After yet another loss, Dwane Casey faced the media with the enthusiasm of a man being asked to take the trash out on a cold, windy, -40 degree night. Not just any old trash, but trash that you forgot to take out last week and is now piled up, which means you’ll be having to get real creative to get all that cardboard in there.
To start things off, he was asked about the horrible defense his team plays and to point out what part of his horrible defense is more horrible than the rest.
The main thing is one-on-one defense, keeping the ball in front of you, containing the ball, not getting broken down which causes chain reactions, and that’s where it starts. We got to get stops, we got to contain [the ball], keep it front of us, and then challenge it. It’s simple basketball.
A brave soul then went on to mention that his team had gotten slaughtered like a lamb 56-32 on the boards, which Casey confirmed. He even went so far as to point out that he specifically had asked his soldiers to be cognizant of the glass threat:
They pounded us on the boards, long rebounds, short rebounds, getting pushed around in the paint. Getting second attempts at it. One of the things going in was to get a body on someone, anybody.
[Rebounding ] has been a huge concern.
Good to know that getting outrebounded by 24 boards is a product of a specific plan of not getting outrebounded. I’m thinking that pre-game he should’ve asked his guys not to worry about rebounding at all, since that can’t have been any worse than what we witnessed.
He was asked about James Johnson and Terrence Ross again, and Casey backed Ross’s three-point shooting and importance once again:
We got to get Terrence going again. He’s our three-point threat, he opens up the floor for Kyle and DeMar. Gives us spacing. Again, it’s nothing that James [Johnson] has done wrong, James has played well, but from a spacing standpoint on the offensive end, we need [Terrence Ross] in the lineup.
Finally, what you’ve been waiting for. The Jonas Valanciunas issue. How our big man and best rebounder plays 23 minutes (benched for the full fourth) in a game where we got killed on the glass by 24 is a mystery we need the CSI crew to get on stat. At least this time Casey acknowledged that he was flat-out wrong:
We were in scramble mode. I probably should’ve got him back in, but I thought the scramble group of Amir, Patterson, and James Johnson was going to give us a little more speed and quickness but it totalled us on the boards.
When the Hornets got Jefferson in to matchup with Patterson, perhaps something should’ve clicked in Casey’s mind, but nada. Honestly, I think some fans might have a better sense of what’s going on in the game than Casey does. I realize how ridiculous that sounds, but there’s ample evidence to suggest that Casey’s reads of the game are more often wrong than right.
Sick of this.
