I've seen two big issues in the last few weeks which are causing us problems:
(1) Lack of variety in the offense. We have huge quarters where we run like crazy and score a ton but we also have quarters where we can't put the ball in the basket to save our lives. Missing Marvin Bagley was a big part of this as he provides a different dimension than our guard-heavy starting lineup. He provided a huge boost in this game but we got almost nothing from our leading scorer (Buddy) unfortunately. Buddy has been consistent enough that a bad game here or there is excusable. I'm more concerned about the bench looking completely out of sync with each other. We brought in Alek Burks and played him a lot of minutes early on but he wasn't pushing the pace like Coach wants so he seems to have already fallen out of the rotation. Then we brought in Corey Brewer and started playing him a lot of minutes as the swing man instead but he's barely had any time to learn the offense or get familiar with the rest of the roster. Bogdan, Marvin and Nemanja have been in and out of the starting lineup recently.
When I watch the games now it just looks like the subs come in and suddenly everybody is freelancing. For most of the year we've been able to come up with a play for an easy basket to stop the bleeding when we need it but the recent roster turnover has killed a lot of the trust the bench unit developed together. We're still racking up points off turnovers (especially when Fox is in the game) but that can't be the entire game plan. I like seeing Bogdan get the opportunity to make plays but he's at his most dangerous as a spot-up shooter and making him a primary ball-handler now off the bench takes away that part of his game. He's forcing up some difficult shots right now and the more possession we waste with bad shots the more pressure that puts on everybody else. The frustrating thing is that they're quite capable of moving the ball and creating easy looks, they just seem to voluntarily go away from it for long stretches of games.
(2) Oh boy do we have problems on the defensive end! When this team is at it's best they're forcing turnovers, crowding ball handlers on the perimeter, and using their energy to wear other teams out. We're the living embodiment of the phrase "the best defense is a strong offense". That's been a double-edged sword though. Often we're so focused on getting the ball up the court quickly that we just step aside and let the other team get an easy basket. And more than the crunch-time mistakes, what's killing us is how easy we give up points in the middle quarters. Grant Napear is fond of calling out missed free throws that come back to haunt us later on but we're effectively doing the same thing any time we give up on a play and let the other team get a layup or an easy shot or an offensive rebound which leads to points. And we do that a lot! We do have some good individual defenders. I think this is where we show our immaturity the most. We don't come out focused for all 48 minutes.
Case in point: It took almost 5 minutes for Brooklyn to score their first points of the 3rd quarter and yet they still managed to score 20 in the quarter. Teams are going to score 100+ points per game now, that's just the new NBA. The increased volume of threes and accelerated pace make it inevitable. But you can still make them work for it. I don't mind too much if one player gets crazy hot and has a career game. It happens. But what's happening far too often is that we're giving maybe 50-60% effort on the defensive end. If this is a product of our "fastest in the league" pace then maybe we need to find a happier medium where we allow ourselves a chance to breath.
I don't think we're playing measurably worse than we have all year. Some of this is bad luck, bad timing, guys getting injured, and so on. But there's a hard ceiling on how much better we could be if we're unable to solve these problems next season.