Here's another way to look at it:
When a team ages and begins to lose its edge, the team must adapt. It must become wily -- cunning, like a fox, able to kill its prey with a thousand tiny pin pricks.
Those pin pricks come from discipline.
Without discipline, we fell short against the Heat. They have more athleticism, more shooting, more rebounding, more range, younger legs, and better health.
As a team, we did not maintain the discipline necessary to outfox the Heat and turn their aggression against them. Instead, we began to play them matching our legs, our athleticism, our shooting against theirs. We played on the same basis as the Heat, and in that sense -- yes. We lost to a better team. Because we put our eggs into baskets that represented aspects of the game we were over-matched in.
As Tortoises, we tried to outrun the hairs, rather than slicking the track with oil and turning the hairs's wanton aggression, energy, and speed against them.
A lesson to be learned, perhaps.
