They required him to go nuclear because our inability to stop anyone caused us to have to try to outscore everyone instead. In the Denver series we gave up 2 50-point games to Murray, not exactly known for his high-scoring. We made him look like the next coming of Jordan. And Mitchell's masterpiece game was in a losing effort because we could not get stops, period. If we actually had some defensive presence he wouldn't have needed those huge games just to be competitive. In fact the best games we had, we also had our best defensive ratings, not necessarily our best offensive ratings, as a team. Lack of firepower isn't really the issue, lack of defense is.
I am not downplaying Mitchell's fantastic efforts in the post-season. His scoring has been nothing short of legendary. But because we cannot stop anyone they are all for naught. He was the first player since Iverson to score 50 points in 2 games in the same playoff series, until we let Murray do the same thing.
I have no doubt that Mitchell will again step up his game and average over 30 points per game this year in the playoffs. But this year he has had a different approach at the end of games than he did the previous years, and not just for a few games but for dozens, and it has been very consistent. So consistent in fact that other teams can basically rely on the melt-down. And his attitude about it has changed, at least from what we can see in what he says to the media. And that change is to play exclusively bully-ball and be determined to be the one to force up bad shots regardless of the situation. His clutch performances this year have been historically bad. That is a concern, and if you can't see that you are just willfully being blind to it. If that tendency carries over it will not bode well for us in the playoffs, unless Mitchell can score enough points that we can simply blow everyone out every game.
I am not saying that Mitchell is the sole reason we melt down. As a team we fall apart defensively and that is arguably the biggest problem. But when the defense falls apart, the offense MUST click, and having Mitchell, who has by far the highest usage in the 4th quarter on the entire team, become a flat-out ball stopper, well that is a recipe for disaster.
For the record, I blame Quin for not getting his team, and his star player, to play a better brand of ball at the end of games. It almost feels like he draws it all up this way. That's a bigger problem, imo.
I am hoping we won't see this in the playoffs. I am hoping we have nothing but success and make a deep run that shows we can win it all.
But I am not doing so with blinders on. The problems are real. They need to be addressed, or our playoff run will be cut very very short.
