Time to acknowledge reality

[TXBamanut]

Sorry that I called you an Eyeor.  That better?

I said right before I clicked into the board last night, "wonder how fast the overactors hit the board?"  Then the first post I hit was yours, wiring about the Mavs, so I overreacted to it also.

When our team starts doing this when everyone is healthy or at least we don't have 2 of our top 3 players out and probably or best perimeter defender and secondary playmaker out... I'll worry, but I'm not freaking out.

It seems we have at least a couple differences in opinion. 


First, I don’t think I’m overreacting. It is easy for any of us to quickly react to highs or lows in the moment of a game, so I can see how this could be painted as one of those, however this is not a single game occurrence. The lack of closing ability, killer instinct, clutch play, or whatever you want to call it has been seen throughout the season at various points.

Second, you seem to think these shortcomings are primarily a product of injuries to top players. While that does play a role I think, I would also say that I don’t think it is a good enough explanation for how the quality of play drops in crunch time, as it has been an issue even when in good health. 

I think the struggles are more obvious now because when players are healthy, we’ve been a lot better than most teams and haven’t had as much crunch time, but there still have been issues when those situations have occurred. 

Of course if after losing our players to short term injuries we started losing due to what looked like a talent issue, and people started saying we weren’t contenders because of it, that would be an overreaction, but that’s not what’s happening here I don’t think.

As we watch more and more of our team, we gather more information about them to try and use to project out how they’ll do when playoffs come. I enjoy tweets about Luka and his ridiculous stats and where that places him in history as much as anyone, but it’s nice to have other stuff to discuss too. 

If you want to discuss the actual points and whether you totally disagree or whatever, that’s fine, but to just label things an overreaction seems to miss the point (willingly or not).

Apologies if any of this is difficult to read, writing from my phone.

In my opinion, you are overreacting or just jumping too soon (which is the same thing, but a lesser degree), because "killer instinct", "clutch", whatever you want to tag it as is a team characteristic that depends on the ability of your best players to come through at the end...because your best players are the ones playing.

Ergo, when you don't have your best players and you are expecting lesser players to do more than they are meant to do, you can't judge that of the team.

"Plays a role"...I guess Paul George, Kawhi and Lou Williams only "play a role" in the personality of their team...no, they, in large part, DICTATE the personality of their team.  And in this case, until I'm seeing the team, HEALTHY, doing that, then I'm not going to worry a whole lot about it, because at the end of the year, the playoffs, when you most need your players to come through at the end of the game to protect a lead, you'll be expecting your best players to do it.

If your best players aren't available, you probably won't win in the playoffs.

I am not saying DEFINITIVELY that this isn't a problem, but I am saying that until I see the team healthy experiencing this over and over, then I'm not going to freak out about it.

For example, in support of my point, a quote from your post.  You say "the struggles are more obvious now because when players are healthy, we’ve been a lot better than most teams and haven’t had as much crunch time" --- so when we were better, we didn't see these issues because we were just better than the other teams?  I get it that you are TRYING to say that we didn't have super close games at the end where we had to protect a lead, but in that very breath/post, you point out that we are a better team with everyone healthy and we don't see these issues there and why --- because we are better.  

Do you think it's pretty logical to say that our BETTER players playing that force LESSER players to play in their natural intended roles MAKES us more clutch?

You kind of just glossed over the points that I've posted and said that I don't want to discuss the points, when THE BIGGEST POINT (the point that nullifies all other points for me) was made in the original post I made...and you just ignored it because you were run off the 3 because you got your feelings hurt because you felt that I grouped you as an Eyeor...come on, man.f

That's not really a lot of discussion to be made on this point...