At the end of practice Friday, the Maine Red Claws spent several minutes working on inbounds plays with only a few seconds left on the clock.
It’s an aspect of basketball – close and late – at which they have been unusually successful during a D-League season that earned them the top overall seed of the eight playoff teams, with a .700 winning percentage.
RED CLAWS IN THE PLAYOFFS
First round, best-of-three
GAME 1: Mad Ants 104, Red Claws 103 (OT), Mad Ants lead series 1-0
GAME 2: Fort Wayne at Red Claws, 4 p.m. Saturday (ESPN News)
GAME 3: Fort Wayne at Red Claws, 4:30 p.m. Sunday (ESPN News), if necessary
It’s also an area where they stumbled Tuesday night in a 104-103 overtime loss to the defending champion Fort Wayne Mad Ants in Game 1 of their best-of-three first-round series.
Game 2 is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at the Portland Expo. Should the Red Claws win, a decisive Game 3 would be played at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, also at the Expo.
The Claws led by as many as 15 points Tuesday night in Indiana and by 10 early in the fourth quarter. They also made a whopping 20 turnovers, including two at critical times.
The first was their failure to inbound the ball with 1.2 seconds remaining in regulation and the game tied. The second was a shot-clock violation with 16 seconds left in overtime and Maine ahead by a point.
Those are exactly the type of situations where, during the regular season, the Claws would give point guard Tim Frazier the ball and Frazier would make something happen.
Unfortunately for the Claws, Frazier’s home base is now the other Portland. The NBA Trail Blazers signed Frazier the day after Maine’s home finale.
“You’d always choose to have him if you could,” said Red Claws Coach Scott Morrison. “But Davion (Berry, Frazier’s replacement at point guard) has had a good week since Tim left and we did win two close games on the road last week without Tim.”
Berry played college basketball at Weber State and was named Big Sky Player of the Year last winter. He played professionally in Italy before joining the Claws in early March.
“Davion is a good player, too,” said forward Omari Johnson, who came off the bench to score 21 points and grab 17 rebounds in Tuesday’s loss. “It’s next man up. We’re not worried about what Tim would have done because we’re all good players. We believe in ourselves. We made it this far from everybody scoring, everybody contributing, so that’s how we’re going to continue playing it.”
Even so, the Claws are still adjusting to Frazier’s absence. In his last four games, ball movement was good enough that 65 percent of Maine’s field goals came directly from a pass. In Game 1, that assist/basket ratio dropped to 40 percent and, over the four games since his promotion to the NBA, the Claws average 46 percent.
“That’s what we’re going to have to work on for this weekend,” Morrison said. “Just keep our pace up. Keep the ball moving. Sharing the ball a little bit more, especially in the fourth quarter when the defense clamps down a little bit.”
Maine and Fort Wayne have played five games against each other this season. The Red Claws are 2-1 in Indiana and 1-1 in Portland. The total points scored is 485-485. Three games were decided by a point and Tuesday’s reached overtime.
“They’re a scrappy team,” Johnson said, “but we’re confident we’re going to win. This whole season, we’ve been down a lot. Coming back, that’s kind of how we play. We make adjustments and come back and beat the team in the second half. This next game is sort of like the second half.”
Among Maine’s biggest challenges are containing former Celtics guard Jordan Crawford and center C.J. Fair. Each scored 28 points Tuesday night.
“We’re not worried about those guys making a few shots,” Johnson said. “It’s about making those shots difficult and taking away things that they want to do.”
James Young was missing from practice Friday because of illness. Young is one of the two Celtics assigned to the Red Claws. The other is Chris Babb.
If Young hasn’t recovered by Saturday afternoon, Andre Stringer or Jason Calliste will likely start instead.
“Obviously we’re hoping to have James,” Morrison said, “but I’d be confident that we can get the job done no matter who’s out there.”
Having three days between Games 1 and 2 has allowed Morrison and his staff to make further adjustments to their game plan.
“If the guys really dig in and take care of the ball and defensive rebound, then we’ll have a shot to win,” Morrison said. “And hopefully we’ll hit that shot.”
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