I think part of the issue was that they really struggled with how to deal with Trae tonight. They still forced him into a high volume of shots and poor efficiency but they were trying to trap him a lot, especially when they were trying to switch Timelord onto Trae on the high PnR and left perimeter shooters open who made shots they don't usually make - Collins 5/9, Hunter 3/5, Bey 2/3. Bogdan shot 3/6 but he's a pretty decent 3 point shooter, the others that we left open to trap Trae killed us. And obviously Trae made some logo shots at the end. At the end they shot 46% from 3, maybe they can replicate it but I doubt it.
To me the bigger issue is the Cs composure. Despite Atlanta shooting well from 3, and us shooting poorly, we scored at will at the rim all night but for whatever reason with 6 mins to go we started walking it up the court, taking forever to get into our sets, obviously to try and bleed as much time off the clock as possible...Tatum is one of the worst offenders at that, he's taken a leaf out of LeBum's book trying to "manage" the game when he should just play the game. Gave up transition chances because we wanted to bleed time off the clock. Then two untimely turnovers from JT and Smartacus, and obviously a foul by Smartacus with 20 sec to go 35 feet from the basket, trying to go for a hero play to steal the ball when we just needed to defend...Smartacus always plays like that, he always goes for high risk plays, we love it when they come off 20% of the time because they are matchwinning but the other 80% they don't and they can be costly.
These guys just need to realize they're better than the Hawks, and to play the full 48 minutes, instead of trying to get cute at the end.
Topic: This team won’t make it out of the East…. (Read 1523 times)