esqtvd wrote:TrueLAfan wrote:Yeah, it's not the refs. It's the whole team. Emphasis on team. We don't play like we're together.
I was kind of astounded that PG had 33 (and, as my friend pointed out, he also had six in the fourth). He had a quiet 33, and that's not good. The thing is, when he was in with bench players, they played hero ball. He took 21 shots to get the 33.
Trezz is just wounding us out there. I don't pretend to know what wrong, and I'm tired of caring about it. He just can't play out there.
But he's not the biggest issue. It's the same thing as the last series. Jokic is a great player; I'm okay with him and Murray combining for 55. But, for f&%$ sake, Gary Harris. Torrey Craig, and Monte Morris had 33 points on 12-22 shooting. Meanwhile, three of our starters plus our first guy off of the bench combined for 10 points on 3-13 shooting. Like Is aid, our problem isn't the best players on the Nugs going off; it's three other guys stepping up, while Sham, Marcus, PatBev, and Trezz are sleepwalking.
Is this on Doc? I'm not a Doc hater; I think he's a good coach. I think he's a good coach because he's a players coach; that's his rep, and he lives or dies with that. Right now, our players are not prepared. This is not a rotations issue. Nobody has the depth to overcome this many players that are playing tentatively or not at all. Sham is a waste of space. So is Trezz for the most part. Lou has been lousy more games than not. Bev is hurt or something, but he's not himself. He looks unready. If you add Marcus to that list--and Marcus was invisible today--that's half of our team minutes. PG had 16 in the second half; Kawhi had 11. The rest of the team had 8 points. We got outscored by 29 in the second half. Bringing in Reggie or having Zu play five minutes more isn't the problem (Zu played almost 9 minutes in the third, and we got walloped all over the the place.) We have too many people that are not showing up. And, yeah, some of that has to be on Doc. Has to be.
I really do think we'll win Game 7, but I'm (fast) losing hope for the season. We don't play together, we don't seem motivated. Our stars are showing up; PG and Kawhi are average 50-15-10 on high efficiency for the series. The problem is the rest of the team; we're getting one or two decent games out of the other 7 rotation guys, and that's not going to cut it.
Spot-on, bro. It makes people angry to try to make a rational explanation, but basically Doc's thinking has been that if we don't get the old Trezz back, we have zero chance against the Lakers anyway. So he burned Game 5 and and 15 minutes of Game 6 trying to get Trezz back in form before facing the Lakers.
Of course now that it's Game 7, you play desperate and hope to win it somehow, down and dirty, whatever it takes, and that means without Trezz [we hope]. But it's simplistic to put all the blame on him, as if only we'd given his 15 minutes to somebody [anybody] else we'd have won. No, we wouldn't have.
Everybody else sucked too, as TrueLA's post delineates above. Zu was a sterling plus+23 at the half but was minus-12 in the 2nd half--as often happens when he gets into extended minutes. His second 15 minutes are never as good as his first 15, which is why Doc is always casting about for an alternative. And Doc tried to give Trezz a quick hook during the Nugs run and had Zu at the scorer's table, but Joker hit a couple of 3s before the next stoppage of play.
Has Doc guessed wrong? Sure, its easy to say so in hindsight. Would another course of action have been successful? We shall never know. But never think you see anything the rest of us so-called "apologists" don't see.
I also agree with TrueLA that even if we pull out Game 7, our prospects vs the fLakers look dim. Plan A, of playing Bron and Brow even and having the deepest squad in the league clean up the rest, is in tatters. Trezz is not coming back, and there is nobody to pick up for him.
Play desperate and roll the dice.