18th January - New Orleans Pelicans vs Los Angeles Clippers - 16-26

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Originally Posted by GuardianAngel25

What started the 10-0 run in 1 minute to start the 4th quarter slick? Was it the bigs not being on the floor? Oh wait..

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Yes but why Hayes also? You can say that Favors was a negative this game but why wouldn't you make Hayes go against Patterson?

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Originally Posted by GuardianAngel25

Lmao! You are desperate after the false narrative you made

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I baited you!! You ignored my last 5 posts proving you wrong time after time. I called
You and your fair weather fan posts time after time. Yet respond to this post the first time I don’t provide facts.

You’re an absolute joke!

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Originally Posted by HartOfaPelican

I baited you!! You ignored my last 5 posts proving you wrong time after time. I called
You and your fair weather fan posts time after time. Yet respond to this post the first time I don’t provide facts.

You’re an absolute joke!

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Oh my! You tricked me!

There was no 10 - 0 run with Favors on the floor to start the forth. Saying it isn't going to make it so. At the 9:54 mark...Moore ended an 8-0 run and the Pelicans had the lead.

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Originally Posted by AUSSIE_PELICAN

Yes but why Hayes also? You can say that Favors was a negative this game but why wouldn't you make Hayes go against Patterson?

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I can’t tell you why.. I’m just not gonna sit here and blame the loss on those 3 minutes. If it was me I would have given Hayes atleast 5 minutes or until he picked up his 5th foul and insert Favors. I’m just not gonna jump at the first sight of us being down for the game and blame it on a 3 minute stretch by claiming it was due to having any bigs on the floor causing us to lose all momentum when we lost all momentum and a 10 point lead in 1 minute with a big on the floor.

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Originally Posted by As I See It

There was no 10 - 0 run with Favors on the floor to start the forth. Saying it isn't going to make it so. At the 9:54 mark...Moore ended an 8-0 run and the Pelicans had the lead.

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LoL maybe hit that rewind button and try again!

Poo

I thought the Clips got a lot of soft calls in this game, but FTs were about even with 36 for Pels and 39 for them. Lou, Mont, and Leonard all had double digit FTs. Hayes had 12. We missed a whole bunch though. Right around 60% for the game.

Sucks to lose but we played well until the 4th quarter.

Edit - I can get over soft fouls but I do get pretty annoyed when a guy like Beverly is out there fouling and they wanna call it hustle because of his reputation. Like Draymond every playoff series.

Hey chirrens. Don't forget to take this energy to the ballot box and vote for Ingram.

Just google NBA All-Star Vote.

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Originally Posted by GuardianAngel25

Oh my! You tricked me!

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Lol. Continuous joke of a person.

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Originally Posted by AD-AT

I thought the Clips got a lot of soft calls in this game, but FTs were about even with 36 for Pels and 39 for them. Lou, Mont, and Leonard all had double digit FTs. Hayes had 12. We missed a whole bunch though. Right around 60% for the game.

Sucks to lose but we played well until the 4th quarter.

Edit - I can get over soft fouls but I do get pretty annoyed when a guy like Beverly is out there fouling and they wanna call it hustle because of his reputation. Like Draymond every playoff series.

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Theme of the season. This is how you lose games. Gotta close out better. Regardless of how well we play the rest of the game, we need to make sure we stay in control.

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Originally Posted by AD-AT

I thought the Clips got a lot of soft calls in this game, but FTs were about even with 36 for Pels and 39 for them. Lou, Mont, and Leonard all had double digit FTs. Hayes had 12. We missed a whole bunch though. Right around 60% for the game.

Sucks to lose but we played well until the 4th quarter.

Edit - I can get over soft fouls but I do get pretty annoyed when a guy like Beverly is out there fouling and they wanna call it hustle because of his reputation. Like Draymond every playoff series.

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Yea I 100% agree! I thought we actually played a solid 4th quarter outside of the first minute where we were out scored 10-0 allowing them to tie the game up. We hung in there all night against a very good and deep team. Had we just had a couple more bounces go our way and we win this game. Never like losing but you can takes positives out of some losses and this one we did some things very well most of the game.

Not converting free throws is what killed us.

beginning of the 4th we settle for 3s and we got away from what was our best offense and that was pnr and getting inside points.........we also stop attacking and settle for outside shots.......i believe if we had okafor available to get some mins and inside points,,we would had won this game....

gentry is our coach and the FO has to give him the personal he need to run his small ball system or get a coach that will run something different......this is like giving gentry, monty players all over again.....you got to give the man a 4th big that he will play after zion,,favors and hayes or get a coach in here that will not play a small ball set......

and this team suck at free throws...the whole team should be practicing shooting free throws for hours...

it was a good game and i enjoyed it.....

So, I missed this game live (unfortunately, I will watch it later) but just looking at the box score and reading through a few comments, I have a few feelings about what I'm going to see when I do finally see the whole thing.

Pels play good offense, but can't slow down the Clippers on the other side of the ball. Whenever they do start to get some defense together, inopportune foul calls kill the momentum; game finishes with roughly even FTAs for each team, but due to the timing of the Clips calls it feels like they got the benefit of the whistle more than we did. 21 turnovers in the game led to too many transition opportunities that we couldn't defend properly. We had the advantage within the paint (that's what 22 points in 28 minutes for Favors and 14 points in 15 minutes for Hayes implies, anyway) but for some reason declined to press it, instead settling for badly timed threes. Some of these threes were falling early in the game, and this amplified the team's confidence for later on, but somewhere between halftime and the start of the 4th we cooled off from range, but the team never realised it and continued shooting threes until it was clear the game was out of our control. At that point we fought back to within a handful of points but it was just too late and we weren't able to overcome the issues from earlier.

Does any of that sound about right? That's my Nostradamus prediction going into the game.

Edit: a closer look at our percentage at the FT line reminds me of how before the season, I was pointing out how we had very few good FT shooters on the team (Ingram's improvement has been huge, but before the season started nobody in our starting lineup had shot better than 80% the previous season!) and I said that this issue would probably cost us a couple of games down the stretch when we bled points at the line.

Here we are, 3 point loss in a game where we shot 23-36 from the FT line.

Jrue and Zion being back wouldn't have fixed this, because Jrue is a meh FT shooter and Zion is only about as good as Hayes from the line (high 60s). Guys gotta get better on the line.

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Originally Posted by UNO Gracias

Not converting free throws is what killed us.

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&turnovers.

I suggest we practice this. Practice free throws and ball control all day at the next practice.

Final statlines I guess :hihi:

Starters:
Ingram: 21 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists. 7/18 shooting (38.9%) and 2/8 from 3 (25%). 4 turnovers, 4 fouls.
Ball: 18 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists. 7/16 shooting (43.8%) and 4/9 from 3 (44.4%). 6 turnovers, 3 fouls.
Hart: 9 points, 10 rebounds, 1 assist. 4/10 shooting (40%) and 1/6 from 3 (16.7%). 3 turnovers, 4 fouls.
Redick: 19 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists. 5/12 shooting (41.7%) and 3/6 from 3 (50%). 2 turnovers, 1 foul.
Favors: 22 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists. 10/10 shooting (100%). 0 turnovers, 3 fouls.

Bench:
Jax: 14 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists. 3/3 shooting (100%). 1 turnover, 4 fouls.
Moore: 9 points, 1 rebound, 3 assists. 4/8 shooting (50%), and 1/5 from 3 (20%). 1 turnover, 0 fouls.
Frank: 8 points, 0 rebounds, 1 assist. 3/3 shooting (100%). 0 turnovers, 4 fouls.
NAW: 10 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist. 3/6 shooting (50%) and 2/5 from 3 (40%). 2 turnovers, 2 fouls.

Advanced Stats from this game:

Best Net Rating: JJ Redick (+18), followed by Hayes (+16.8)
Worst Net Rating: Frank Jackson (-37.8), followed by Moore (-34)

TS% Leader: Frank Jackson (133%), followed by Favors (93.5%)
Lowest TS%: Josh Hart (45%), followed by Ingram (49.8%)
REB% Leader: Derrick Favors (21.2%), then Hayes (14.7%))
REB% Lowest: Melli and Frank both tied at 0%
AST% Leader: Lonzo (39.3%) then Hayes (30.8%)
Lowest AST%: Melli (+0%) then Hart with 3.4%

Scrn Assists Leader: Favors (4), leading to 11 points. Then Hayes with 3, for 8 points.
Deflections Leader: Hart, with 3.
2pt Contests Leader: Hayes, with 10. Followed by Favors with 7.
3pt Contests Leader: Ball, with 6. Followed by Hayes with 5.
Overall Contests Leader: Hayes, with 15.
Boxouts Leader: Hayes and Favors tied with 4 each.

Also just going to say to the Jrue Haters, if he plays last game Mitchell doesn't get 46 and we run away with that game and if he plays today Kawhi and Lou aren't getting 39 and 32 and we would have won. We tend to undervalue defense, too much. He is a vital lynchpin to sustained success.

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Also just going to say to the Jrue Haters, if he plays last game Mitchell doesn't get 46 and we run away with that game and if he plays today Kawhi and Lou aren't getting 39 and 32 and we would have won. We tend to undervalue defense, too much. He is a vital lynchpin to sustained success.

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We also could have had more turnovers and missed offensive production due to bad shot selection. Goes both ways.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Also just going to say to the Jrue Haters, if he plays last game Mitchell doesn't get 46 and we run away with that game and if he plays today Kawhi and Lou aren't getting 39 and 32 and we would have won. We tend to undervalue defense, too much. He is a vital lynchpin to sustained success.

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Totally agree!!!!

….and despite the terrible free throw percentage and our propensity to turn the ball over, if we weren't among the league leaders in giving up uncontested layups, we'd probably have a winning record,

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Also just going to say to the Jrue Haters, if he plays last game Mitchell doesn't get 46 and we run away with that game and if he plays today Kawhi and Lou aren't getting 39 and 32 and we would have won. We tend to undervalue defense, too much. He is a vital lynchpin to sustained success.

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Jrue gets so much shtick that he just doesn't deserve. Yes, he had a really rough start to this year, and it sucked. We all get that, and I don't think any Jrue fans would deny it. But he really is a fantastically talented player, has been for the last several years, and I find it really weird that so few people are willing to give him the same benefit of the doubt that they're willing to give to other players with far less impressive back-catalogues.

Lets not get over zealous about Jrue. He is not this teams best player and never will be on any non-lottery team. He is a really nice 3rd wheel.

And Donovan Mitchell dropped 40 on Jrue his rookie year in Utah I'm pretty sure.

This is a team that relies on youth and a head coach that goes through erratic rotations. Ls like this are inevitable. THey'll happen with a fully healthy roster as well.

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Originally Posted by luckyman

Lets not get over zealous about Jrue. He is not this teams best player and never will be on any non-lottery team.

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I don't anyone is really saying that though. But there are people that talk about Jrue like he's some kind of washed up scrub that we should be eagerly looking to trade at first instance for whoever is willing to toss us the 19th pick and some sub-par young prospect, and that's just absurd.

Jrue was a top 20 player last year. He was a top 25 player the year before. He started this year off badly, nobody is denying that, but he's a very, very good basketball player who has given a lot to this franchise and deserves more consideration and benefit of the doubt than he's getting from some.

Doc Rivers also felt that they made their run when they went small and we tried to match....with BI at the 5 and Lonzo at the 4....

yeah

BI is having a career year. Zion is set to be the greatest player of the next decade. But they have to do it consistently to supplant Jrue as our best player. I think both will. BI will continue to get even better and I am all in on the Zionwagon. But.....potential alone doesn't crown them.

Jrue is the perfect 3rd to a Big 3, yeah.....but BI has to keep this up a bit before earning that Big title and Zion has to at least get on the court.

Blows my mind that professional players making this much money can be this bad at shooting free throws

I cant even complain about the officiating...we literally beat ourselves with unforced turnovers and crappy FT shooting

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Zion is set to be the greatest player of the next decade. .

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MVP races between Zion, Luka, and Giannis are going to be absolutely wild.

What a disappointing 4 quarter. Great 3 quarters and terrible 4th. We have a great team, but still need a lot to learn. #WorkInProgress

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Originally Posted by Snarly

They’re a deeper team. Our bench overachieved for 3 quarters. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. They played their hearts out today. I’m definitely not disappointed at all.

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This is how I feel. There was definitely some poor reffing, but we are used to that at home now

We loss this game because somebody has to lose.

This isn’t a game to rile up about. It was evenly matched and what tipped the scale in their favor is their wise and veteran players made shots when it counted.

I know when it’s one of those “omg fire everybody!” games.

To me, this wasn’t one of them.

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Originally Posted by Wowowowow

We loss this game because somebody has to lose.

This isn’t a game to rile up about. It was evenly matched and what tipped the scale in their favor is their wise and veteran players made shots when it counted.

I know when it’s one of those “omg fire everybody!” games.

To me, this wasn’t one of them.

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I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

Okay Gentry made a mistake going small. We all make mistakes. Not the end of the world. We lost to a Championship favorite. Learn from it and move on. I'm not going back to trashing Gentry when he has completely turned this team around and his offense/defense is looking fantastic. We are on the right track thats what matters.

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Originally Posted by HartOfaPelican

I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

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Gentry's poor coaching didn't create alll the TOs and horrible FT shooting. We lost this at the line. They had only 3 more attempts then us but had 8 more points there.

People keep saying "we pulled the bigs" like it was only a tactical maneuver to match Doc and it isn't the usual time we would sit people for the final 4th quarter push. This is the type of disadvantage that happens when two starters are out and you're deep in the bench.

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Originally Posted by HartOfaPelican

I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

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You keep ignoring the obvious , Too many missed FT's and too many TO's , Gentry did NOT turn over the ball NOR did he miss a FT . Throw in some bad officiating and you have a loss . AG's rotations had FAR less negative impact on the game than those things . But you hate AG fo it falls into your narrative . AG is not my favorite coach but he is down on the list of reasons for the loss

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Originally Posted by djrnno

You keep ignoring the obvious , Too many missed FT's and too many TO's , Gentry did NOT turn over the ball NOR did he miss a FT . Throw in some bad officiating and you have a loss . AG's rotations had FAR less negative impact on the game than those things . But you hate AG fo it falls into your narrative . AG is not my favorite coach but he is down on the list of reasons for the loss

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I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

People keep saying "we pulled the bigs" like it was only a tactical maneuver to match Doc and it isn't the usual time we would sit people for the final 4th quarter push. This is the type of disadvantage that happens when two starters are out and you're deep in the bench.

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I dont think I've ever seen this team go with a lineup of BI at the 5 and Lonzo at the 4.

Seemed like a desperation move by Gentry to try and match wits with Doc. They didnt lose the lead with that lineup, but they fell further behind with it.

I know we've run a fair share of 3G lineups and even had a few stints with 4G lineups (actually to some success, IIRC). Can't remember exactly which personnel was in those.

So JJ is probable tomorrow against Memphis and Favors, Jrue, and Jah are listed as questionable. Good news on Jrue and JJ, meh for Favors and Jah. Zion is somehow listed as doubtful (lol) and Kenny Hustle and DMill are out. I hope we treat this Memphis and any other game against the teams vying for the 8th spot as playoff games.

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

I know we've run a fair share of 3G lineups and even had a few stints with 4G lineups (actually to some success, IIRC). Can't remember exactly which personnel was in those.

So JJ is probable tomorrow against Memphis and Favors, Jrue, and Jah are listed as questionable. Good news on Jrue and JJ, meh for Favors and Jah. Zion is somehow listed as doubtful (lol) and Kenny Hustle and DMill are out. I hope we treat this Memphis and any other game against the teams vying for the 8th spot as playoff games.

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90% of the time when Gentry rolls out a 3+ guard lineup, especially the super-weird ones that don't contain a lead ballhandler, I just get sad.

It works maybe 20% of the time. The other 80%, we get hammered. For obvious reasons, both in terms of a lack of defensive versatility and interior defense, and because of a lack of consistent abilities to generate good looks on offense (again, particularly in the paint). It's such an awful idea, at least when done with the regularity that Gentry does it, and it actually makes me kind of feel bad for him. Like this is his one party trick and he doesn't realise that everyone got bored of it 10 years ago.

I'd love to refer to line-up data to prove this, but due to injuries and janky rotations, we literally only have one 5-man lineup that's played more than 100 minutes together at this point in the season, and really you want to avoid looking at such small sample sizes as if they were definitive. If you look at 3-man combos (where we do have many 200+ minute trios) you find that of our 9 positive net trios, none of them are 3-guard combos. By contrast, a couple of the negative net trios are (Lonzo/Jrue/Redick being the worst culprit, outscored by 10.9 points per 100). Is this definitive? Not at all, but it's worth at least thinking about when Gentry rolls out 3-guard lineups every night.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

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Not saying make 100% of our FT's , That's really unrealistic as a talking point , What'd we shoot 60%? INEXCUSABLE .Even BI who had been shooting FT's really well did not do so good . JJ a 90% FT shooter 6-8 . And players do improve , BI and Ball have . Also 21 TO's and you're not winning many games against good teams like that

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Originally Posted by djrnno

Not saying make 100% of our FT's , That's really unrealistic as a talking point , What'd we shoot 60%? INEXCUSABLE .Even BI who had been shooting FT's really well did not do so good . JJ a 90% FT shooter 6-8 . And players do improve , BI and Ball have . Also 21 TO's and you're not winning many games against good teams like that

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Of course it's inexcusable, but what I'm saying is that it's also not particularly surprising. That's the kind of thing we've been dealing with for dozens of games now, decisions are made by the coaching staff knowing how we shoot from the FT line, so we can't rely on it to bail us out because we suck from there. Additionally, I'm not saying players don't improve at all, I'm saying that players almost never make big leaps at skills at random, midway through the year. Ingram, for example, came into this year shooting massively better from the FT line than he ever had before, and that's surprising. But it would be three times as surprising if he had come into this year shooting 67% from the line until January 2nd and then magically leapt up to 86% for the rest of the year. That leap happens, but you can't be relying on it to randomly occur in the middle of the season.

I'm not disagreeing that missing FTs cost us (although I wouldn't really get mad at JJ for shooting 80% from the line lol), we lost by 3 in a game where we missed 13 FTs. Of course they cost us. And of course turnovers cost us too, for obvious reasons. I'm just also saying that our mediocrity from the FT line is something that we just have to deal with: it sucks, it will lose us games, i said as much before the season started, but it's also not something that will randomly change mid-season. It's out of the coaching staff's control. But Gentry can decide not to run stupid lineups and rotations. So he should make the choice to not run them, where possible.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

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You’re willing to go into the details and write much longer posts than I’m willing to haha.

Basically, I agree with everything you said. Of corse we missed FT. I’m not stating that because it’s obvious.

What I am say however, that it’s the coaches job to put the team in the best position to win. Taking out our big and try to match our shooting with theirs was a huge mistake on Gentryes part. Thus, getting out coached.... which has happened far too many times this season.

The turnaround for the negative was very obvious when the bigs came out and the score reflected that. Favors and Hayes played incredible all game. There was no reason to go small when we did.