need more high intensity games under their belt against the few opponents like the Celtics who can really challenge us with their D.
We could finish the season with home court throughout the playoffs, and then blow it in game #1 of each series if the team is too wound up to relax and execute.
But sure, a few more hours and we'll see if there's a magic bullet on the way. Keep your fingers crossed I guess and then we can hope they can handle high pressure situations ...
