Celtics vs. Warriors, NBA Finals

Who you got?

  • Celtics in 4

    Votes: 6 1.5%
  • Celtics in 5

    Votes: 18 4.6%
  • Celtics in 6

    Votes: 146 37.2%
  • Celtics in 7

    Votes: 127 32.4%
  • Warriors in 4

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • Warriors in 5

    Votes: 23 5.9%
  • Warriors in 6

    Votes: 56 14.3%
  • Warriors in 7

    Votes: 15 3.8%

  • Total voters
    392
  • Poll closed .

lars10

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The best thing to do is treat Draymond how Draymond treats others. Bully the bully. Try to get in his head and jostle him around.

As with most other agitators and people of that ilk, Draymond can dish it out but he can’t handle it. He will absolutely lose his cool or do something stupid. Just have to wait and allow him to self combust
Yeah.. he's absolutely a fake tough guy.
 

lars10

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Yes but I kind of respect it all the same. Maybe I'm just feeling like the C's are going to win anyway, but I admire that Dray pretty much said "If I don't push the limits and try to get into their heads, we're fucked" and went out and did it. I mean, it sucks for us, but I don't think they can out play this Celtics team in a fair fight and Dray realized that. So he took matters into his own hands. Will I be pissed if we lose the series because we couldn't figure out how to get back on our game and the refs let all this stuff go? For sure. But I do appreciate the compete in Green -- and am looking forward to see us adjust.

As for actual basketball stuff, I also think Kerr watched some Miami film and saw them clogging the lanes. A bunch of Tatum's TO's in the first half were guys jumping the lanes and expecting him to dish instead of finish. C's will have to adjust to that for sure.
I'm sorry. Draymond Green is everything that's wrong with the NBA. There's nothing to admire there.

edit: why should we admire a player who does all kinds of crap outside of the rules when other people aren't watching.. gets away with it.. gaining a huge advantage when the player he's doing it to is either a. not allowed to do the same thing or b. tries to control themselves so they don't get thrown out? Draymond knows other players aren't going to stoop to his level... but they're also not given the same space to do the same things he is without getting T'd up and costing their team points and possibly a player.
 

tims4wins

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Won't it be the opposite though? The league will see what happened in Game 2 and adjust. Celtics should expect to get some calls at home. I wouldn't be focused on aggravating Green, but I'd get more physical.
Disagree, they will blow whistles early to make sure nothing gets out of hand
 

BigSoxFan

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I'm sorry. Draymond Green is everything that's wrong with the NBA. There's nothing to admire there.

edit: why should we admire a player who does all kinds of crap outside of the rules when other people aren't watching.. gets away with it.. gaining a huge advantage when the player he's doing it to is either a. not allowed to do the same thing or b. tries to control themselves so they don't get thrown out? Draymond knows other players aren't going to stoop to his level... but they're also not given the same space to do the same things he is without getting T'd up and costing their team points and possibly a player.
Yeah, I can't stand the glorification of Draymond Green by media. Let's call a spade a spade here. Draymond Green is allowed to be "Draymond Green" for the sole reason that he is teammates with NBA darling, Steph Curry. That's it. He helped Curry win titles and ascend to greatness and, because of this, he gets protection. Sure, he gets techs from time to time and the occasional suspension and media criticism but he doesn't get nearly what he deserves. And that's all because his illegal screens free up the greatest shooter in NBA history.

The irony of a guy like Draymond is that his antics make the average fan overlook just how good he can be. But I doubt he cares because he continues to rack up the hardware and the notoriety that allows him to have a podcast that people apparently actually tune into.
 

Auger34

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I'd be willing to bet that the Celtics will get a friendly whistle. Doesn't obviously mean they will win, but GS will get called for more stuff than they did last night.
Id bet literally everything I own that this will be the case. Golden State won’t be allowed to be nearly as physical as they were and if Draymond has the same 1st quarter that he had last night, he’s thrown out by halftime.

The only way the Warriors win Game 3 is if 2 of Poole/klay/Wiggins go nuts. I am hoping Kerr plays Poole a ton after Game 2 so the Celtics can abuse him on defense
 

NWsoxophile

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Actually he can, and he did…..and forced the official to make a call. Again, it was effective. I think you’re discounting his defensive effect last night. He had Jaylen under wraps and flustered when he couldn’t get by him. It was also pretty clear Jaylen wasn’t comfortable with the skirmish on the ground which again is something he has to learn to play through and be tougher.
Their team defense was pretty solid last night and it made Dray look good at times. There were a couple plays where Jaylen picked up his dribble and Green harassed him until he turned it over. JVG and Jackson were gushing about his defense but the turnover was caused as much by the fact that no Celtic could get open enough to receive the ball from Jaylen as it was Green's defense. I thought they turned the defensive pressure up a notch as a team last night.
 

Deathofthebambino

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If I knew I'd never be called for a foul, I could also play defense in the NBA. Basketball is a contact sport, fine, but if only one team is allowed to make contact, it's not a sport anymore. Jaylen Brown was called for a foul with zero contact that took our hottest shooter out of the game for an extended period of time.

Draymond Green should have been called for north of 12 fouls last night. The trucking of Grant, the trucking of Marcus, the hook on Marcus, the illegal screens...There was another that nobody talks about. When they trapped and "stripped" Jaylen on the sideline, Draymond absolutely raked Jaylen's arms causing the ball to go out of bounds. That happened right in front of the C's bench, and resulted in Ime losing his shit and getting the T (Marcus also went after the refs when it happened).

Let me repeat, Ime Udoka got a technical foul last night, admittedly on purpose. That's all anyone needs to know about how bad the officiating was. I've been trying to find the number of T's Ime got all season. I've watched every game this year, and I think he may have doubled his total with 1 last night.
 

Auger34

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If I knew I'd never be called for a foul, I could also play defense in the NBA. Basketball is a contact sport, fine, but if only one team is allowed to make contact, it's not a sport anymore. Jaylen Brown was called for a foul with zero contact that took our hottest shooter out of the game for an extended period of time.

Draymond Green should have been called for north of 12 fouls last night. The trucking of Grant, the trucking of Marcus, the hook on Marcus, the illegal screens...There was another that nobody talks about. When they trapped and "stripped" Jaylen on the sideline, Draymond absolutely raked Jaylen's arms causing the ball to go out of bounds. That happened right in front of the C's bench, and resulted in Ime losing his shit and getting the T (Marcus also went after the refs when it happened).

Let me repeat, Ime Udoka got a technical foul last night, admittedly on purpose. That's all anyone needs to know about how bad the officiating was. I've been trying to find the number of T's Ime got all season. I've watched every game this year, and I think he may have doubled his total with 1 last night.
All of Ime, Tatum, Jaylen and Al criticized the officials in their own way postgame.

FWIW, this team rarely, if ever, criticizes the officials postgame. Specifically those 4 almost never say word one postgame about the refs. It’s honestly annoyed me in the past how little they do it. So, for all of them to mention the officiating, it must have been truly abysmal
 

Nick Kaufman

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That’s what Draymond does and it’s effective. It sucks as fan to see and it really sucks to be the opponent bc it is so effective. Basketball is a contact sport and you have to match the toughness both physically and mentally or you’re going to lose that battle. Green is really good at winning the mental battle and how we respond in G3, without the officials ensuring that it returns to Boston tied 1-1, is going to tell us a lot about our teams physical and mental toughness.
Green is smart if he's taking advantage of the rules. As I have said many times, the rules are created in order to foster a particular type of spectacle. Is tiki taka, passive aggressive bullshit the type of spectacle most people want to see?

If yes, let Green be smart and do his thing. If not, start punishing him, so he stops being smart when he does that sort of bullshit.
 

Red Right Ankle

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How many of those players won titles in those seasons? To have the most turnovers requires you to play a lot of games.

edit: 7 of the 10 won titles. Disconcerting indeed. Or not.
Seriously, if your list has LeBron (x2!), Bird and Shaq on it and you think being on that list is a bad thing, you should probably go into a different profession. Nothing that involves sharp objects, though.
 

j44thor

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Green is smart if he's taking advantage of the rules. As I have said many times, the rules are created in order to foster a particular type of spectacle. Is tiki taka, passive aggressive bullshit the type of spectacle most people want to see?

If yes, let Green be smart and do his thing. If not, start punishing him, so he stops being smart when he does that sort of bullshit.
There is a big difference between taking advantage of the Rules Bill Belichick style and taking advantage of Tim Donaghy level officiating. Last night was a clear example of a league wanting a 7 game series. Green was literally tackling players and getting penalties called on said players as a result. That was WWE style officiating.
 

Bongorific

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Javie’s in game comments said everything we need to know about NBA officiating. While the Draymond/Jaylen altercation may have been worthy of a technical, or double technical, the refs want to think about the entire game in context when deciding whether to call a technical.

NBA officiating: where everything is made up and the rule don’t matter.
 

bosockboy

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Javie’s in game comments said everything we need to know about NBA officiating. While the Draymond/Jaylen altercation may have been worthy of a technical, or double technical, the refs want to think about the entire game in context when deciding whether to call a technical.

NBA officiating: where everything is made up and the rule don’t matter.
The fact that officials are announced game to game is the most telling. Zero reason not to announce a series in full. They literally announced the uniforms for all 7 games but not the refs.
 

yecul

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Draymond has been in the league some time and has behaved similarly for the duration. He's going to do this in game 3 and every other game. The refs are inconsistent call to call, quarter to quarter, and game to game. Sometimes consistently inconsistent and sometimes not.

Celtics need to buckle up and deal with it. While the refs did not help they certainly lost the game. Actually, I'd say GS won it. They had immense pressure on the defensive site and didn't make anything easy. The turnovers were bad and many of them were sloppy and avoidable, but credit where it's due; GS was very strong.

Play smart and tough no matter what the refs or DG does. Win game 3 and go from there. There should be no surprises.
 

RetractableRoof

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I get that feeling from a fan but the officials aren’t viewing it that way. It wasn’t like he kicked Jaylen which would have been different. His legs were on him for half a second before Jaylen shoved him. It doesn’t matter…..we got our asses kicked tonight on the floor and on the bench with Ime basically conceeding when we were down 9 in the 3Q. We move on.
If you watch the video again, Green landed, and his feet came to a rest on JB. Then his right foot moved again, further towards JB's shoulder, and then finally came to rest again on JB's face. That is an intentional act - these are elite players with ultra control of their bodies. While not as egregious as a shove or other non-basketball action, this was the equivalent of a face wash in hockey - and any act of JB's which resulted in clearing Greens feet from his body should not have been viewed with negative intent. Once Jaylen stood up and leaned into his response (standing over Green) could be viewed as an escalation, was then countered by Green pulling himself up by JB's shorts. That act alone should have gotten him a T. Game context or not, if you don't T him up, then you are putting the Cs in a negative state. It's Riley's point all over again - you can acclimate the refs to allowing you to foul or acting like a horses ass. And if the refs allow it, it is to the detriment of one team.

When you look at the totality of the game, Green decided he was going to run roughshod over the Cs until the refs stopped him, and they chose not to.
 

benhogan

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When you look at the totality of the game, Green decided he was going to run roughshod over the Cs until the refs stopped him, and they chose not to.
the funny part is Green admitted as much post-game and in his pod

I did find Nick Wright's, noted Boston sports hater, take this morning somewhat interesting. He picked GSW before the series but is leaning towards Boston now after Game 2. Both he and Broussard also brought up the biased first-half whistle and Green eventually getting tossed in this series.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh86ZC-YRi4
 

lars10

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Draymond has been in the league some time and has behaved similarly for the duration. He's going to do this in game 3 and every other game. The refs are inconsistent call to call, quarter to quarter, and game to game. Sometimes consistently inconsistent and sometimes not.

Celtics need to buckle up and deal with it. While the refs did not help they certainly lost the game. Actually, I'd say GS won it. They had immense pressure on the defensive site and didn't make anything easy. The turnovers were bad and many of them were sloppy and avoidable, but credit where it's due; GS was very strong.

Play smart and tough no matter what the refs or DG does. Win game 3 and go from there. There should be no surprises.
They were allowed to play an entirely different style of defense than the C's were. They had nothing to do with the fact that they weren't called for fouls. A lot of the turnovers were because the C's got manhandled... others were just sloppy play. The C's weren't allowed to play defense in the same way at all. How do you adjust to that without giving up a ton of points?
 

bakahump

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Green is smart if he's taking advantage of the rules. As I have said many times, the rules are created in order to foster a particular type of spectacle. Is tiki taka, passive aggressive bullshit the type of spectacle most people want to see?

If yes, let Green be smart and do his thing. If not, start punishing him, so he stops being smart when he does that sort of bullshit.
THATS the thing. He isnt taking advantage of RULES. He is taking advantage of Special Treatment.

At the end of the day a game should be FAIR. THATS WHY RULES exist. If GS had 48 seconds to shoot and the Celtics had 24 that wouldnt be fair. If Bostons Hoop was 12 feet and GS was 10 that wouldnt be fair. Rules exist to Level a playing field.
 

McBride11

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If I knew I'd never be called for a foul, I could also play defense in the NBA. Basketball is a contact sport, fine, but if only one team is allowed to make contact, it's not a sport anymore. Jaylen Brown was called for a foul with zero contact that took our hottest shooter out of the game for an extended period of time.

Draymond Green should have been called for north of 12 fouls last night. The trucking of Grant, the trucking of Marcus, the hook on Marcus, the illegal screens...There was another that nobody talks about. When they trapped and "stripped" Jaylen on the sideline, Draymond absolutely raked Jaylen's arms causing the ball to go out of bounds. That happened right in front of the C's bench, and resulted in Ime losing his shit and getting the T (Marcus also went after the refs when it happened).

Let me repeat, Ime Udoka got a technical foul last night, admittedly on purpose. That's all anyone needs to know about how bad the officiating was. I've been trying to find the number of T's Ime got all season. I've watched every game this year, and I think he may have doubled his total with 1 last night.
Preach. It was a fucking goat rodeo out there. And people can’t grasp that the Cs had to alter their play because of the uneven whistle. Was it all of their issues? Maybe not. but saying ‘play thru it’ is missing the larger picture.

Dray is just ‘stirring shit’ is so off the mark. He shouldn’t be T’d out bc it is the finals? Maybe he hurts Smart or Brown or the Tatum push in the back. But nah it is the finals, let him run rampant.
 

Deathofthebambino

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If I knew I'd never be called for a foul, I could also play defense in the NBA. Basketball is a contact sport, fine, but if only one team is allowed to make contact, it's not a sport anymore. Jaylen Brown was called for a foul with zero contact that took our hottest shooter out of the game for an extended period of time.

Draymond Green should have been called for north of 12 fouls last night. The trucking of Grant, the trucking of Marcus, the hook on Marcus, the illegal screens...There was another that nobody talks about. When they trapped and "stripped" Jaylen on the sideline, Draymond absolutely raked Jaylen's arms causing the ball to go out of bounds. That happened right in front of the C's bench, and resulted in Ime losing his shit and getting the T (Marcus also went after the refs when it happened).

Let me repeat, Ime Udoka got a technical foul last night, admittedly on purpose. That's all anyone needs to know about how bad the officiating was. I've been trying to find the number of T's Ime got all season. I've watched every game this year, and I think he may have doubled his total with 1 last night.
This is the play I posted about before, that led to Ime's technical? People want to blame Jaylen for turnovers, and tell him he needs to "play through it." You tell me how to "play through this" and I'll hire you to be the head coach of the NBA team I own in the future:

52223
 

Auger34

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He deserves it after all.
Hes earned the benefit of the doubt from the refs. All of the screaming, insulting, and aggressive complaining has given him the right to do as he pleases and not be punished!
 

Philip Jeff Frye

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He deserves it after all.
I'm in the SF Bay Area today on a business trip and I'm listening to KNBR sports radio. Even these guys admit the the Celtics have a right to complain about last night, although they then retreat into "well, that's the way Draymond always plays so you can't call really complain about him when he does that."
 

BigSoxFan

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I'm in the SF Bay Area today on a business trip and I'm listening to KNBR sports radio. Even these guys admit the the Celtics have a right to complain about last night, although they then retreat into "well, that's the way Draymond always plays so you can't call really complain about him when he does that."
Cool. So, Grayson Allen is allowed to trip Steph on a fast break because that’s how he’s always played. They would totally be cool with that. I hate the hypocrisy of Dubs fans.
 

HomeRunBaker

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I'd be willing to bet that the Celtics will get a friendly whistle. Doesn't obviously mean they will win, but GS will get called for more stuff than they did last night.
No doubt. The league did not want to see the home team go down 0-2 heading on the road. It is what it is.
Hes earned the benefit of the doubt from the refs. All of the screaming, insulting, and aggressive complaining has given him the right to do as he pleases and not be punished!
Are you denying that his playing style gives him an advantage? It’s weird bc it seems like some people are mocking him on one side of their mouth then complaining about him getting an edge on the other.
 

Mooch

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Meanwhile, these same Warriors fans were crying about Marcus Smart being “reckless” diving for a loose ball and 100% unintentionally injuring Curry.
 

Auger34

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No doubt. The league did not want to see the home team go down 0-2 heading on the road. It is what it is.

Are you denying that his playing style gives him an advantage? It’s weird bc it seems like some people are mocking him on one side of their mouth then complaining about him getting an edge on the other.
Im mocking the fact that he says he’s “earned the benefit of the doubt” from the officials. He hasn’t earned any benefit.
That would be like Richard Sherman or Brandon Browner from the Legion of Boom days saying they’ve “earned the benefit of not getting pass interference called against us”.

it’s not earning anything, it’s realizing that refs won’t call a foul every play and using that to your advantage
 

JCizzle

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Am I alone for not wanting to see Theis again in this series? I think he's been quite bad even in his 6-10 minute role and would much rather see Nesmith out there in small lineups. While Nesmith certainly isn't going to win you a game, he showed the ability to be active and make plays defensively earlier in the playoffs. Most importantly, nobody will try to throw him the ball under the basket on the other end of the court.
 

BigSoxFan

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Am I alone for not wanting to see Theis again in this series? I think he's been quite bad even in his 6-10 minute role and would much rather see Nesmith out there in small lineups. While Nesmith certainly isn't going to win you a game, he showed the ability to be active and make plays defensively earlier in the playoffs. Most importantly, nobody will try to throw him the ball under the basket on the other end of the court.
The Port Cellar doesn’t agree on much but we all pretty much agree that Theis is borderline useless right now.
 

slamminsammya

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I actually would have hated seeing Draymond tossed for that chicken shit. Am I the only one?

Also, the play leading up to that should have been a clear offensive foul on Jaylen Brown, right? The leg kick was totally not a natural part of his motion and was meant entirely to catch the foul.
 

Jimbodandy

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The Dray love here is strange. I respect the guy and all, but he spent the night taking cheap shots at people. I honestly don't know what fucking game you guys were watching.

edit: for the record, I'm glad to see plays like that Jaylen/Draymond exchange not called in the future. It never should be, though it usually is.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Im mocking the fact that he says he’s “earned the benefit of the doubt” from the officials. He hasn’t earned any benefit.
That would be like Richard Sherman or Brandon Browner from the Legion of Boom days saying they’ve “earned the benefit of not getting pass interference called against us”.

it’s not earning anything, it’s realizing that refs won’t call a foul every play and using that to your advantage
Hasn’t it always been assumed that veterans get the benefit of any doubt due to their ability to understand what they can and can’t get away with? That’s how I interpreted what he said.
 

lovegtm

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Hasn’t it always been assumed that veterans get the benefit of any doubt due to their ability to understand what they can and can’t get away with? That’s how I interpreted what he said.
Obviously Dray was aware that the league wasn't going to let the home team go down 2-0, and adjusted his "playing" style accordingly, so.....good for him I guess?

It's weird that an NBA Finals game swings on the fact that the league decides to let a washed, possibly mentally deranged senior citizen go tackle people for 48 minutes.

That's my biggest takeaway from all this: Draymond has lost a step on both ends, possibly multiple. He was a liability in game 1, and was only a positive in game 2 because he stopped playing basketball and guessed right in the dumb "does the league want to extend the series?" metagame.

Hopefully the Warriors lose out, and he can move on to the coaching or media career that his body is clearly much better suited for at this point.
 

Eddie Jurak

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The officiating, frustrating as it was, is out of the Celtcs control.

A bigger problem for them is that Golden State's defense bascally shut their offense off, starting late in the first quarter and continuing into the early 4th and Ime's waving of the white flag.

They are either going to find a way to adjust to that or the rest of this series will be ugly - none of their playoff compettion has come anywhere near that level of defense against them.
 

m0ckduck

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A bigger problem for them is that Golden State's defense bascally shut their offense off, starting late in the first quarter and continuing into the early 4th and Ime's waving of the white flag.

They are either going to find a way to adjust to that or the rest of this series will be ugly - none of their playoff compettion has come anywhere near that level of defense against them.
This is the second time you've expressed this point, but I don't see the evidence for it. As far as full-game performances, again, G1 MIL was pretty similar:

G2 vs. Warriors: 88 points on 37.5% FG shooting with 19 turnovers leading to 15 opp. points
G1 vs. Bucks: 89 points on 33.3% FG shooting with with 14 turnovers leading to 27 opp. points

If we're focused on lousy quarters, then it's a tie between Q3 Sunday and Q3 of Miami G1 (14 points) If you're saying that the middle two quarters of this last game was the worst two-quarter sequence they've had, then that would be true but seems a bit cherry-picked.

It's possible that GS will stonewall the C's for the rest of the series, but I'm going to chalk it up to variance (both with regards to the C's shooting and the officiating vis-a-vis how much physicality is allowed) until I see them put together two bad offensive games in a row.
 

Eddie Jurak

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This is the second time you've expressed this point, but I don't see the evidence for it. As far as full-game performances, again, G1 MIL was pretty similar:

G2 vs. Warriors: 88 points on 37.5% FG shooting with 19 turnovers leading to 15 opp. points
G1 vs. Bucks: 89 points on 33.3% FG shooting with with 14 turnovers leading to 27 opp. points

If we're focused on lousy quarters, then it's a tie between Q3 Sunday and Q3 of Miami G1 (14 points) If you're saying that the middle two quarters of this last game was the worst two-quarter sequence they've had, then that would be true but seems a bit cherry-picked.

It's possible that GS will stonewall the C's for the rest of the series, but I'm going to chalk it up to variance (both with regards to the C's shooting and the officiating vis-a-vis how much physicality is allowed) until I see them put together two bad offensive games in a row.
I'm saying the Celtics played over 26 straight minutes of basketball during which they were held to 34 points, after which Ime pulled the plug on the game. I don't think there's been a comparable sequence in this playoff run. The closest by point totals is the first half of Miami game 5, after which the Celtics trailed 42-37. They went on to win 93-80. But slow pace seems like part of the reason for the low scoring as the Celtics had an offensive rating of 104.5 for the game.

The Celtics offensive rating was similar in G1 Bucks and G2 Warriors, if you look at the full games, but the Celtics dropped 30 on the Warriors in the first quarter despite 7 turnovers. Then the Warriors defense just shut them off until Ime gave up.
 

lovegtm

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I'm saying the Celtics played over 26 straight minutes of basketball during which they were held to 34 points, after which Ime pulled the plug on the game. I don't think there's been a comparable sequence in this playoff run. The closest by point totals is the first half of Miami game 5, after which the Celtics trailed 42-37. They went on to win 93-80. But slow pace seems like part of the reason for the low scoring as the Celtics had an offensive rating of 104.5 for the game.

The Celtics offensive rating was similar in G1 Bucks and G2 Warriors, if you look at the full games, but the Celtics dropped 30 on the Warriors in the first quarter despite 7 turnovers. Then the Warriors defense just shut them off until Ime gave up.
My prior record on this board demonstrates that I'm very loathe to blame officiating. However, in this particular game, the officiating made it extremely hard to play offense, in a way that is hard to parse out from the officiating.

The Bucks series was different, because the Bucks are better at defense, particularly in protecting the interior, and the Celtics were allowed to play the same way on the other end. That was a physical series against a well-matched team. This was two fundamentally different games being called on each end.

I imagine that the Celtics will find a lot in the film that they don't like, of course, and will make an effort to clean it up. If we're right, and the thumb is taken off the ref scales, I'd expect to see some games in Boston that feel fairly dominant from the Celtics side.
 

PedroKsBambino

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I agree with lovegtm on the impact of Warriors being allowed to play that aggressively.

It is also true that Celts turnovers were an issue, and one that is related to GS defense. JVG on Lowepost noted how well Warriors stunt and feint into passing lanes; that was really visible on some of those turnovers especially in the paint. Celtics can do better on those. The other point JVG made is Tatum is worrying too much about drawing fouls and needs to just finish./shoot over smaller Warriors---this is something he did some of in game 2 and should continue to do.

Defensively, some of those screens were Bam-level ridiculous. That's an example of where I expect the play to be different in game 3 and that helps
 

benhogan

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Since Dray/Warriors believe in "situational foul calls" and the NBA obliged I imagine we'll see a very physical Celtic team daring the refs to blow a whistle every trip down. It kind of sucks because the product is worse, but welcome to the muck. Boston just went through two series of this so they are physically strong enough and prepared to play it.

Ironically a Game 1 whistle/style of play probably favored a Warriors team but here we are.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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So the major adjustment Kerr made on defense was to put Green on Brown and Klay on Horford. I'm also reading that GPII helped the defense stop some of the dribble penetration - I'm not going back to watch that game to confirm but it sounds right.

If Draymond can hold up against Jaylen 1 v 1, that's going to be a huge issue for BOS as it allows GSW to load up against JT and puts a damper on the Cs drive and kick game. There's obviously ways of getting Jaylen on someone else but then we go into ISO ball.

The other thing is that the Cs 2-Big lineups are not working and GW doesn't seem to be holding up. If the Cs can't play any of their bigs at the same time, that means minutes for JB, JT, MS, and DW are going to go into the 40s AND that PP has to hold up at least better than the 2-Big lineup. And no, Nesmith is not the answer as they'd just get Curry isolated on him and Curry would have a field day. This is the time where it would be nice to have one more wing defender on the roster instead of all of the shooters.

Also, I've not seen anything on TL's knee; it makes me think that Marcus crashing into it aggravated something.

Lots for Ime and his staff to think about before tomorrow.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Most of the game Green was not on Jaylen, though they did that for (as I recall from a podcast citing one of the stat services) 9 minutes and I agree he was impactful in those. They like Green to be off-ball and as a rim protector, so I don't know that they'll fully commit to that matchup.

I believe the adjustment, if they go to a lot of Green on Jaylen, is to have Jaylen park in a corner or ideally straightaway in three point land and use Draymond's absence to attack the paint. If he cheats in (which I think he will) Celts have to be aware of it and look for Jaylen, being aware Green may fake a double and fall back to intercept the pass, too.

Payton being back gives them lineups (with Wiggins) that have two legit defensive wings, and Porter is ok as well. So that helps them wtih Jays, and increases chances they can keep Celts ouf of the line off the bounce. That said, I still think Celts can often get into paint and need to be disciplined about doing so and looking to shoot when there---not much rim protection for GS even when Green is down low. The interior passing generated a lot of turnovers in game 2, and it probably plays into Warriors hands to do a lot of passing down there
 

JakeRae

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I don’t see how your statement and my statement are mutually-exclusive.
Agree with this. Theis as a player is fine. He’s not a terrible matchup and he holds his own in this series, but he’s not helping us win games. It’s not clear why he’s playing 5-10 mpg in this series when we should (and have been) playing smaller overall and when we didn’t need those minutes to spell our other bigs in prior series where we were demanding more of them on a tighter schedule. I also don’t see how we benefit from extra minutes from bigs who need to be played in drop coverage on screens.
 

Jimbodandy

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Agree with this. Theis as a player is fine. He’s not a terrible matchup and he holds his own in this series, but he’s not helping us win games. It’s not clear why he’s playing 5-10 mpg in this series when we should (and have been) playing smaller overall and when we didn’t need those minutes to spell our other bigs in prior series where we were demanding more of them on a tighter schedule. I also don’t see how we benefit from extra minutes from bigs who need to be played in drop coverage on screens.
Frankly, as much as we want to hang some of this on Theis, Rob presents the same problem in his diminished state. Neither is quick enough to stay with Curry, so they have to drop so far off that he can launch uncontested. Rob at full strength is closer to being competitive there, but he's not now.

IMO, we're going to end up playing more 1Bigz. Not sure how else to counter that otherwise.