Point Blank – February 28, 2017
Did the All Star break make the Wizards disappear…It is a special night for Iowa State, but the Cyclones are also running into a special offense…
Two of the biggest games on the Tuesday board also bring some of most intriguing talking points, both for the particular matchups involved, and the long-term. So time to get to work for some more Case Studies in Basketball Consciousness…
Item: Tonight’s game is big for the Wizards, but might it be too big
Washington went into the All Star break on quite a roll, the Wizards going 15-2 over their final 17 games, made even more impressive by the fact that they had the lead in the final half-second of regulation play in both defeats (one of the loss, vs. Cleveland, went to OT). That surge not only pushed them to the top of the Southeast Division, but also to within a legit chase for the #1 seed in the conference. It was enough to go out and add some badly needed depth in the form of Bojan Bogdanovic.
Time off can sometimes be a crusher to momentum, and in this case it may have been. Washington has opened 0-2 SU and ATS in the post-break cycle, losing to the spread by 29 points, including an ugly loss at Philadelphia in which the Joel Embiid-less 76ers rang up 120 points. Ordinarily a defeat like that would be like having a bucket of ice water dumped over a team, but instead of responding well the Wizards fell down by as many as 28 points in losing to Utah in the ensuing game.
There was a theme across the defeats – bad basketball. Washington got pummeled 100-70 on the boards, allowed 48.1 percent shooting, and John Wall alone had 15 turnovers. Hence tonight’s game against Golden State is a showdown in more ways than one for Scott Brooks and his team – it is not just the profile of the opponent that they are up against, but also an issue of their confidence and composure. I make those latter elements important here because of a loud and recurring theme that came from the post-mortem of that loss to the Jazz. In a game that the Washington players should have been embarrassed to have lost the boards 52-27, was there far too much focus spent on the officiating?
I’ll start with Wall - “It’s frustrating. You keep attacking the basket. No-name guys getting calls on the other end, that’s getting little contact. You drive to the basket and get contact the whole game and [they] try to make up for those calls the last two or three minutes of the game. It gets frustrating. But I got to do a better job as a leader of this team in keeping my emotions in check. But don’t try to give me the calls [late] to make me feel good. That’s not going to change the outcome or how aggressive I want to be in the game.
“I think we were being physical, we were competing, we were attacking the basket just as much as them. Look at some of calls they got and some of the calls we should’ve got. It didn’t go our way. This isn’t nothing new. We dealt with this before. Near the end of the game the refs try to make up for what they missed, but you can’t make up for 20 to one free throws in the first half.”
Had that been all it could have been excused (and just for clarification, the FTs were 18-1 in the first half). Wall has been one of the best players in the sport this season, and it has been his leadership and drive taking the team beyond his obvious physical skills. But there was more.
Let’s go to Markieff Morris – “All we can ask is for them (the officials) to do their job to the best of their capabilities like they ask of us every night. We had a bad game. They had a bad game. We came out with the loss. We’re the ones that’s reaping the consequences. It’s one of those games.”
And then there was Bradley Beal – “We got to fight through it. We just got to ignore it and continue to play. Sometimes I think we put our attention too much on the refs and not getting calls. . . . If we get them, we get them. If we don’t, forget it and just move on, man. We got to continue to play. It’s tough though because we do get beat up. We feel like we deserve calls that’s not been made but it is what it is.”
I am not sure it is ever OK for three key cogs in the machine to vent on the officiating after a game. I am pretty certain that it is not OK in a game in which a tem fell down by double figures in the first half, and never got closer than seven the rest of the way. There were 79 available rebounds and the Wizards only grabbed 27 of them; none of the others were credited to an official coming down with the ball.
Is this about confidence and mojo? Otto Porter, who has been having a terrific season, used those words after practice on Monday - “Just get back to playing how we’ve been playing. Get our scheme back, get our confidence back, get our mojo back. With that, it’s going to take some time, but I feel like we’ll get it back going.”
And that is the point – in focusing on the need to get something back, it is admitting that the item(s) had been lost. Two scoreboard defeats should not have been enough to shake a team that hard, but that shows the contrast between how well they were playing into the break, how dismal those first two games back were, and quite possibly how fragile they still are mentally.
Item: And making the challenge even more difficult are the Warriors
Golden State is 1-5 ATS playing the second night of back-to-back games on the road this season, a small sample size but something that carries a bot of logic because the depth on the current roster is nothing special. The one success came in Kevin Durant’s return to Oklahoma City, when there was more than enough adrenaline running through the locker room.
It may be a more focused Warriors team tonight, however, with this also being a homecoming for Durant, who was born and raised in Washington, and there just may be a bit of a chip on Steph Curry’s shoulder after taking an 0-11 collar from 3-point range in last night’s win at Philadelphia, the Golden State offense a collective 6-29 beyond the arc. For trivia buffs, Antoine Walker and Trey Burke are the only other players in NBA history to have taken an 0-11 collar in a regular-season game (John Starks did it in the playoffs).
Let’s go to Steve Kerr – “What I love about Steph is he went 0-11 tonight from three but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at his face. He never loses confidence; he never hangs his head. It is a sign of a guy with ultimate confidence in his ability and the awareness that it is one of those nights. He is likely to come out tomorrow and make about seven in a row at some point.”
And for proper perspective, note that Curry took it in stride, an appropriate tongue-in-cheek response to the post-game reporters – “The weatherman said it’s like a low-pressure system that was coming in and I forgot to adjust to the thickness of the air.” He’ll be more relaxed at opening tipoff than his Washington opponents.
Item: The LHG at Iowa State means more than most (but Oklahoma State is a beast right now)
There are not many Senior Nights on this week’s board that bring as much of a legacy as the final bow-out for seven Iowa State players this evening, including four starters. If it seemed like Frank Mason had a rather unusual career arc for Kansas, which got celebrated in Lawrence last night, how about Monte Morris making start #115 his evening? Meanwhile Nazareth Mitrou-Long is finishing his fifth season, getting a medical red-shirt after appearing in only eight games LY; Matt Thomas is closing out a career that saw him start 15 games as a freshman back in 2013-14; and while Deonte Burton began his career with Marquette, this will be game #55 and start #36 for him as a Cyclone.
It has been quite a run for the group, State winning at least 23 games in each of the seasons, and because of their leadership and balance (all four of the seniors are averaging in double figures), they have a chance to make a run in the Big Dance. Here is how floor leader Morris sets the Tuesday stage – “I’ll probably cry in the locker room when coach plays our video — our highlight tape. He plays a personal one for the guys. Even on the plane coming back from Texas Tech (last week), I got emotional just knowing our flights are winding down together.”
It will not be easy tonight, however. Remember all of those great things written about the UCLA offense in the Friday edition, and how the Bruins were elevating to a historical level? Behind the skill sets of Jawun Evans, Jeffrey Carroll and Phil Forte, who are now getting comfortable in the first season of Brad Underwood’s schemes, the Oklahoma State offense has also become something special -
2017 Offensive Efficiency
1. UCLA 125.5
2. OSU 125.3
That isn’t just rating the Cowboys as #2 for this season, but at #3 over the past decade, only 2015 Wisconsin scoring at a more efficient clip. As the chemistry comes together they have built a 10-1 SU and 9-2 ATS run, the only loss in the span a close defeat vs. Baylor, and who knows just how high the ceiling is.
Let’s go to Underwood for more on that – “We’re a good basketball team and have we peaked? Not yet. We have a chance to be an exceptional basketball team and we’re showing that.”
These two put on an offensive showcase in Stillwater earlier, Iowa State winning 96-86, and I don’t see the flow changing all that much – while it is the #1 and #18 offenses on the court, the defenses are far less of a force, the Cyclones at #46 and the Cowboys at #111. And when those defenses do cause a miss note that each has been weak at clearing the boards, ISU #275 in the nation in defensive rebounding, and OSU even worse at #317.
So how does this one flow? I believe the same way, and it will put #750 Iowa State/Oklahoma State Over (9:00 Eastern) in pocket, with 161 the going morning rate (a shopper can get to 160 right now), and this one good to 162. I expect an intense game, a fast-paced game, and also a close game - these teams suffered one loss each in February, by a combined five points. What does the latter element mean? An opportunity for some late scrambling, and this duo just happens to be #1 (OSU at 80.3) and #3 (ISU at 73.0) in the Big 12 in free throw shooting. Meanwhile the willingness to chase stems from the fact that the teams are #1 and #2 in the Big 12 in 3-point shooting, so the final furlongs of this race could pack a lot of points.
About Last Night, NBA…
After Monday’s discourse on both the quality and quantity aspects of the Houston offense, that loss to Indiana brings a pause for some added perspective. The Rockets shot 36.4 percent from the field, and the starting lineup was a 3-27 roll of the dice from 3-point range. Yet they still got to 108 points because of the tempo.
Houston has played the first three games since the break at a 107.6 pace. For perspective, the full season leader is Brooklyn at 103.9, and in 2016 it was Sacramento at 102.2, in 2015 Golden State at 100.7. And note that with last night’s scoring updated into the mix, the bench production since the break nearly matches the scoring of the starters – the first unit now at 191 and the reserves 188. This bunch is going to challenge most traditional handicapping models, but that can open up opportunity in the marketplace.
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