These interviews mean literally nothing unless you say something abjectly stupid. Unless you’re a sports talk radio host, of course, then it’s content.
4/25 - G5 vs. Hawks
- Thread starter Light-Tower-Power
- Start date
I mean I don’t understand why they stop running the offense. Like, they get a lead and are like, Hey, we’re winning, so no need to run the offense anymore! Seems like the wrong conclusion. And it’s been happening for ages.
Who the fuck cares how the coach deals with the media. Like that matters even a tiny bit?
Tatum plays for the disrespectful 3 all the time. It’s super dumb but brings the house down when you hit. You have to admire the several-year commitment to dumbass basketball by this franchise.
Tatum is an incredible player. One of the very best in the league. Probably a Hall of Famer.
And there are still stretches where he plays like a gremlin has possessed him and sucked both the brain and the soul from his body.
I’ll never understand him.
And there are still stretches where he plays like a gremlin has possessed him and sucked both the brain and the soul from his body.
I’ll never understand him.
My big issue is not about this series but rather I have no idea how this team wins a title if they still have it in them to wilt like this against the worst defense in the playoffs in an absolutely plum clinch spot at home with a double digit lead late into the game.
We saw last season all they have to do in many games is simply not play hot potato and hand possessions away and they literally cannot do it. They just can’t. They would rather lose playing the easy way than win playing the right way.
The White situation is Andy Reid giving Jamaal Charles 8 Carrie’s level of decisionmaking but we don’t have time for Joe to eventually figure shit out.
We saw last season all they have to do in many games is simply not play hot potato and hand possessions away and they literally cannot do it. They just can’t. They would rather lose playing the easy way than win playing the right way.
The White situation is Andy Reid giving Jamaal Charles 8 Carrie’s level of decisionmaking but we don’t have time for Joe to eventually figure shit out.
End of the day, we all felt dejected after they smoked Game 5 at home against Milwaukee last year and we all know how that turned out. It’s not like they’re losing two more so whatever. They’ll play up to Philly. Have all season long.
Even the usually rosy NBCSB guys are ripping them so hopefully they read their own press clippings in this case.
Even the usually rosy NBCSB guys are ripping them so hopefully they read their own press clippings in this case.
Joe is clearly over his skis.
Players play but the coach has to impart the “no foul” mentality in the Smart scenario, call time-outs at the right times to settle his team down, and not insert Blake Fucking Griffin in the game for the first time late in the 4th quarter for no apparent reason.
We’ve seen a lot of Celtics champions. I was a wee lad in the 60s but I’ve seen all 6 since the 70s. I know that many of them played lots of 6 and 7 game series along the way to a title.
But…
1. No Celtics champion since 1974 routinely coughed up late double digit leads throughout the course of the season and now the playoffs. That 28 point gag job against the Nets is emblematic of this team and not a championship squad.
2. I don’t remember any Celtics champion lose a game with the circumstances surrounding this one….(a) next opponent having swept and being vulnerable with its best player possibly out for 1 or 2 games and utterly squandering that and (b) failing to take advantage of a player like Murray’s absence.
3. I don’t remember any Celts champ making as many mental mistakes or having a coach who seemed totally overmatched.
The Celts will probably win this series. They will probably win Game 6. But does this team look to anyone like a Celtics champion?
Savings grace: there really are no truly dominant teams in the league.
Players play but the coach has to impart the “no foul” mentality in the Smart scenario, call time-outs at the right times to settle his team down, and not insert Blake Fucking Griffin in the game for the first time late in the 4th quarter for no apparent reason.
We’ve seen a lot of Celtics champions. I was a wee lad in the 60s but I’ve seen all 6 since the 70s. I know that many of them played lots of 6 and 7 game series along the way to a title.
But…
1. No Celtics champion since 1974 routinely coughed up late double digit leads throughout the course of the season and now the playoffs. That 28 point gag job against the Nets is emblematic of this team and not a championship squad.
2. I don’t remember any Celtics champion lose a game with the circumstances surrounding this one….(a) next opponent having swept and being vulnerable with its best player possibly out for 1 or 2 games and utterly squandering that and (b) failing to take advantage of a player like Murray’s absence.
3. I don’t remember any Celts champ making as many mental mistakes or having a coach who seemed totally overmatched.
The Celts will probably win this series. They will probably win Game 6. But does this team look to anyone like a Celtics champion?
Savings grace: there really are no truly dominant teams in the league.
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It’s a long playoffs, I don’t love the potential downstream effects of extra minutes especially with TL’s body feeling like a ticking time bomb + our shit injury luck in general.
Am weirdly less worried about Philly because they have an actual gameplan against that team.
I do think G6 is kind of must-win. Have seen this team spiral too much to feel anything but terrible about a Game 7.
Gonna be a while before I get over this. Just so hard to understand.
Credit to Trae for the dagger.
Credit to Trae for the dagger.
There is a small bit of humor in seeing flashes of Smart randomly flying through the air, at times completely away from the play. Like, Al will be shooting a baseline three and THERE GOES MARCUS pinwheeling into the stands on the opposite end of the court. Sometimes you just see a random shoe or flailing arm or flash of green hair.
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I agree that tonight was an all time disaster and it’s complete fucking bullshit that they’re playing a Game 6. I still think they’re coming out of the East and it’ll be a footnote but it’s definitely infuriating.
They jumped out to the nice lead playing fast and aggressive as fuck on both ends including running guys off the 3 point line to force shots by lesser players or contested shots in the paint.
It’s not like they don’t know how to exploit shit but goddamn why do they commit so damn hard to the chaos??? Like, what the fuck, Derek Fisher has 5 rings from making clean entry passes and hitting open threes, can we get that from a ballhandler down the stretch???
It’s not like they don’t know how to exploit shit but goddamn why do they commit so damn hard to the chaos??? Like, what the fuck, Derek Fisher has 5 rings from making clean entry passes and hitting open threes, can we get that from a ballhandler down the stretch???
Well, the '08 team took seven games to put away a much worse Hawks team. I'm not sure how much a team's play in one series affects the next - it's so dependent on matchups and whatnot that we've routinely seen teams barey squeak by in one round only to dominate the next, or vice versa.
This x 1000 - underhanded one-hand passes in the last three minutes, that overhead pass turnover, etc.
there’s demonstrably no one who can keep him from the rim and he didn’t try to get there. I love him, but he looked likes he wanted to be somewhere else in a close out game and I don’t get it at all
Like I said, I get that prior champs played many long series along the way. The point is not that…it’s the routine blowing of huge leads, the failure to put teams away, the coach who makes frequent bonehead moves and non-moves and the lack of a killer instinct given the situation the next opponent was in.
Any chance we get a matinee Thursday or are they just going to give Janet the boot?
Edit: Janet booted to Friday.
Edit: Janet booted to Friday.
This is worse than any of the playoff losses last year. They haven’t learned shit from their struggles. They’re the same old team who thinks they can coast to wins at times and it comes back to bite them in the ass. I can not trust them.
Yeah I think the reality is that they just kinda fucking suck on defense against quick twitch. Downside to their big ass guards I guess.
Teams like Philly and Milwaukee they are better equipped to play more straight up. You know what’s coming, etc, and drop coverage against Embiid and Giannis is good.
Well, glad we have your memory to rely on instead of actual stats. No double digit lead is safe in today's NBA, it's just a different league. The Timberwolves came back on the Nuggets two days ago. The Warriors almost blew game 4 against the Kings when the Kings came back in the final seconds. Like every other series has had double digit leads slip away. Do people here watch the other games? If we're going to bang on the Celtics, and they deserve it tonight, it should be about poor decision making in the final minutes. And Tatum being a complete no show the whole game. He's a ways off from a true MVP candidate imo.
But tell me, since this team doesn't look like a Championship team - what team this season looks better to you? The Bucks? Obviously not. The Sixers? They are beating up on a fake KD-dragged 6 seed and they've had stretches of looking real bad even while winning those games. The Suns? Their defense is suspect and their bench is ass after the KD trade. The Nuggets? Good team, but without warts? Hell no.
I am incensed that they weren't parading to the rim the whole fourth quarter. Jacking up threes when the lead was 10ish was a theme on repeat. Learn the fucking lesson already.
That’s the frustration. Nobody is that good this year. Bucks are down 3-1 and Giannis isn’t 100%. Embiid has a knee sprain and the Celtics have given him much-needed rest. The Heat lost Herro, a Celtics killer. The Knicks and the Bucks/Heat winner are going to beat the crap out of each other.
Out West, you have a bunch of decent but flawed teams.
The Celtics are up 3-2 and are like 98% to be fine but the lane is there for Green 18 and they seem intent on fucking it up at every turn.
I am most disappointed with Tatum. We got a D- game when all we needed was his C game. He says all the right things but he’s had enough damn lessons. At some point, a young star needs to get it done. We have no idea about what this window will be until Jaylen’s contract gets resolved. They need to win soon or it may never happen.
No need to be condescending.
Of course I watch other games. Hell, the Bucks coughed up a late lead last night.
Still, I doubt you will find many NBA champions EVER who dis that as frequently as this year’s Boston Celtics. And who also had a head coach who routinely failed to call key time outs and settle his team down when leads started to vanish. (And yes, Joe has gotten better at that.)
Let's try to stay positive folks. This team is still the odds-on title favorite.
I'll just continue to bang the Derrick drum, White needs to play more than 31 minutes.
I'll just continue to bang the Derrick drum, White needs to play more than 31 minutes.
And if they fail this postseason, it’ll be very hard to trust them moving forward and hard to enjoy the regular season because nothing will matter until April.
My apologies - crankiness got the better of me after that shitshow.
Agree to disagree on the your point though - big lead changes are just the reality of today's NBA. I think the Celtics may have underestimated the fight of the Hawks in this one, but with some further reflection, a ton of things had to break the Hawks way for them to pull this out.
I don't think any of the remaining teams are better than the Celtics. Tonight was disappointing, but they're still fine. Hoepfully this is their only needed lesson of this variety this postseason. I expect them to win this series and then we'll see.
No problem. I’m pissed too.
I hope you’re right. I’ve been worried about the constant gagging up of huge leads for a while, and think it says a lot about what this team is and is not made of.
But yeah, anything is possible for this team. KG told me so.
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Yeah still big mad. We should not be witness to CD effort for a series closeout game at home. Can't happen.
Among championship-caliber Celtics teams over the years, there's none that comes close to this crew in terms of the distance between their floor and their ceiling. I remember the Bird-era Celtics having bad games, but they always looked like basically the same team. Tatum is the microcosm of this variance: his ceiling is as high as any player in the league, but he has worse stinkers than other all-NBA first-teamers. He hasn't learned to make a positive impact when his shot isn't falling and when the whistles aren't friendly.
Celts were up 10 when my youngest had the most violent puke of our entire parenthood. Took us a good 20 minutes to deal with. I came back to the TV and they were behind. Goddamn.
I’m still pissed this morning. This team with the experience level of their two best players should not still be choking away important games like they did. Tatum/Brown are not young players anymore. It’s time to step up and once and for all show some killer instinct and close out a team when you need to. No more excuses.
They need a coach on the sideline whose whole job is to watch quietly and, if needed, open a secret compartment in the floor, pull out the glass box inside, enter the code “Orange” to open that box, and push the Melo Button inside that box.
The Melo Button unlocks a set of plays to get Tatum the ball in the post to bully his way to the basket, draw fouls, hit layups, and make easy passes out of double teams to open shooters. Hell against a team like this you might not even have to bully. The fact that they don’t run anything to get him into a mismatch on Young down low is sickening.
It hit me that while he doesn’t take contested midrange shots much anymore, that doesn’t mean Kobeball is dead—he has just extended it out to the 3pt line and increased the degree of difficulty even more.
I know this is not empirically true but I woke up believing in my heart that if he didn’t inanely pull up from the logo in the 2nd quarter during the big run out to a lead, they would have won. Either way that play ended up being a harbinger of doom.
Yeah, still mad.
The Melo Button unlocks a set of plays to get Tatum the ball in the post to bully his way to the basket, draw fouls, hit layups, and make easy passes out of double teams to open shooters. Hell against a team like this you might not even have to bully. The fact that they don’t run anything to get him into a mismatch on Young down low is sickening.
It hit me that while he doesn’t take contested midrange shots much anymore, that doesn’t mean Kobeball is dead—he has just extended it out to the 3pt line and increased the degree of difficulty even more.
I know this is not empirically true but I woke up believing in my heart that if he didn’t inanely pull up from the logo in the 2nd quarter during the big run out to a lead, they would have won. Either way that play ended up being a harbinger of doom.
Yeah, still mad.
People are understandably focused on the last 5 minutes, but this team showed a dismaying lack of urgency from the jump. They sleep-walked through the first quarter when they had an opportunity to really engage the home crowd and run an on-the-brink and undermanned Hawks team out of the building. After the first few minutes it was clear that ATL had "believability" (to borrow a Brick term from hockey) and really felt they could win. Then when the Cs eventually built a lead they acted like they expected the Hawks to just concede. To me the Blake minutes were a concern not because they lost ground (they held serve as has been noted), but because it seemed to signal a lack of a kill-shot mindset. That's the stretch of the game where you should be extending the lead and putting the game away - not bleeding the clock and treading water while you get a fan-fave bench guy some minutes.
This is exactly what is frustrating. They DO and CAN put teams away. They closed like a boss in game 4.
It's the inconsistent play down the stretch. We saw it during the regular season. I know I'm probably just echoing many sentiments from others as I don't venture in these threads too often.
Can they provide enough consistency to win a championship? I don't think so, but I hope I'm wrong.
Such a frustrating team to watch, but so great when they are clicking.
Just because I was curious, I checked career W/L in playoff games:
Pierce: 87-83
Tatum: 44-35