Devin made some crucial mistakes, but Vince waited to long to feel the urgency. We were already down eight with less than a minute to go. As far as who lost the game, you can blame that on the lack of team defense....again.
The bench did suck, but I blame Frank for putting out a lineup of Boone-Ryan-Hassell-Dooling-Harris in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. He didn't call any plays to get Ryan open on the perimeter, thus rendering him useless over that span (there was one play where Boone kicked it out to him off a drive, but it clanked). Take Ryan out and the only guys who are offensively capable are Dooling and Harris: 2 on 5. No wonder we let them back in the game.
You can't play Brook the whole game - similarly you can't play Simmons the whole game. What you're really pissed at is that Hayes was hurt and that Yi sucked, but that's not Frank's fault. I suppose it would have been possible to stagger the time that Brook and Simmons were out of the game, but that's an awful lot to balance when you're doing the same thing with Vince and Harris. http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20081213&game=NJNCHI It is interesting that in the second half, it was pretty much the starters that couldn't put the game away. Can't really blame the second half on the bench...
I kinda figure that after the washington game. You can see that Devin is starting to get frustrated with the T's he's been picking up. Derrick Rose I have to say was dayum good and impressed me.
During this three game period where the league has finally "figured out" Harris, he is averaging 22.7 points and 6.7 assists, shooting 44% from the floor and taking 8.3 free throws a game. Big deal. Anyone want to lie and say they expected better than those numbers from him this year?
He still has stuff he hasn't tried from his bag of trixs. Besides you can't stop blinding speed. The only i figure they can stop him is to figure out a way to get him into foul trouble.
Jarvis Hayes being out is crucial. However the focus of my point was that no offensive set was called to take advantage of Ryan's strengths. He's not at a point where he can be called on to create his own shot; you've got to call a set play to make him an option (where was that hand-off/screen/option offense we had been running?). If you look at the tape, that span just involved people the passing the ball amongst the perimeter hoping that a shot would pop up, and that's pretty much useless.
