Why I'm Okay With Last Night's Game

Last night's game was the first game I've gotten to watch start to finish in high-definition 42" TV. (Most games I get to watch on a 5" computer window.) I've read a lot about people really disappointed by the lost, ready to make some changes, something has to happen, etc.

I'm okay with the game. We lost, yeah, but I've been much, much angrier at other games.

1. Joel. Look, Joel was having a brilliant game. Me, personally, I think he should've been in the game. But Nate simply does not like him in the 4th qtr. Whatever Joel brings, Nate is not a buyer. We're going to have to live with that while we have Nate. I prefer having Nate and not Joel in the 4th to having Joel full time and no Nate. That's just it. (I worry that the same will be true of Sergio.)
2. Defense. Our defense was solid. After the first quarter, we held that team to low total shots, contested shots, forced some turnovers, and played some good D. More to the point, I tried to watch Webster closely and he played some very respectable D on LeBron. We held this team to 84pts and that's including LeBron's magic 3 pointers at the end of the game. That's very, very good. If the offense had shown up, this would have been a game featuring Taurean Green in the fourth quarter. Speaking of which...
3. Offense. I am absolutely not buying the offensive woes. In my opinion, we played a brilliant ofensive game. Do you know what I saw? Open shots. Over and over and over again we had wide open, clean looks at the basket. Our team took great shots. The issue was that they didn't go down. But what the heck do you want? Against what is touted as one of the better defensive teams in the league, we continually and routinely got wide, wide open looks. That's a great offense. So we had great defense, we had great offense... what are we complaining about? That the shots didn't go down? That's a bummer too... but this team has already shown that they can hit the shots. Sometimes a statistical anomaly develops and I can live with that. I'll take those same shots again next game and we'll absolutely blow that team out of the water.
4. Sergio's Shooting. You know, two of those misses were buzzer beaters at the end of quarters and both had a very decent chance of going down. Another couple were 3 pointers, which is a known defect in his game. Another two he was trying to hit layups, when we know his passing too frequently is a known defect. He is developing, and I'm okay with that for the time being.
5. Jack's Shooting. It sucked, agreed. Jack had a terrible game. Nothing new there... Jack has been bad for weeks. But something good did happen last night: never once did he turn the ball over by stepping out of bounds. That might be the first one this year. Development!
6. Outlaw. Every shot he took was, pretty much, clean. He took great shots. He even took some great passes. If anything, I think the degree of difficulty on his shots was too low... maybe that's why he wasn't hitting them.
7. We played not to lose. That's just crap. The last few possessions we had leading up to the final LeBron shot, the Blazers took three great, open, clean looks at the basket. They ran their offense well. Again, we ran into a statistical anomaly.
8. Rebounds. Good grief, we got offensive rebounds. Awesome! And I don't remember losing d-board after d-board. It was a great relief, that. I only remember being massively upset three times over second-chance points instead of 10 or 11 times, as has been usual of late.

That's a loss I'll take. That it happened in the final seconds hurts, yeah. But they played a great game. That team, with that execution, wins the majority of games in the future.

There's a lot to love about last night's game.

(Assuming, of course, that hitting all their shots earlier this season was not the actual statistical anomaly.)