It was also a fleeting moment–there wasn’t a sustained leap in that postseason or since. More recently, he was -21 in 35 total minutes across Atlanta’s two play-in losses to be eliminated, ending up with 7 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, 1 turnover, and 6 fouls in those 35 minutes. Makes me sad, and I’ll still root for him in the future, but the past is the past.

We shouldn’t need any of our role players to score 30+ this time around, and as long as James/Kawhi/Zu are all healthy nobody else should even be taking enough shots to get to 30. But we do need Bogi and Norm to hit a decent clip of their C&S 3s and keep the turnovers down.

Don’t know why we move away from ball movement.

Yes, KL or James will take the last shot, but why not actually move the ball around?

Maybe, even give the ball to Zu?

I really like Bogi (he’s been better than Norm over the last 2 months of basketball, though Norm being hurt for most of that time is a worthwhile caveat), but he’s much, much better as a weak-side shooter/secondary playmaker than he is as a lead ball-handler. In his peak with the Hawks, those teams always had Trae Young and either Lou Williams or Dejounte Murray, and Bogi was the guy playing off of those guys as lead ball handlers. Throwing out Bogi-DJJ-Kawhi-Nico-Ben is fun if there’s no ball pressure, but if the Nuggets are going to make a point of punishing the Clippers for taking James out, which was a big theme in game 1, they need to mitigate that by:
– resting James less (the tradeoff here can be giving James more Bogi/less Norm at SG so he has support ballhandling to make for easier workload in heavier minutes)
– getting Bogi going before taking James off the floor
– maybe giving Bogi’s units Dunn so he has another guard
– having Ben take a more active ball-handling role
– Kawhi being better with the ball and not having a playoff career-high 7 TOs

1 & 5 will happen tonight. 3 & 4 I don’t expect to see tonight. 2 is Ty’s wild card.

That said, they’ve been a good rebounding team all year. 9 of their 10 most-played lineups this season grabbed over 50% of available boards. Their best look–James, Norm, Kawhi, and Zu with either Dunn or DJJ–produced great results (52.5% of available boards w/ Dunn, 57% w/ DJJ).

The real issue with rebounding down the stretch of the game wasn’t size of lineup but scheme: using Kawhi and Dunn to bring doubles to Murray at half court left Russ, Braun, and Gordon–three great athletes and rebounders–competing with Norm (small, bad rebounder) and James (strong but not a leaper, good rebounder but in foul trouble) on the glass. When we switched to the high blitz of Murray, we allowed 8 OREBs in 7 minutes (L2M + OT), after allowing 4 in the first 46 minutes. Disaster adjustment.

No way that Bogie can be that bad again. It was nuts, but that’s not who he is. He’s not unplayable by any means, especially against the Denver defense (if it was HOU, it might be a different story), and he’s played in big games for years. He’ll step up. Both Norm and Bogie have to shake off the funk somehow. I’m not sure what will do it, but it might just be getting past game one.