Do I believe we can win this series? Yes. The knicks are not impressive. We are beating ourselves.
Do I believe in this team? Not really. I believed in last year?s team 100%. This year they lack focus and aren?t close to last years level. And we have to overcome Mazzula?s incompetence.
What is the difference? Why did you believe in last year's team but not this year's team?
Without spending too much time on this:
1) Brown is having a down season. Regressed from last year.
2) Holiday regressed from last year. But to his credit he's been solid so far in the playoffs.
3) We're even more 3-point happy than last year, which bodes poorly if we're rushing shots and/or having an off game, which we have already seen twice so far against the Knicks.
4) We don't have the same focus and drive as last year. Last season we were locked in the entire time. We looked unstoppable.
5) Question marks around Joe's coaching resurfaced this season, at least from my perspective. As we've seen so far, his ATO plays are garbage, his substitution patterns poor, and has not instilled disciplined play into his team.
6) Horford has regressed.
7) Teams are better adjusted to KP now. They've found soft spots defensively. He's often in no man's land, which I understand is sometimes by design with drop coverage, but it's to the point where we have to compensate defensively. We've looked terrible with him on the floor so far in the playoffs.
8. We've seen poor 4th quarter execution throughout the year. This is what has probably bugged me the most. We slow down, play iso ball while everyone stands around. The offense is slow, predictable, and ineffective. Yet we keep doing it.
9) We've also had a recurring pattern of blowing large leads throughout this season, something that should be fixable with a veteran team, especially with the caliber of our players.
10) Joe has not gotten the most out of our talent. This team is so talented that we can win even if he sits around and does nothing or makes bad decisions. But we're capable of being better than what we've shown.
We can point to 61 wins. That's hard to complain about. But along the way I've seen cracks and flaws that were significant enough to be of concern come playoff time. And now it's exposed. We should not be down 0-2 to an inferior team.
I'm less worried about regression, because despite it all we (as you say) won 61 games and we beat Orlando, a team we expected would cause us more problems than NY, 4-1. And in both these NY games, we shot 35% from the floor, 25% from 3 on huge volume, and still led by 20 points in BOTH games before collapsing in the 4th. To me this is a 100% mental issue of not taking NY seriously enough because we beat them 4-0 in the regular season and all the chatter around the media and fans was that the Knicks were Tomato Cans that were going to be punted aside.
I can't prove it but I feel like there's a causal relationship between not taking a team seriously enough and failing to execute when that team applies pressure. When the Knicks made those 4th quarter runs in both games (game 1 it was Anunoby hitting improbable 3s and Hart pushing the ball in transition, while in Game 2 it was Bridges scored 14 points in the 4th quarter after going 0-8 for 0 points the first 3) we looked like we didn't know how to respond, other than to try and take an ill advised 3 at the other end, which missed, and we were unprepared to run back to defend in transition. To me that speaks to a lack of mental preparation and respect for the opposition.
The good thing for us is that there's nothing like being humiliated on your home court and being put in a must-win situation to focus the mind towards a) respecting the opposition and b) executing better because you respect the opposition. Don't feel you can just jack up a 3 because they suck and if you jack up enough 3s you will overwhelm them, you have to work for every basket. Knuckle down and when the other team has momentum don't jack up low percentage shots unless you're willing to risk them running the rebound back the other end in transition. Take lower value but higher percentage shots to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Grind the win out if you have to.
The bad news is that the Knicks stole 2 from us without particularly playing well. Brunson hasn't really had a great game both games, KAT had a terrible first game, and Bridges was meh offensively until the last quarter of Game 2. So they have to prepare for the Knicks being better at MSG at least. But I think they can still do it, if they treat the game and the opposition with more respect and that respect translates to their execution.
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Topic: Down 2-0, Do You Believe? (Read 31560 times)