We played great one on one defense on Aldridge. Our team is just too inexperienced (including the coaching staff) for us to be good on team defense. I don't want us to double Aldridge.
And that's what happens when you sacrifice the little defense we had for more offense. The RGV experiment was fun, not let's play some more traditional basketball.
Hate to gripe but McHale still can't get the rotations right. You can't let Lillard be out there with Beverley on the bench. And McHale is taking terrible risk by keeping Dwight in to defend LaMarcus after Lopez goes out. I don't understand why he can't see that he's got to match Dwight on Lopez and Asik on LaMarcus as much as possible. The 19-2 run killed us. I didn't realize it was that bad but I did realize that we had the wrong matchups on the floor. Also.....Portland stole some minutes by putting Freeland in there. Freeland.....that's a good matchup for DMo. There's no sense in having TT out there when Freeland is in. He ain't that good. You're taking foul risk and you're wearing the 2 bigs down. Better off to bring in an offensive guy like DMo and let him exploit Freeland on both ends of the floor. Once again....I don't want the TT out there unless Portland is running LaMarcus/Lopez. We need both centers for later in the game and we need to preserve foul count on them. We got away with it here in the first half tonight but McHale has got to be smarter than that. Another note: Jones looked like crap against TRob. TRob beat him down the floor repeatedly and we got away with it with some bad passes, etc. from Portland. But TRob is looking faster, quicker, and stronger than Jones out there. Better keep an eye on that matchup. I really think we're better off to go with either DMo or Casspi when TRob is in there. Spread them out better with either guy.
Playing with only 7 or 8 players in the lineup will cause fatigue as the series goes along... He should have at least a 9 man rotation--that way, he can keep everyone fresh down the stretch. There's a reason why the Rockets have struggled in the 4th quarters--because the players look gassed!
