What happened?
We had three tough games into tonight. We knew, that if things didn’t go the right way, adversity may hit. And we didn’t fight through it.
We were just emotionally drained, and gave into their onslaught as the game went on.
Once they hit us with the haymakers, we didn’t have enough emotional fortitude, or whatever it was, to sustain it.
Hey coach, how did Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas fare? Here’s your chance to lay some blame on them.
Terrence and Jonas have a lot of work to do. To play at this level, you got to have razor-like focus. I don’t want to poo-poo how much they grew throughout the seaosn, but again, this level is a different level, and all of our guys, all of us have to learn how to compete at this this level.
Does this roster need a major change?
I don’t think so. That’s not my department. My job was to, er, is to get us ready to play and develop, continue the process, that’s my charge, my goal.
The next step this team and organization has to make is probably going to be the toughest, to get to that next level. To go from just making the playoffs, to continuing in the playoffs and playing for a championship. I know how hard that is. We won it in Dallas. It took us three years to get to that level. Our guys are just scratching the surface where we need to be to get to that level.
Seriously, what happened? Who’s fault is it? Say Jonas and Ross, please
The way we played in the entire playoffs was not us, as far as execution offensively, execution defensively, we didn’t get it done as a group. I don’t think you can pinpiont one person, it was all of us, us coaches, we’re in this together.
Does he regret any strategic or tactical decisions?
No, we tried everything. We made adjustments, we tried to make every proper adjustment, according to their small lineup, their big lineup, their pick ‘n roll game, their post-up game. The only thing we didn’t implement, and it was tough for us to get in, was our zone. Everything else, we switched, they exploited that.
Why did the defense suck this year?
One thing hurt us this year was DeMar’s injury, going out 22 games. I don’t know what our numbers were defensively, I thought they were pretty good before he went down. And then we became ‘how are we going to score’ [type team]. Got caught up in that game, playing a little bit faster, taking quicker shots. And somehow, somewhere, your defense is going to suffer.
It was hard for me, as a coach, to get the horse back in the barn.
I usually comment a lot more on these quotes but today I’m just drained. Only thing I’ll comment on is the quote about strategy. From one angle, I think it’s crazy that he thinks he couldn’t have done things better when dealing with Bradley Beal’s movement, Paul Pierce’s hot stretches, the defensive rebounding, or the looks he gave John Wall. On the other hand, maybe he’s just not a good enough coach to know that there are other possibilities out there when dealing with a good-passing big man in Gortat, combined with a lightning quick guard in John Wall.
I don’t think the Raptors ever made it difficult for Wall, we should’ve sagged off of him to force him to shoot, we should not have had Kyle Lowry check Bradley Beal under any circumstance, and two of our best wing defenders in James Johnson and Landry Fields (yes, he does exist) weren’t even utilized. We didn’t even think about bumping Gortat off the offensive rebounds or even offer him a different look for five minutes. In the regular season, Chuck Hayes had success against Marc Gasol where he held him away from the boards on account of his strength, not even something like that was tried, if only to slow him down for brief moments to quell the storm.
So, when he says he has no regrets, it blows my mind. On the DeMar DeRozan injury affecting the defense, the stats do support that. Up until the injury, the Raptors were 9th in defense, and since they’re 25th. So, there you go. The new working theory is that the defense sucked because everybody tried to compensate for DeRozan’s offense and forgot about defense. The coach couldn’t correct that approach, as he admits with the whole horse/barn thing.
