1) Defense struggling to re-discover that elite mojo. We had been shutting down stars and forcing the role players to beat us. That’s not happening during the rough patch.
2) Not turning teams over. The pints in transition were what allowed us to run up the score on the opposition and cruise during the good times. During the rough patch teams are recognizing the lurker, or banshee as Coach Reddick calls them, and being less reckless with the pass.
3) Bench scoring issues. The entire Lakers bench was out scored by one player. That’s not gonna get it done, someone off the bench needs to become a serious, nightly scoring threat. Even in the playoffs you need something from your bench.
4) Streaky threes. We made a decent clip, and have over our last 10 (38.5%) but it hasn’t been enough with the dip in Fastbreak points once the defense started failing/got scouted.
5) Negative LeBron. Tonight was another night where we lost the LeBron minutes. Hard to see us struggle when Luka goes to the bench. I’d consider keeping Luka and LeBron together and letting Reaves and maybe Gabe run the 2nd unit. LeBron needs time to ramp up and get grooving, we got killed when he ran the show.
Honorable mention goes to the lackadaisical 3rd quarter. Need to figure that out, stat.
Can’t just flush this one, need to right the ship ASAP.