I was watching tonight’s match-up of the Golden State Warriors at the Cleveland Cavaliers.\u00a0 Golden State was coming off of a bad loss;\u00a0 Cleveland was coming off of some strong wins.\u00a0 Cleveland was pretty much embarrassed off the court.\u00a0 Cleveland called timeout less that two minutes into the game, already down 10-2 at the time.<\/p>\n
Cleveland needed to make a statement in this game.\u00a0 They needed to come out and prove that they could play with Golden State, given that these two are the favorites to repeat last year’s NBA Finals.\u00a0 Instead, Golden State came out, was very loose, and played like they were the ones that needed to make the statement.<\/p>\n
I’m reminded of the worst game I ever coached – my 2008 Heat<\/strong> versus the 2008 Knicks in the re-match that year.\u00a0 We were coming off of a huge win, and feeling really good about ourselves.\u00a0 We were expecting to play well against the opponent.\u00a0 We had superior scoring, superior rebounding, and superior passing, and we were confident.<\/p>\n We came out flat.\u00a0 Just plain flat.\u00a0 We looked awful, and we were down at the half.\u00a0 We had our strong line-ups coming out, and I wanted us focused and intense.\u00a0 I opened fire with both barrels in the half-time talk.<\/p>\n You could tell that we weren’t the same team that left the court at halftime.\u00a0 You could tell it from the looks on our faces coming out.\u00a0 9 players coming out with upset, angry looks on our faces.\u00a0 And one player – Josh Wade<\/strong> – who was absolutely happy to be there, playing, and no one – no coach, no fan, no older brother – who he was getting matched up against – was going to take away the joy of playing the game from him.<\/p>\n Three players had good games in the second half.\u00a0 The first was Austin Renwick<\/strong>.\u00a0 That’s because of all my players, Austin was the one who was most in touch with his emotions.\u00a0 He knew what being angry meant, and he knew that when he was angry, he had to focus, to not let it interfere with him doing what he needed to do.<\/p>\n The second was Eric Abele<\/strong>, who the Greyhound Trophy for Hardest Worker<\/a> is named after.\u00a0 He played great because Eric was always focused on doing exactly what our game plan called for;\u00a0 Eric was the model of consistency who never drifted off game-plan.\u00a0 He came out, focused as always.<\/p>\n The third, was, of course, Josh Wade<\/strong>.\u00a0 He was out there to have fun, and was going to bring everything he could.\u00a0 I’ve never had any player outwork Josh Wade.\u00a0 (Having Josh and Eric on the same team was amazing because of the level of hard work they both put\u00a0in.)\u00a0 But Josh wasn’t playing “angry.”\u00a0 He was already aggressive, and already intense, and already hard-working.\u00a0 He didn’t need to be “angry.” \u00a0We nicknamed him “The King of Pain,” because of how often he ended up on the floor diving and fighting for the basketball.<\/p>\n The rest of my team didn’t play anything like the players I had.\u00a0 That’s because to those guys, “angry” was an alien concept.\u00a0 They weren’t “angry” players.\u00a0 Instead of fixing the focus and sloppiness and flatness problems we had,\u00a0with my poor coaching, especially at\u00a0halftime, I just added a new one to the load.<\/p>\n Needless to say, we didn’t win.<\/p>\n I’ve seen lately several teams trying to play “angry” rather than playing “re-focused.”\u00a0 For some players – folks like Austin, or players like me – playing “angry” helps us re-focus and puts us back in aggressive, commanding mode.\u00a0 But I’m growing to believe that many – if not most – players don’t work that way. \u00a0Team Carfax doesn’t play well “angry.” \u00a0The 2008 Heat didn’t play well “angry.” \u00a0And there are tons of players and friends who don’t play well “angry.”<\/p>\n Cleveland, tonight, should have come out focused, knowing how important of a game it was.\u00a0 They came out absolutely sloppy defensively.\u00a0 Cleveland, tonight, should have come out with a strong game plan.\u00a0 They came out absolutely flat and confused.<\/p>\n And when they saw the FUN Golden State was having at their expense, THEY GOT MAD.\u00a0 And sure enough, that was it for them.\u00a0 They completely became unraveled.\u00a0 Cheap shot fouls and scuffles.\u00a0 A couple of players – players who knew how to play mad – looked okay.\u00a0 But others were pretty much gone.<\/p>\n Part of it is the style that Cleveland plays against Golden State.\u00a0 Part of it was the fact that they play so many games, that every once in a while, players are going to come out flat.\u00a0 But part of it is coaching, and part of it is a mental weakness.<\/p>\n I’m not saying Cleveland CAN’T beat Golden State.\u00a0 But I am saying that there is a significant problem that Golden State has exposed in Cleveland.\u00a0 Part of it comes from the isolation-type style that Cleveland tries to play, and part of it comes from poor coaching, but more than anything, I think Golden State has exposed the fact that Cleveland don’t have the emotional control and focus to, as a team, enforce their will upon an opponent.\u00a0 Pull at the strings hard enough, and Cleveland will turn on each other and unravel.\u00a0 This is something that I think Cleveland\u00a0needs to fix.<\/p>\n How did my Heat respond?\u00a0 Quite well, actually.\u00a0 In our next practice, we let go of the anger, and got re-focused, and came out and did some incredible things in our next game, against the Bulls.\u00a0 In fact, in the fourth period of that game, we started and ended the period with long bomb inbound passes from Patrick Smith<\/strong> to Tate Cooper<\/strong> and to Eric Abele<\/strong>, respectively, with Tate, Eric, and Austin hustling back behind all the defenders.<\/p>\n Focus and playing aggressively are not the same thing as anger.\u00a0 Anger allows us to come unglued, and turn that anger in all different directions – most of which do not produce good outcomes.\u00a0 Some players understand how to channel anger in productive ways, but more often than not, it takes away from FUN.<\/p>\n Cleveland doesn’t look like they know how to have fun playing basketball.\u00a0 That’s what concerns me the most about that team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was watching tonight’s match-up of the Golden State Warriors at the Cleveland Cavaliers.\u00a0 Golden State was coming off of a bad loss;\u00a0 Cleveland was coming off of some strong wins.\u00a0 Cleveland was pretty much embarrassed off the court.\u00a0 Cleveland called timeout less that two minutes into the game, already down 10-2 at the time. … Continue reading “Playing Angry”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houndblog.joev.com\/HoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}