Only the most relentlessly optimistic among us expected to sweep Miami coming in.
It is, however, daunting to have seen the total lack of focus and effort this team opened the game with today - very similar to some of the dead efforts this club rolled out post-December.
Meanwhile, Cleveland looks very good today.
Good points. We lost this one in the first quarter, not the fourth.
Honestly, I thought the D on Wade in the fourth was actually pretty good. I mean - we can live with him shooting threes. Most games he won't hit them at that crazy kinda rate. And we'll win. For Miami, this was a perfect storm in the fourth. Bad free throw shooting for the Celtics, Wade shooting the lights out, Rondo missing a layup. It won't happen again.
But Cleveland is going to be a serious handful.
We did not lose this in the first. We lost when Wade started burying pull up 3's of the dribble, as you mention.
I don't think effort was a problem in the beginning. Q Rich shooting the lights out was the problem,combined with the bigger problem of bad passes. 9 TOs in the first quarter is not a sign of a lack of effort. It is poor decision making and good defense by the opponent. Sometimes bad passes are actually a sign of trying too hard.
The only person I would say showed a lack of effort was J ONeal. Our problems were TOs turning into transition plays for the Heat.
If it was a lack of focus, what were they failing to focus on? What indicates a lack of effort? These seem to me to be sports cliches that people just automatically attribute to teams that are performing poorly.
I completely agree with the opinion above about Wade shooting 3's. That is not his game. He isn't good enough from 3 to do that for 4 games straight. He looked rather mediocre from 3 in other games.
Could not disagree with you more strongly. The ball movement wasn't there. The defensive rotations weren't there. And once Doc went to the bench in the first, the effort went from bad to nonexistent, especially with Wallace.
We did absolutely nothing well in the first period on either end of the floor, which shows a decided lack of focus. And we didn't close out on anyone in the first period - terrible, terrible defense, very reminiscent of the regular season. That returned in a couple of shorter sequences in the second half that were equally destructive.
And no, it is not inevitable in the association that any offense can get any shot it wants against any defense. Good defensive teams - championship teams - get over screens, they close out and they suffocate the other team, as the 2008 Celtics did repeatedly.
Championship defensive teams dictate the pace of the game and the quality of the shot to the offense with effort and intelligence - which we've done in this series. We didn't do enough of it today to win a game - against basically anyone.
We spent much of the game running uphill from the total lack of focus and effort with which the game was started - and we're going to lose each and every playoff game from this point that we approach similarly.
The ball movement didn't happen because our passes were being picked off. We were passing, but they were slapping the passes away.
"And no, it is not inevitable in the association that any offense can get any shot it wants against any defense."
You are both correct and wrong. If an offense is willing to take low percentage shots, they can typically get them, but they will make them at a low percentage. Wade was satisfied with taking low percentage shots today (he shot 30% on the year from 3). They just happened to fall this game. He will not be able to do that regularly against our defense, so our defense will win out. In fact, this is not the first game this series where he tried launching 3's. Wade was 3-11 from 3 in game 3. This is just the first game where his 3 point shooting benefited his team.
Players like Jamal Crawford are great examples. They can get the shots they want, no matter what you do, because their standards for what a good shot is are so low. Over many games, this doesn't usually work if those players are the focal point of the offense because of how often they are doing low percentage plays at key moments.
You won't find a coach at any level of this great game to agree with you. We are going to have to agree to disagree, because you are rationalizing bad basketball away.
One place in which you contradict yourself that cannot escape being pointed out: You assert that we "didn't expect" our passes to be challenged?
Uh, in the interest of blog rules, I will just add that again, I completely and totally disagree with this errant interpretation of lazy, unmotivated basketball. Passes behind a player and fumbled by a player - unchallenged - are what they are: Players who simply aren't ready to play. Anything less is an excuse, not an explanation for failing - in the first quarter, primarily - to value the basketball, which is something coaches begin demanding in junior high school.
I'm sitting here going through the DVR, and there just isn't the slightest sign of Miami suddenly morphing into an impenetrable defensive juggernaut, as comforting as that idea might be. The ONLY thing they're doing differently is playing with more energy than the Celtics, which isn't saying much since we opened this game and played a couple of significant second half stretches without any appreciable energy - again all too reminiscent of the regular season.
So, I'm going to leave it at this: I totally and completely disagree with your interpretation of this game.
