I think this is all based on each coaches strategy. Spo had two other defenders at the elbow waiting for Tatum to begin his move. Ime was switching and allowing Butler in the paint while sticking the weak side defenses on their 3-pt shooters.
Yes, yes. This is important to remember when talking about Butler "going nuclear". The Heat had shit offensive numbers in 2 of his 4 big games, much the way that Milwaukee had crap offense while Giannis was scoring efficiently. That was due to the effectiveness of not sending help, and how it lowered the volume and accuracy of opponent 3 pointers.
Thanks, this makes sense. Only reason the Heat won game 6 was that the role players hit a bunch of 3s, many of them difficult.
A couple areas I thought he did well were:
They were one of the best 3pt shooting teams in the league, if anything their 3pt shooters wildly underperformed in almost every game.
Maybe they underperformed though due to the defensive strategy of not doubling Butler?
Butler in general is not a great creator for other players. I can't think of many times he set up other guys in those games he was red hot. It felt more "I am scoring a lot" than "I am controlling these games" if that distinction makes sense.
Some of it was definitely that, and the defense in general. My point was more that people love to discount it as a fluke when opponents shoot well, but give all credit to the defense when teams shoot poorly. The Heat missed a lot of open shots, the Celtics were happy to give them those shots until they started making them, but they are still shots that personnel should knock down and at no point did they have some insane game, game 6 was well within normal variance, in fact 43% isn't even an outlier.
Based on shot quality the Celts win 83% of the time in game 6. So while 43% wasn’t an outlier, the types of makes seemed to be. I mean so many of their 3s were contested, turnaround, bad shots. Plus, Butler does legitimately stink from 3, so those wide open looks were by design for the most part.
So...he generally *is* a good playmaker. The Celtics specific approach took away a lot of the plays he likes to make.
There was some underperformance, but the quality of the looks they were getting was pretty poor, mostly due to not being able to get the Cs in rotation often. Less openness and less rhythm and fewer threatening paint touches, combined with the general grind of that series, start to lower expected 3 point value pretty rapidly.
And for Miami in general. Regular season they assisted on 64.4% of their makes. In the series, the Celts held them to 54.5%, and under 50% in 3 of the 7 games
My guess is you watch some film with Smart to see what opens up in that spot and what other options he has to attack besides just shooting. And then you move on.
I disagree with this premise a lot. Imo, Butler is one of the leagues best probers and “take what the defense gives me” players. He’s had one of the highest non-PG Assist rates in the league over the last several years. He was scoring a lot against Boston bc our help defenders were denying the passing lanes to the 3-pt shooters all series.
Those timeouts (at 3:47 and 3:17) were use it or lose it, so they were relatively easy calls (teams are limited 2 timeouts in the final 3 minutes of the 4th quarter, and they had 4 remaining with 4 minutes left in the game). That's not to say they weren't smart calls, just that I don't think it had much to do with the teams's late game struggles so much as they had literally nothing to lose by calling them.
And part of the closing going well this time was that the open 3s fell (including from Marcus). As we were saying after game 7, 98% of the time one or two shots fall, and no one ever remembers the ending to that game. This is just what it looks like when they all fall.
I was a bit worried at the time that so many time outs in such a short time would take them out of their rhythym. (Guess not.) They did play well coming out of them.
This. Very similar to game 7
Playing against the Cs defense is exhausting I'm sure, particularly after the Cs defense makes the adjustments needed in-game. It's kind of like when Stevens had good teams; seemed like teams would struggle shooting in the 2nd half.
The choice to remove Smart and Jaylen with 3:20 to go in the 3Q while down 9 and still fending off a Warriors run is unconscionable. I couldn’t even finish writing here and tweeting before the lead was 16. While my mouth was still having open it was 30. As I said in those posts at the time……at lease Jaylen and Marcus will be fresh for garbage time.
I saw that too but can understand trying to buy a few minutes of rest for the non-Tatum starters at that point in the game with the lead and guys already with two fouls. PP and Horford really hurt us tonight on both ends of the floor. Hopefully some home cooking helps them. Theis actually played pretty well despite the walls around him caving in.
Yeah, this didn't feel like a serious effort from him wrt lineups and learning from game 1, as well as the extra rest days you mention.
Have to wonder if this was related to Brown getting his second foul. He sat from 3:52 left in the first quarter until around 6 minutes left in the second. Although I guess that doesn't explain Theis. Theis came in for Smart.. who did very little in the first.. two missed threes, three turnovers, two assists, two points in a little over 9 minutes. Horford was also not great and he sat at the same time. The PP and White lineup was a good change of pace in Game one... but that was with Tatum, Brown, Horford. The GW and Theis combo wasn't a great alternative.
If this is the case, then the mistake was not challenging the foul. It was completely phantom and I don't see how it wouldn't have been overturned.
Precisely. If the foul was going to change Brown’s usage, you have to challenge.
That’s the key and for all the grief I gave Ime last night I don’t think you can burn your challenge in the 1Q there. Jaylen is a low-foul guy and was about to come out for his normal rotation blow over the next 30-60 seconds so it really didn’t figure to affect his usage.
Not really and he actually may have sat longer in G1 iirc. Last night after Tatum replaced him with just under 4 to go he returned to start the 2Q.
Ah my bad, I think @lars10 had bad info - his post said JB didn't check back in until halfway through the 2nd. Game log confirms you are correct
Have no idea what I was looking at last night.. I was reading the ESPN play by play and I saw something different from what I’m seeing this morning.. I must have been over tired.
I think Jaylen's defense got noticeably softer for the remainder of the 1st half. Perhaps that affected the rest of his game?
Yeah, I generally agree that you can't use the challenge that early. Last night, and believe I said as much in game thread, I thought there was a pretty good case to use it given impact on Brown and also making a point about overall officiating quality.
He played soft the entire game imo. He didn’t pick up his 3rd until mid-3Q and only played a few min after that so it shouldn’t have affected him.
Yeah.. having only one challenge just admits you have a problem without really wanting to fix it.. especially since the challenge system itself also seems arbitrary as well.
I’m sure this is something that will be adjusted by the rules committee this summer. You cannot penalize a team for them correctly challenging a bad/missed call.
It definitely shouldn't have. It seemed that it *did*, though, when he re-entered the game in the 2nd Q.
Or have an entity review the calls outside of the arena? Don’t have the ones who made the call have to review their own call? NBA refs can’t be counted on to police themselves.
The league office can't be counted on either based on the ref assignments. So what's the point at all.
Oh I agree he played soft after reentering the game. My point was that he was playing soft prior to that point so not sure if it was the fouls or his approach in general. He needs to learn to match the physicality as he was really struggling with Draymond’s pressure and omg that handle is killing me!
