-We allowed some pretty easy transition baskets that will be easy to shore up.
-We have to counteract Livingston's excellent defense on Delly. That was what screwed us for quite a bit.
-My solutions: 1. Either Mozgov or LBJ have to be on the court pretty much all game. It gives us an advantage to work off of. Now granted, they can counter Moz by not going so small, but that'll hurt their offense too. 2. We did pound them pretty well with LBJ-TT-Moz on the court together. I think we were only +1, but the 2nd chance opps were there. That means Moz has to cover someone, and whoever he covers, he has to step out a little bit further. Sure he might not have the foot speed to stay in front of his man, but the shot at the rim likely won't be easy.
-I think we'll be more fresh with the extra day off to rest, but we likely have to spread our minutes out a little bit more. Come the 4th quarter, there was a lot of dead legs, missed shots, and ball slapping (instead of feet moving), which I am sure was due to fatigue. Granted, we gave a lot to climb back into the game.
-They are going to continue to throw different looks at LeBron. They recover well on ball swings (as seemingly everyone is 6-8ish and athletic when they go small), so we'll (obviously) need to hit what is open at a higher clip AND use that scrambling to get in good position for offensive rebounds.
-The bottom line: it's doable but we'll need to manufacture some consistent offense. To expect LBJ to go for 40/night is not going to cut it. It's been a great team defensive effort, and now we'll have to really focus on correcting some things on that side, but spending a ton of time on how to create advantages on offense. And never forget what Blatt said at halftime: we can't afford to be out-hustled.
I think the film room leaves these guys a bit more confident and we will be in the game at the end of the game. This series has still been epic, and I see no reason to think that they have "figured it out" like it's them against their emotions. It's them against a group of ferocious competitors, led by a generational talent, and we've constantly heard, almost like a fractal, that we need to treat each game, day, quarter, possession, and moment as if it stands on it's own. Now it's time to see if our team can deliver by putting that into action.
