Golden State's Coach Is Not Planning to Hold the Ball Tighter

A coach who has just lost a Finals game has two jobs, and they pull against each other: say what happened, and leave with something she can fix by Wednesday. Natalie Nakase did both on Monday night in San Francisco, and the two halves of her press conference describe different games.

The first half was more generous than losing coaches usually manage. "It's frustrating, that's been part of our identity," she said, per the Associated Press. "Because our identity is defense, we hang our hats on that." Then, on how Atlanta kept ending up with the ball: "The hustle is the turnovers because in order for you to get turnovers they have to kind of outhustle you to create the turnovers."

Take those in the order she said them and she is not conceding effort. She is conceding the category -- ESPN had these two clubs as the first- and second-ranked defenses by defensive rating in the regular season, without saying which was which.

Then she was asked what she would look for on film. Per ESPN's Michael Voepel: "We're going to see how close these fouls were. [The Dream] do lunge forward at times. We've just got to make sure we take a close look. We have to play harder, No. 1, but we have to play smarter as well."

The fouls. Not the ball.

Same instrument, other end of the floor

Golden State committed 13 fouls in Game 1 and 23 in Game 2. Atlanta went to the free-throw line 21 times on Saturday and 35 times on Monday.

I wrote last night that Atlanta won Game 2 at the free-throw line: both clubs scored 49 points from the field, Atlanta made 30 free throws to Golden State's 16, and the game finished 14 apart. It is still sitting there with 35 attempts next to it.

Nakase's plan is to walk into Wednesday with Atlanta's contact on the film. Same instrument, other end of the floor. That is not a coach getting ready to protect the ball; it is a coach getting ready to contest the whistle, arguing with the sentence I put my name on from the other side of it.

Veronica Burton committed three of the 19 giveaways and took responsibility for all of them: "I think we were just a little too loose with the ball. Obviously that's what they're known for, and we're known for the opposite." Voepel printed the first sentence and not the second.

What actually doubled

The figure in circulation is 19: the 18 turnovers charged to Golden State's players plus one charged to the team. Atlanta stole 14 of them, 78% of the player giveaways and 74% of the whole column. The ratio is mine, no outlet I reached printed it, and 19 is what a reader who checks will find.

It is also the least surprising thing on the page. Golden State has played eight postseason games and the steal share of its player turnovers reads 75, 60, 67, 69, 67, 30, 63 and 78. The mean is 64%. Monday is the top of a range, not an exit from one.

The volume is the part with no precedent. Those 18 player turnovers are a postseason high by five. The 14 steals conceded, a postseason high by five. The 24 points Atlanta scored off them, a high against an eight-game mean of 11.6. And Golden State scored no fast-break points at all, the only zero in a column that read 6 to 11 in its other seven playoff games. Nobody asked Nakase about that zero in the four Game 2 accounts I read in full.

I printed those 14 steals last night, and Rhyne Howard's six of them. The number I left out was the one that belonged beside them, settled now four ways: Atlanta scored 24 points off Golden State's turnovers on Monday, and 8 off them on Saturday.

Saturday is still in the record

Same two teams, same building, two days earlier. Atlanta had 5 steals, 8 points off turnovers and a loss: Golden State 68, Atlanta 64. The defense that produced 14 steals on Monday produced 5 on Saturday, which is what makes Wednesday a live question.

It cuts the other way too. Atlanta gave the ball away more often on Monday than on Saturday, 14 times against 12, and won by 14 anyway, with Golden State taking eight of those as steals. And Saturday's version of this defense still held Golden State to 68.

Game 3 is Wednesday at State Farm Arena, 8 p.m., series level at one apiece.

Golden State's coach is not planning to hold the ball tighter. She is planning to ask whether Atlanta is allowed to take it. Those are two different Game 3s, and hers is the one nobody built a story around.