It drives me absolutely insane that we are not a very good team defensively for long stretches of games, that the opposition seems to consistently play with more energy and hustle during crunch time, but tonight was a different story. I could be wrong (don’t have the stats but perhaps Dylan can check), but I don’t think we allowed Minn a single offensive rebound during the last 5 minutes of the game. I thought the defense was decent, and most of all we played like a hungry team down the stretch.
I certainly call out the team for not playing and being tough, but I will give credit where credit is due, and tonight our team earned that credit. We closed out this game because we outplayed them down the stretch (not withstanding a silly foul by Nik.), on the road at that. We’ve crumbled in these moments earlier in the year, but tonight we grew up a little.
Obvious kudos to Irvin and Horford, but Walton quietly took a leap tonight, not so much with his scoring but his game management and rebounding.