They lost four in a row to the Bulls, Nets, Spurs, and Raptors in March. If you expect top teams to perform at a high level every single night in today’s league you’re going to be disappointed.
2023-24 Celtics
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The Lakers shot 53% from 3, shot 26 FTs vs 7 for Boston (officiating was fine), and turned Boston over 9 times in Q1 (guys weren't ready from the tip). They never put any ball pressure on the Lakers or made them feel uncomfortable on offense.
It felt like a 30-point blowout, surprised it ended up as close.
Over the last 2 weeks, the Celtics have played 1 good game (@Miami) other than that it's been pretty mediocre (sub-optimal intentions). They still have eeked out a 5-3 record, which is nice. BUT wouldn't be shocked if the C's continued with this middling play until AS Game.
Appreciated Joe having the guts to bench JB/KP 3 minutes into the 3rd Quarter, they were completely out-to-lunch to start the game/2nd half. May as well play PP/Hauser/Luke/Queta/Brissett more minutes to see if they can give this team a jolt.
It felt like a 30-point blowout, surprised it ended up as close.
Over the last 2 weeks, the Celtics have played 1 good game (@Miami) other than that it's been pretty mediocre (sub-optimal intentions). They still have eeked out a 5-3 record, which is nice. BUT wouldn't be shocked if the C's continued with this middling play until AS Game.
Appreciated Joe having the guts to bench JB/KP 3 minutes into the 3rd Quarter, they were completely out-to-lunch to start the game/2nd half. May as well play PP/Hauser/Luke/Queta/Brissett more minutes to see if they can give this team a jolt.
There's the physical component for sure, and I think people also underestimate the mental component, and how fatiguing that is. "Why don't they just try hard all the time?" doesn't work in high-level sports.
Who cares if Jordan or Bird or Kobe would say something like that or not. It's refreshing when guys say things that don't fit neatly into typical sport speak
"The job is done. We can go home now."
Can you imagine Jordan or Bird or Kobe saying that???? Whoever said that isn't truly passionate about winning, and will clearly NEVER be a champion.
Last night means literally nothing with respect to their title chances but, fair or not, it’s clear that the “soft”, “mentally weak”, etc. labels are going to follow the Jay’s until they change the narrative. I’ve had plenty of avid non-Celtics NBA fans make the same comments. It’s out there no matter how much we want downplay it.
Both Tatum and Jaylen are well-liked around the league. My sense is that guys like Shaq and Barkley WANT them to get over the hump. But they’re seeing the same things we are. I just hope it doesn’t impact them come playoff time. We’ve seen Tatum come out timid at times whereas Jaylen tends to be too hard on himself, which hurts him at times.
Really, really, REALLY can’t wait for this year’s playoffs.
Both Tatum and Jaylen are well-liked around the league. My sense is that guys like Shaq and Barkley WANT them to get over the hump. But they’re seeing the same things we are. I just hope it doesn’t impact them come playoff time. We’ve seen Tatum come out timid at times whereas Jaylen tends to be too hard on himself, which hurts him at times.
Really, really, REALLY can’t wait for this year’s playoffs.
Yeah, I get that the Lakers shooting is a big part of the story and not sustainable. But the Celtics also only scored 105 points against a team missing it's best defensive player so part of this story is at the other end as well.
My observation was they were passive offensively (which accounts for something like half of the free throw disparity, they were a lot less aggessive offensively than Lakers) and also didn't shoot particularly well. And they turned it over 15 times, which is pretty bad especially without AD out there for Lakers (Lebron is hit or miss defensively at this point, so they are no worse off without him in my view at defensive end) Defensively, they weren't great on top of the Lakers being crazy hot.
I agree we shouldn't overplay the importance of one game. But it's also demonstrably true this is not just a story about hot Lakers shooting.
Of course and espeically when the opponent is missing multiple key pieces like the Lakers and Knicks last night…..the full strength team exhales and the shorthanded team scraps and plays with energy. This has been how the NBA machine has worked for many years…:the story last night wasn’t the Lakers shooting imo, it was a product of all that other stuff.
I think White looks off too.. he’s still playing good D but his shot has been off and both him and Drue haven’t been as solid on offense or D really (other than the 4th quarter where DW couldn’t miss sometime this week).
The schedule has been ridiculous though.
Yes. I was remembering how the Celtics took the Bucks to OT last year on a night when 4 Celtics starters, including JT and JB, were out. Grant Williams played 48 minutes and Mike Muscala (!) played 44 minutes that night, and it took a 40 point game from Jrue Holliday for the Bucks to squeeze this out. None of this makes me happy about last night, of course, but it does provide some context. Relatedly, it makes me wonder (as others have suggested) whether it makes sense for the Celtics to give bench a lot more minutes on nights when the other team is undermanned and it seems like a trap game.
Box score from the Feb. 2023 Celtics-Bucks game
Not only did the Nuggets have that 4-game losing streak, they lost 5 of 6 in that stretch. Then after a 4-game win streak, they finished the season losing another 5 of 6 before winning their final game (against the Kings). Then the playoffs started and they went 16-4 on their way to the championship.
You want to see high-level performance (almost) every night? Cut the season down to 60 games, eliminating back-to-backs and 4-games-in-six-nights stretches. Then cut the playoffs from 10 teams per conference (including play-ins) to, say, 6. Of course, that will never happen for obvious reasons. But if it did, the quality of play in the NBA would immediately elevate and every game would be intense.
I feel like KP takes somewhat rushed 3PA. Looks to me like he could take another 0.33 of a second and be fine, and maybe it would help. Seems like he's been in a slump from 3 for awhile now.
This is fair. Members of the team have even spoken about this phenomenon. They're aware of it. Now...it would make themselves and us feel better if they put down some ass-whoopings over the next batch of schedule, to kinda remind themselves that when they try, they destroy.
The 2008 champion had the biggest single hardo I had ever seen on the court in Garnett. Guy didn't believe in taking a possession off, let alone a game, against the Lakers no less. And they still had their share of punts, including famously not being able to win on the road in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
So as someone wrote upthread, it's not nothing, but it's probably not really something either.
He did, all 3 came out early 3rd. Jrue went back in for White a few minutes later though.
Unusual move for Joe, usually if the starters are playing like shit he makes them work through it rather than reaching for a different lineup.
100% - I expected it from the jump and would frankly have been surprised if they won. Did no one see the Nuggets beat the Clips at home without Murray and Jokic? These losses are like immutable NBA facts at this point. Remember when we got smoked by OKC without Shai?
It’s hard to win when you walk into the game wishing you were somewhere else.
I think it’s fair to say, “I hoped this team wouldn’t fall into those traps,” but the TNT “mentally weak” stuff is nonsense. So is everyone I guess.
Well.. I’m saying he should have been sat like the other two were for the rest of the game.
+1
Make-or-Miss League is used way too much by lazy NBA Media folk.
Yes, shooting variance is important, but it's one of a dozen variables that impact winning.
Q1 Celtics had 9 turnovers + gave up 10 offensive rebounds, they never showed up.
ALSO the JAYs/KP have developed a bad habit of arguing with refs/jogging back on D after a missed shot/TO.
They got smoked at the FT line & gave up open 3s all game.
Sam Hauser is the only reason they didn't lose by 20.
Last night was mostly an effort/fatigue loss from the tip with some Make-or-Miss mixed in.
4/5 starters were terrible & Tatum was mediocre. I'm fine with Joe benching players (except maybe White, who hustles all the time)
There is no way to sugarcoat this, Jrue is a turnover machine. His 14.3 TOV% is substantially higher than all of his teammates, and he really doesn't initiate the offense enough to be that bad. Somehow he has to value ball security more.
OTOH he's elite at Corner3s, posting PGs & being this team's most physical WING defender.
That's an extremely important role on this team, especially come Playoffs.
Not disagreeing that Drue is important.. just that last night his effort was awful and it was clear from the jump that he should have sat.. he just didn’t have anything going at either end.. last night felt like a game that the bench should have played even more.. the starters were sleep walking.
This. It's all downstream of a sport that plays too many games for its mental and physical intensity.
The playoffs do solve this, but teams have to essentially hack the regular season in order to get the right things out of it.
The NBA system does not reward treating the 82-game schedule seriously, for every game.
“Make/Miss” is often times very real. That wasn’t what last night was though. There was a clear energy and focus imbalance between the two teams that far outweighed “make/miss.”
I wouldn't be opposed to the team aggressively load-managing the starters over the next 2 weeks.
There is a reason Pop regularly did it during all those Championship seasons.
Play PP/Hauser/Luke/Brissett more during the dog days of Jan/Feb. Live with the results
As the saying goes, luck is the residue of design. At best, had the shooting percentages been even partially reversed, we may have been looking at the game as one of those "played down to the competition but got away with it for the W". But that is not a strategy for winning games consistently.
Yep, somewhat related to the Ewing Effect, it's been a part of the NBA for decades.
If you cut the playoffs down to 6 there will be a dozen teams eliminated from playoff possibility half way through the season. That is a good way to make so many games meaningless for one of the teams playing.
I know load management is your jam but there's no need to make shit up. It's a fairly recent (last decade or so) phenomenon in the league
98-99 team games played/total games:
Duncan 50/50
Avery Johnson 50/50
David Robinson 49/50
Sean Elliot 50/50
Mario Elie 47/50
02-03
Duncan 81/82
Parker 82/82
Bowen 82/82
Stephen Jackson 80/82
Robinson 64/82 he retired after this title.
04-05
Parker 80/82
Duncan 66/82 injuries not load mgmt
Bowen 82/82
Ginobili 72/82
Rasho 70/82
06-07
Duncan 80/82
Parker 77/82
Bowen 80/82
Ginobili 75/82
Barry 75/82
You definitely have an argument with the 13-14 Kawhi title team though. Parker lead the team in MPG at just 29.4
Parker, Danny Green and Ginobili all played 68/82
Duncan 74/82
Kawhi 66/82
Belinelli 80/82 (I forgot all about this dude, I liked him as a player)
Diaw 79/82
Doesn't the league/owners/players want a schedule that affords underdogs to win games? Let's say you cut the season down and have plenty of rest between games, don't you greatly increase the chances the better team wins each game?
You get a lot more fan engagement, if they think their team has a chance to win.
You get a lot more fan engagement, if they think their team has a chance to win.
Last night's performance gets magnified by fans and media because it's Celtics - Lakers. But I definitely don't think the players see it as a huge rivalry anymore like everybody else does. I personally hate it anytime they lose to the Lakers, but I don't think that game was a big deal to the players at all, especially with Lebron and AD out. It's been 14 years since they last met in the finals, and Al and Jrue were the only ones even in the league then. The current team would get ramped up for a regular season game against the Heat, Bucks, or Sixers, but last night was just another regular season game for them. That's not an excuse for them to mail it in, but more a comment on what the loss means to them in the big picture. Which is virtually nothing.
Yeah, Pop was a load management pioneer, but he didn't pioneer it until later in his tenure.
This is true for a lot of things Pop, like modern-style offense.
I don't find comparisons to Jordan particularly helpful for thinking about the mental side of the game. for one there's a pretty big generational gap. but also he is clearly pathological in various ways. lots of other guys have shown it's possible to win without being a petty asshole.
the style of play has gotten significantly more physically taxing compared to 10 or 20 years ago.
Yeah, the latter is the part that makes me feel the worst about the game last night. In the run-up I made a few post about how seriously both teams would take these games, that they circled them on the calendar, felt the rivalry and would lean into it. And then the night comes and Lebron and Davis both opt out, and the Celtics lose their focus and play half the game like they wanted to be somewhere else. Making me pretty damn wrong about that assertion.
It's unfortunate. Hating the Lakers, and then wrecking them with the much better team we have now, should be one of the highlights of contemporary Celtics fandom.
This team is going to lose 20-25 games this year and still likely (barring a collapse) win the East, and possibly have the best record in the league.
Those losses have to come from somewhere. If they lose close to really good teams, they don't have what it takes to meet high pressure moments. When they lose to bad teams, it's because they have bad attitude or effort. Every loss is going to fit a narrative, but the narrative is probably... they just didn't have it, and that happens to nearly every single team in NBA history except a handful of the greatest ones. Please look at the losses Jordan's Bulls would have to 20 win teams in their championship years - this is just the way the league is.
Those losses have to come from somewhere. If they lose close to really good teams, they don't have what it takes to meet high pressure moments. When they lose to bad teams, it's because they have bad attitude or effort. Every loss is going to fit a narrative, but the narrative is probably... they just didn't have it, and that happens to nearly every single team in NBA history except a handful of the greatest ones. Please look at the losses Jordan's Bulls would have to 20 win teams in their championship years - this is just the way the league is.
Nice work, clearly Pop only started using it a decade ago. Thats fair. It's a strategy that he (and Kahwi/Bron to some extent) popularized.
I guess I'm the load mgmt guy around here? I've been called worse so NBD.
To me, it makes so much sense to aggressively rest starters throughout the regular season. Besides the benefits of physical/mental wear-n-tear, it lessens the odds of injury, or worsening nagging injuries.
The other side benefit of playing your bench more is developing them for key minutes and trade value down the road.
I root for the laundry, so I'm not bothered if KP or Luke plays when I go to a regular-season game.
This convo is getting ridiculous now. No…the league/owners don’t care about underdogs winning games. They care about MORE games and MORE revenue which is why there is expanded playoffs and now even an extra regular season game.
I’ll never be bothered when Luke plays. I love that goofy bastard.
Im personally torn on the load mgmt thing. On the one hand yes it makes total sense to do that with the older and/or banged up guys, but on the other I LOVE watching the game of basketball and especially love watching when great players are playing it. I’m also unabashedly an instant gratification guy and have admitted up and down I’d be a terrible coach and GM. I’m basically the basketball Veruca Salt.
Seriously, that was my immediate thought after reading that post.
Fucking Caleb Martin
Exactly
The TOS and transition d were awful.
Whenever they moved the ball they got good looks, but didn't sustain that type of play.
I didn’t watch the whole game, just saw most of the 4th quarter and from what I saw Porzingis stunk.
Completely agree on rushing the 3 point shots. I saw it at least twice just in the one quarter
As I wrote in the game thread just now, Joe wasn't reaching for lineups last night. He was benching guys fir effort. It was clear from the 1st quarter on.
I’m surprised there is so much debate in this thread. There is a reason most of us bet money on the Lakers last might. It was extremely predictable and that’s not Celtics specific. The lakers shot 50% because they had mostly great looks. The Celtics shot in the 30s because they didn’t. Both were due to the relative effort.
Onto the next game.
Onto the next game.
And good that he was. He should. The problem isn’t losing the game the “problem” is setting a standards bar and holding the team accountable for whatever that was. It’s possible for it to be true that these things happen in an NBA season and for it also to be true that the coach needs to demand that they don’t.
This team will continue to suffer from variance streaks because they choose to play a high variance style. I wish they had more tricks up their sleeve but they spent like a dozen posesssions straight in 2nd half taking 3s after one guy tried to dribble his way in. It was dogshit offense.
More annoying for me is that whether it’s Caleb Martin or Bryant Reeves or whatever random role player is going off they don’t have a guy who can just go lock him up for a while to cool things off. For all the words I read about how White is this incredible defender and Jrue is this incredible defender and Tatum has all this value because of how good a defender he is then why the hell can’t one of them step up and shut down the nonsense. Sometimes you need to knuckle down and get stops and these games where the other team gets hot and stays hot but they just try to shoot their way through it. I really thought Jrue could be that guy at the guard level but I wonder whether Brad needs to be looking into someone who can just put the clamps on someone in a short stint so they don’t bury themselves while the shots aren’t falling. Of course those guys aren’t really available as much anymore but I’m not talking about someone who can shut down a Kawhi or Halliburton just someone to stay connected to these other types and get them out of rhythm
This team will continue to suffer from variance streaks because they choose to play a high variance style. I wish they had more tricks up their sleeve but they spent like a dozen posesssions straight in 2nd half taking 3s after one guy tried to dribble his way in. It was dogshit offense.
More annoying for me is that whether it’s Caleb Martin or Bryant Reeves or whatever random role player is going off they don’t have a guy who can just go lock him up for a while to cool things off. For all the words I read about how White is this incredible defender and Jrue is this incredible defender and Tatum has all this value because of how good a defender he is then why the hell can’t one of them step up and shut down the nonsense. Sometimes you need to knuckle down and get stops and these games where the other team gets hot and stays hot but they just try to shoot their way through it. I really thought Jrue could be that guy at the guard level but I wonder whether Brad needs to be looking into someone who can just put the clamps on someone in a short stint so they don’t bury themselves while the shots aren’t falling. Of course those guys aren’t really available as much anymore but I’m not talking about someone who can shut down a Kawhi or Halliburton just someone to stay connected to these other types and get them out of rhythm
I guess I don’t see why the team *needs* to go all out in the regular season. They should cruise to the #1 overall seed. They’ll get a chance to rest players towards the end of the season. What do they gain? It’s not clear to me why a random Feb game has any bearing on their chances. I’d prefer they don’t burn themselves out. They coasted during the first series last year vs. the Hawks, I think these are good reminders that regular season coasting doesn’t convert to the playoffs.
There are all sorts of good reasons why this team should play hard most of the time in the regular season (the biggest reasons being securing home court and integrating the two major new pieces to their rotation), but I absolutely agree that it's really not worth getting bent out of shape over the random goofy loss or appearance (I posted just yesterday that the only really dopey loss on our schedule so far this year was @Charlotte, I guess this would be #2). Even a bad week or two is hardly out of character for championship teams.
This exactly. Until they win a title it's impossible to be fully satisfied with regular season wins, and regular season losses for a team that hasn't won it all just yet will always feel symptomatic of a larger problem.
Are we really even prone to “high variance streaks?” We are 9-1 coming off a loss, haven’t lost 3 in a row all year and our only B2B loss came in Minnesota and in Philadelphia with both being one-possession games.
the best thing that you can say about this team is that their negative trends can be measured in quarters, not games.