The delta between this team’s best play and is worse is huge. Latest of the remaining teams, IMO. Simply showing up to the arena is not good enough. We will lose this series if we don’t focus and show up ready to fight. Ime has to beat that into them.
We win game 4, then I think we can steal one back in Miami. Close out opportunity in Boston again.
But we really can’t let this happen again. It happened in the Bucks series and it’s happened in this one twice. The fire needs to be there for 48 minutes. This is for the Finals. They need to be locked in at all times. Even during that comeback I was not convinced they were gonna win because they kept making forced, dumb passes and getting stripped and turning the ball over. It was infuriating.
But on to game 4. Thankfully we don’t have much time to linger on this one.
To be fair, every other team has been thrashed in the playoffs except us:
Dallas - lost 112-87 vs GS (25 pts). Lost to Phx by 20 and 30 pts
GS - lost 134-95 to Mem (39 pts)
Mia -lost 127-87 to Bos (25 pts). Lost to Phi by 20 pts
Mil - lost 109-81 to Bos (28 pts)
Phil - lost 120-85 to Mia (35 pts). Lost to Tor by 15 pts
Phx - lost 123-90 to Dal (33 pts).
Mem - lost 142-112 to GS (30 pts). Also lost to GS by 16
Our worst loss was a 12 pt loss to Mil, followed by an 11 pt loss to Mia, both opening games of the series. The problem is, and I think what you mean by the delta between good and bad being large, is that there have been lapses in the games when they have been really bad, and been blown out in a quarter. We have won 10 of the 12 quarters in this series but the 2 we lost, we lost badly enough to end up losing the games. It suggests a concentration thing as opposed to us not being good enough. I'm hoping that because that's the case, learning through painful experience will be enough for them to be able to cut that out of their performance.