‘All the little things’ mean a lot at playoff time
It’s all familiar territory for Raymond Felton.
The Thunder’s 102-95 loss to the Utah Jazz on Wednesday was Felton’s 38th career playoff game, and Oklahoma City is the sixth different franchise with which he’s reached the NBA Playoffs. He won an NCAA title with North Carolina in 2005.
So Felton has been around the block.
After the Jazz evened its first-round series with the Thunder at 1-1, Felton talked about the little things that matter at playoff time.
You guys had a lot of early turnovers, particularly in the first quarter. How important is it to manage possessions in the beginning of the game?
Felton: Obviously turnovers can hurt, but at the same time, we did a lot of things tonight that hurt us. So we just got to go back to the drawing board. That’s what playoff basketball is about.
They came in and stole one, so we got to try to go down there and steal two.
How quickly can those things add up — the second chances and some of those loose balls — throughout the course of a game?
It can hurt. You give up offensive rebounds, you give loose balls, they come down and hit a 3 off those possessions, that can hurt. That can change the momentum of the game. It can give them confidence. It’s so many things that can happen in those situations. Like I said, it’s a lot of things that hurt us tonight, why we lost. We’ll watch film…, get back to the drawing board, get some good work in before we head out to Utah and go try to get these two.
What happened in that 19-0 run in the mid-third quarter that was different than the rest of the night?
Nothing, really. We were just playing our basketball. We were just playing D, locking up. We was moving the ball, getting good shots, taking care of the ball — doing all the little things, I think. That’s what playoff basketball is all about.
It’s not about scoring every possession. It’s not about not turning the ball over. It’s about the little things. You got to get the loose balls, you got to get the rebounds. Those things mean a whole lot when you come into playoff basketball.
They had a 7-2 spurt at the end of the third quarter. Is that a big deal in the course of these games, to close out quarters?
No question, that’s a very big deal. You have to close out the quarters, try not to give them the momentum going into the next quarter and giving them confidence. We went on a run, was up by 10, they want on that little spurt, cut the lead to, like, five. That gave them confidence. We got to do a better job with that.
How concerning is it that two games in a row, they’ve reeled off points against you early and forced you to call timeouts?
Ain’t nothing concerning about that. It was a dogfight throughout the whole game. That’s gonna happen.
Whether it’s early in the game, late in the game, it’s playoff basketball. A team is gonna make a run. They’re gonna go off 10 straight, we went off 10 straight on them.
So that happens. We just got to weather the storm and come back out and make another push at them.
Is it a problem when you fall behind and you have to expend energy to get back in the game?
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a problem. It was too early in the game for us to say that. We got a lot of basketball to play at that point. If something like that happens late in the game, then it might be a problem.
But when it happens like that early in the game, that’s playoff basketball. You got to weather the storm and come out and make a run yourself.