i'm not sure what part of we scored well fans dont udnerstand. Technically we could have shot better and scored more and beat them with the game in the 120s, but if that's what we want from them then we can kiss the playoffs goodbye. We need the defense to iimprove. We scored 30, 35, 25, and 25 in order for all 4 quarters. That's above average. They scored 36 and 35 in the second half, that was the issue. All worrell and co. kept saying is "we need a stop" in the closing minutes. Over and over. Granger and ford closed it out for them offensively. We failed to score late due to some bad mistakes, not just plain inability to score. Some silly turnovers, bad bounces, bad calls, etc. SHouldnt have been in that position to begin with if we had played defense.
Bad game for Martin. He went 3-16 from the field. Hopefully it's just a "new to town" thing and he'll go off for like 40 tomorrow. Haha. :grin:
re-watching the 3rd and 4th qrts...so far halfway through the 3rd i've seen like one inside bucket by the Pacers. they scored mostly on the break and jumpshots, especially 3s.... for the game they shot 11 of 20 from 3...but yeah, our inability to stop their bigs with size killed us
The play offs for me are a complete fantasy for this team so do we continue to play our strongest line up for 48 minutes or do we start to experiment with our roster to see what we keep for next year?
I hope so too but I think it's more of an "injury prone player is declining" thing. I'd be really happy to be wrong though.
The main reason is when you play guys out of position, your defense can look this horrible. Missing lowry hurts, he would have never let Ford run and pull up every single time down the floor for open shots like Brooks did.
The guy turned 27 less than a month ago and your writing off his career? I find that conclusion after one game absolutely amazing.
You should be cheering for knicks to win every game, cause the jazzholes own their 1st round pick and you don't want the jazzholes to get a high lottery pick do you?!!
Brooks' defense was poor but Ford did the same thing to Temple. There are nights when opposing PGs shoot poorly against Brooks but he gets zero credit in those cases. Is Brooks a good defender? No, not even close but even the best defensive PGs will have nights where they get lit up. Also, Battier and Ariza got absolutely pwned by Granger and those two guys are defensive specialists. Brooks got pwned but he wasn't the only one. Our interior defense wasn't any better than our perimeter defense.
Yep he tore up both of our PGs, but Lowry is better than Temple and more experienced. I know some nights guys are just on but damm, he's pulling up for open jumpers time after time again. Granger made some tough shots at least.
There is plenty of blame to go around when your defense gives up 125 points. The one thing that did concern me about the trade is what happens when you start Brooks and Martin together in the backcourt? The D will suffer a bit. It wont improve until Yao returns next season.
Now Ariza seems to hit his shots. Andersen becomes the new scapegoat despite 11 rebounds in 20 minutes. Did he play well? No. But why do people put all the blame on a 2 mil rookie center is beyond me.
But we played Battier out of position at the 4. The defense looked horrible on the perimeter. I'm almost done watching the 3rd qrtr and there's hardly any inside bucket for the Pacers. the guys at the 4/5 for houston were playing tough and contesting shots. Murphy had a nice dunk of a back door cut he did on Scola, that's about the only bad defensive play up front so far.
Everyone who's had at least a papercut and a drop of any kind in their stats is considered declining to JC..
Granger also made some absolutely easy shots as if defenders were nothing more than figments of his imagination. He blew by both Battier and Ariza on more than one occasion for easy finishes at the rim. He also created separation from them with ease if you watched his play off the ball. Almost every PG in the league can get by the first line of defense with today's no hand-checking rule and Ford got to the basket 2 or 3 times with no interior support. Brooks almost had to respect his speed and force him to shoot outside since our big men were HORRIBLE and NONEXISTENT at the rim. Ford's defense on Brooks was no better than vice versa. Ford just had MUCH BETTER support from his bigs to cut off Brooks. If Brooks was facing an interior defense as soft as ours (other than Hayes who, himself, struggled defensively), he'd have put up 40-50 tonight. Seriously. Lowry is absolutely better than Temple. Lowry is quite possibly the best defensive PG in the NBA and I am very happy we have him. I have no problem if he becomes out long-term starter. I just think some people (not necessarily you) like to only talk about Brooks' mistakes as if there aren't 4 other guys on the floor and an opposing team.
We needed height, size is underrated here. With some height in the paint everything changes. But Adelman never reacts and again this is what pisses me off. Never. This lost maybe did cost us the playoffs. It was a must win. And your 3 big men watching sidelined.
I call it like I see it. He's shooting under 40% coming off of seasons where he missed 30 games and 20 games. He's in what is traditionally considered to be the "prime" years but looks to be flaming out earlier than most players.
Kevin Martin is a good reader on defense. He's more of a ball hawking safety than a shut down corner. His offense will come around. Let him get some more practices under his belt and develop some chemistry with the team. I can't WAIT to see Lowry and Martin on the floor at the same time
