I guess a bit later on in the game I was able to take my fan hat off and look at the game a little more dispassionately, to see how our flaws were being exposed by Golden State. Obviously people brought up the drop coverage we had to play, and the Dubs are the type of team that can punish drop coverage with players like Steph, Klay and Poole. Poole was 1-9 but Curry and Klay were 10-22. It's one of those [dang]ed if you do, [dang]ed if you don't situations where if you don't play it and have Blake and Kornet defending up Steph and Co would treat them like turnstiles on their way to a layup at the rim, or if it forces help from one of the corner defenders they kick it out for a corner 3. because those guys don't have the lateral quickness to defend small guards. Joe tried to combat it by playing small but then you get outrebounded (51 to 39 with Looney getting 15) and posted up. It's one of those teams where the loss of Al really hurts us - against Phoenix it didn't because Phoenix shot 25% from 3. I thought maybe Joe could have gone to a zone or something, a different look to force GS to do something different to break it down.
That's more of a structural and schematic thing. The thing I'm more worried about, which rears its ugly head with our team whenever we don't shoot well, is that we allow missed shots to affect our defense. Advanced box scores for this game aren't available yet but I'm sure they hammered us in transition. During the game at least twice in a row Jaylen was caught ball watching in the backcourt while first Tatum missed an open 3 and then Smart missed an open 3. The ball was rebounded long by GS, one of their players was already halfway up the court and it was an easy layup. Not meaning to pick on him because other players were guilty of it too and Jaylen's offense kept us in the game for large parts but it was just typical of our transition defense as a whole.
We have to learn to not let missed shots affect our defense. Other then the first quarter where Tatum and Brown tried to do a bit too much hero ball I felt we actually moved the ball well to get good looks from the perimeter but we just missed the shots. By the end Tatum was missing bunnies at the rim. It happens right, but what can't happen is for the misses to be compounded by giving up easy shots at the other end.
Losses always suck, especially for a team that won it on our court last season, it would have been nice to get bragging rights. But they didn't play well and deserved to lose, and they have plenty of food for thought on where their gaps are. It's a long season and unlike Game 6 which a lot of people brought up earlier in the thread, we do have plenty of time to fix things. It's hard to identify flaws and fix things when you're beating teams by 30 all the time
As for the Dubs, they're 13-13 but looking at them tonight they clearly have the quality to be better than 9th in the West. I feel it's disinterest and lack of motivation more than anything that has them where they are, which must be frustrating for their fans. Because tonight they were up for it, they treated it like a playoff game. We came up short but it's a little premature to be slitting wrists
Topic: Celtics (21-5) at Warriors (13-13) Game #27 12/10/22 (Read 36777 times)