The problem here is that we’re playing money ball. That’s not inherently wrong. You play the hand you’re dealt and hope to move forward. The problem with money ball is that it thrives in larger samples, but is very risky in small samples. The reason the house always wins is because they are placing drastically more bets than each guest individually, coupled with a very small advantage that’s not nearly as noticeable psychologically or in any given instance. That’s where we thrive. We will shoot our numbers.... over time. The playoffs are a small sample. When things clamp down, the calculus changes. It’s why we suck at rebounding despite our numbers, and I’ve been saying this for at least three seasons, so it’s not a new development. We can point to anomalies as to why games are won and lost, but each game will have anomalies, and any game that doesn’t itself will be an anomaly. Good teams find ways to win games. We’ve certainly done that this year. We’re not in first place for no reason. But, that said, the last two games we found ways to lose. We found ways to lose three games in a row against Denver. We had completely bested them that series. Then we found ways to lose.
We have shooting that should approximate our averages more in the future. But we’ve had a lot of games go the way of not being able to produce because we can’t throw it in the ocean. Do we remember the Houston series? We lost because we couldn’t hit a shot.m, with a non-shooting team. Unbelievably, I think we’re still capable of that in a playoff series, and if we blame it on flukes an anomalies, and that the money ball didn’t have a large enough sample to regress to the mean, well, it’s the playoffs... and your sample sizes are small. Ask the house how they’d feel if all their bets for a year got thrown into 7 scenarios. I’m certain they wouldn’t be going into that thinking the house always wins.
