This has come up yet again in D’Antoni’s postgame comments. And short of getting all Star Wars / yogi zen about energy and all, tangibly - I saw about 8 min of “force” in the first quarter. And that was about it. The other 40 minutes... I’m still speechless by it all. But insofar as “tangible” demonstrations of force or the lack thereof. I saw a couple worth highlighting beyond the typical “play with aggression” definition of force. One show of force is Ariza driving for layups. I consider him the most consistent of role players thus far doing the yeoman’s work of displaying his force. Conversely, there’s Eric Gordon. For every one great (and one) play he makes, I feel like he makes one boneheaded step out of bounds or turn over the ball play that absolutely sucks the energy out of the room faster than Thanos can with his infinity stones. And then there was that lazy pass by Harden to I believe Ariza who was trying to set a screen for him. The passing has been absolutely force-less. And here I was sincerely hoping CP could set a better tone early. Anyways, here’s to hoping we play with more force on Tuesday. Sage
We didn’t play with “force”. We didn’t make “them feel us”. It’s true, we just weren’t as engaged as we should have been. It sucks. It’s uber frustrating as a die hard. But it happens and is what it is. We have absolutely got to, make curry feel us defensively. Grab, tug, push, pull and abuse him. Mod the small things and the “force”’shows up. Cp3 HAS to be better. We want shots at the rim more than we want 3s
Exactly this. It's all about which team can establish the role as aggressor first. I expect both teams to come out very hard. Whoever gets the first big lead will likely get the W. It seems that the games between these two teams have been all about that - who can establish first?
