wonder if there's any difference calling a timeout while still ahead rather than waiting till it's all tied up? And did they call a timeout or was it a TV timeout? I thought Joe didn't call a TO the entire 3rd quarter?
Celtics vs Heat ECF Redux Discussion Thread
- Thread starter DeadlySplitter
- Start date
I agree with this for the most part, but I can kind of see the logic in it.
- PP is a good shooter typically, he's not afraid to shoot, and he needs to be guarded
- He's never low on energy and competes very hard - for a team that was low energy that quarter and not mentally in it, he could be a shot in the arm
Now, I've disliked Pritchard on the Cs since he was drafted, so I'm not stanning for him, but that's the best argument I can imagine for it. Like you, I don't get people being hung up on the timeout thing, but the PP substitution is hopefully avoided in future games in favor of more DW or GW.
It wasn’t a total disaster - initially Miami didn’t really take advantage of Pritchard as they scored only 2 points in last two minutes of 1st quarter - but that changed quickly to begin the 2nd quarter as Miami scored on 5 of 6 possessions for 10 points before he was subbed out with 9:32 left. Celtics won rest of the quarter 30-19.
Obviously that’s a simplistic take on it but I just don’t get the matchup preference over using Grant or even to a lesser extent Hauser to fill some of those minutes.
To top it off, PP came back in with 2:30 left in the already disastrous. 3rd and Miami scored on all four possessions - 11 points in all. They recovered to start the 4th with him out there but just… I don’t know.
Since everyone came back healthy Joe has proceeded to absolutely try and destroy Derrick White's confidence.. He was probably our best or second best player for a few weeks.. as soon as Brown and Smart came back healthy they were immediately put back in and White was basically shut out. Made absolutely no sense then and it makes no sense now.
The main criticism I'd have of Joe is that he has basically killed the confidence of everyone other than the top seven.. to the point where it's not even worth putting in some of the players that helped the C's all season. He seems to like to ride or die with whomever is on the floor for long stretches, despite results, quite often with few or no changes.
DW should be getting a lot more minutes.. playing PP once was huh.. playing him twice after he did nothing and the team couldn't cut into the lead with him on the floor seemed desperate and out of ideas.
also.. I didn't block you
Yes, it was a TV timeout, and so did not have the mystical power required to transubstantiate the team's Spirit into something greater.
And they were only ahead by 3 points at the time everyone here would have called timeout (Love's 3 that cut it to 71-68).
In the 2nd quarter, not one of the MIA scoring possessions had anything to do with Pritchard. He was on opposite side of the floor and not in any of those plays.
Only 2 of the scoring possessions at the end of the 3rd involved Pritchard. One, Horford over helped as Butler was backing Pritchard down, which resulted in an open three. The other, Brogdon decided to cover Cody Zeller at the three point line rather than Max Strus
You're absolutely correct. CJM destoyed the Cs confidence that they were first team ever to lose two playoff series in one season.
I don't see the point to starting Rob Williams if there isn't a player he can cheat off of. I'd start White or Grant. Pritchard playing when Butler is on the court is questionable. Butler likes going against shorter players.
Edit: I guess Rob's vertical spacing makes it easier for Tatum to get to the rim.
There was a lot of make/miss about game 1. I'm not going to quote the shot quality dudes, but suffice it to say they had a different expected score. The downside is that the shooting luck is banked and it turns game 2 into a must win. I don't think many adjustments need to be made except the 'play harder' adjustment. Tatum was fine. Brown committed too many turnovers.
Edit: I guess Rob's vertical spacing makes it easier for Tatum to get to the rim.
There was a lot of make/miss about game 1. I'm not going to quote the shot quality dudes, but suffice it to say they had a different expected score. The downside is that the shooting luck is banked and it turns game 2 into a must win. I don't think many adjustments need to be made except the 'play harder' adjustment. Tatum was fine. Brown committed too many turnovers.
This is really my biggest complaint, it felt like a hot hand decision and not one based on matchups. Miami is not a great matchup for Rob IMHO
I think it's hard in the media and the locker room to move away from the thing that won you game 7 convincingly. CJM was kind of forced to start Rob as the default opinion was the two big lineup was the best in the league since mid-2022. If they lost after he made a pre-adjustment, he'd get even more crap for that. Now that it's shown to not be the best strategy, he can try a smaller starting lineup.
Thanks for providing some context. As I said, it was a simplistic take. Lowry making contested shots to begin the 2nd was more of a factor.
There is more to a TIMEOUT than putting two hands together in a perpendicular shape. A coach can substitute, change match-ups, take advantage of an opponent's weakest defender, quiet the crowd, give your stars a blow, reorganize, even draw up a ATO play, etc, etc, etc
Stomping around, throwing a clipboard, & repeatedly telling the players to change their "mindset" isn't all that clever. Considering Spoelstra is game-planning during those same timeouts I'm cool if Joe just pockets them to be used at the very end of games (which he's also allergic too).
Stomping around, throwing a clipboard, & repeatedly telling the players to change their "mindset" isn't all that clever. Considering Spoelstra is game-planning during those same timeouts I'm cool if Joe just pockets them to be used at the very end of games (which he's also allergic too).
I was just speaking of the role players and White who he’s used to weird amounts in both of those series
Edit. Perhaps try reading the post you’re responding to before going for a ‘got ya!’ Type post?
It may not have made a difference.. but the Genius Spoelstra calls these kind of timeouts all the time.
Yeah but the guys on the radio said so.
People are free to watch or listen to whatever dumbass sports talk content that they want. It's a free country. And sometimes those ratings-driven weak sauce takes will spill over here. It's understandable.
But when we have pages and pages of regurgitation of sports talk memes in here, it's a little depressing.
To add -- I can buy trying to give the team a wakeup call in game one after that third quarter, but everything you write about PP describes Grant as well, and Grant is better at defense and obviously size. Maybe Pritchard is a hair better at shooting but not much, and he's faster but he gives up so much size on everyone but Lowry it doesn't matter..
Our favorite film curmudgeon savages the Celtics defense last night. Notable: (1) Time Lord often looks kind of slow and disengaged (2) Brogdon's defense is confirmed as bad (3) Lack of hustle on a few rebounds ("Box out!") (4) Jaylen doesn't always have his head in the play, as we've all seen
I get being upset, but honestly, I found the clipboard thing and not talking to the players kind of childish. It's your job, rise above your feelings, and help them figure it out. There can be certain rare situations where a temper trantrum can motivate the players, but I don't think this was it.
He is horrid. He is obnoxious and wrong half the time. I don’t know why anyone would watch.
The timeout thing is almost 100% vibes not evidence. The thing with people saying "see Spo took one" is so dumb.
Heat went on a 9-0 run, everyone screamed for a timeout, Joe didn't take one, the Celtics on that possession get FTs, in the 2.5 or so minutes after he doesn't take timeout the Celtics were a whopping.... minus 1 (the missed FT by Smart).
Celtics go on a 7-0 run, Spo takes timeout... they don't get anything out of the ATO, over the next 2.5 or so minutes the Heat are....even. It was the exact same result for both teams, but one is "wow he stopped the momentum" and the other was "he can't coach".
Heat went on a 9-0 run, everyone screamed for a timeout, Joe didn't take one, the Celtics on that possession get FTs, in the 2.5 or so minutes after he doesn't take timeout the Celtics were a whopping.... minus 1 (the missed FT by Smart).
Celtics go on a 7-0 run, Spo takes timeout... they don't get anything out of the ATO, over the next 2.5 or so minutes the Heat are....even. It was the exact same result for both teams, but one is "wow he stopped the momentum" and the other was "he can't coach".
The TO thing is cope for not wanting to engage with the rest of the game and analyze it, with a side helping of the anger phase of grief. Obviously I expect that out of the randos posting here now that it's the ECF, but everyone else can do a lot better in analysis/commentary.
We should all be in favor of Joe pocketing the Celtic TOs, if we are going to use G1 evidence.
I’m just glad we are basing this off of the “results” of 1 timeout and 1 non-timeout. Even in your proof it was a net negative, and that’s after the initial run was 9 vs 7 for “example”.
I think playing Pritchard was worse than the timeouts, but both can be true.
Regardless we need a far better game tonight and this is a team that plays well when they are forced to. Interested to see what adjustments the coaching staff makes with the benefit of an off day.
That Time Lord behind-the-back save was him trying to replicate the 3rd play in this highlight reel:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWw4QzjwLKc
Unfortunately this time he saved it to a wide-open Heat player.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWw4QzjwLKc
Unfortunately this time he saved it to a wide-open Heat player.
I'm mocking the particular argument that Spo timeout was great and Joe not taking one was bad. In general though many people have studied the large samples, nobody has found any correlation between timeouts and stopping runs or even team performance. There is no evidence it makes any difference
That it became a focus is dumb because Joe made actual mistakes with Pritchard, and the team made tons of execution mistakes
There are different types of 9-0 runs too. You can get good looks and miss and they can get mediocre looks and convert. A timeout isn't really going to do anything about that unless you believe in magical-mystical timeouts. A 9-0 run could also be caused by an exploitation or matchup that cannot be adjusted on the fly or the players aren't able to account for/see while the game is in motion. In that case, of course a timeout can make a difference.
Looking at point swings is not a good way to tell whether a timeout should be called. Players hitting contested shots happens in the NBA, they're really good. Calling a timeout in that case is like calling a timeout before a field goal -- it's conspicuous coaching and yeah it happens, but does it do anything?
Looking at point swings is not a good way to tell whether a timeout should be called. Players hitting contested shots happens in the NBA, they're really good. Calling a timeout in that case is like calling a timeout before a field goal -- it's conspicuous coaching and yeah it happens, but does it do anything?
If the timeout strategy employed in the regular season never gets put in the spotlight then the usage of timeouts in the post-season is relegated to game thread fodder. Now it's become a thing. Joe is a social media meme, the announcers talk about it during the game, the players have to answer questions about it post-game, and on and on. Joe even offered that his own TO usage was mismanaged in the Philly series (plenty of pushback here before Joe owned up to that being a poor strategy). Whether or not timeouts actually work to refocus the players or end runs is practically irrelevant because the cost of a timeout is practically nil. It's a stupid hill for the coach to die on, yet here we are.
I wish we could explore more about the lineup choices, how to turn off the water on the Heat's 3-pt shooting, Grant usage, and TL's lack of fit in this series, rather than beating this one slightly-late-timeout to death.
Mazzulla has a lot of hard and interesting decisions to make, and we're focusing on the dumbest and most marginal/minor one.
Mazzulla has a lot of hard and interesting decisions to make, and we're focusing on the dumbest and most marginal/minor one.
Do you think we will see more of the small three guard line up tonight?
Who should get the most playing time between Smart, White and Brogdon?
Is PP relegated to the bench except for garbage time in this series?
Should the Celtics continue to start Rob Williams in the 2 bigs line up?
When will we see Grant Williams?
The timeout discussion is a bit like the 'clutch' hitting discussion this board had 15 years ago...there's some absolute positions and some misuse of data going on here.
The suggestion "the evidence says it doesn't matter" misunderstands sample size, isolating variables, etc. The more accurate way to encapsulate it is 'we haven't yet figured out a way to test whether it matters or not, and when' which I believe is true. Not being able to identify an effect matters...and, not being able to identify an effect is also not the same as there definitely not being one.
The reality that many people overrate it as a factor is very fair in my opinion. As someone who has watched a ton of basketball games, I also believe Joe is worse than average at deciding when to use them. I don't think there's a game yet that has been a decisive factor, but it's not good either.
In terms of adjustments that seem like they really might happen (unlike timeout usage) I believe we should see some more Grant as a second big. I wouldn't start him, but he'd be in the rotation certainly instead of PP and possibly to reduce TL minutes especially against Heat starters, who roasted him overall.
The suggestion "the evidence says it doesn't matter" misunderstands sample size, isolating variables, etc. The more accurate way to encapsulate it is 'we haven't yet figured out a way to test whether it matters or not, and when' which I believe is true. Not being able to identify an effect matters...and, not being able to identify an effect is also not the same as there definitely not being one.
The reality that many people overrate it as a factor is very fair in my opinion. As someone who has watched a ton of basketball games, I also believe Joe is worse than average at deciding when to use them. I don't think there's a game yet that has been a decisive factor, but it's not good either.
In terms of adjustments that seem like they really might happen (unlike timeout usage) I believe we should see some more Grant as a second big. I wouldn't start him, but he'd be in the rotation certainly instead of PP and possibly to reduce TL minutes especially against Heat starters, who roasted him overall.
I'm guessing:
DWhite or Grant in the starting lineup
Not much/any PP
Try to not have TL and Jimmy's minutes overlap too much
A focus on having Jimmy/Bam beat good defenders in single coverage in the midrange, and sticking a lot tighter to shooters
Posts are happening in various threads to this effect.
@benhogan posted a video clip of Rob playing drop on a Heat player who buried a 3 in his face. He also astutely pointed out that that’s the exact same coverage the Bucks play and the Heat rained fire on them for 5 games.
I’ve posted at least a few times about Grant’s weird usage and how he should be the 8th man going forward. I also posted an anecdote from The Lowe Post (with Chris Herring) where both of them lambasted Mazzulla…and the timeout thing was only brought up as an afterthought by both. Lowe brought up a prescient point that you’re probably bringing Pritchard in for his shooting…yet he’s basically not involved in the offense at all. At that point he’s just a shrimp standing in the corner who will get picked on on defense
I also posted a few adjustments I think are obvious:
-No Pritchard at all. Grant takes his minutes.
-If there’s a break glass in case of emergency need for shooting, play Hauser
-White should be getting more minutes than Brogdon.
-Brogdon should be hidden on defense more. That means 3 guard lineups with Pritchard and Brogdon should be dead and buried..then killed again and buried again.
-Get into Heat players airspace more. The only players they have that are reliable creators/guys that can get to the basket are Lowry and Butler. Make everyone else beat you off the dribble.
-Perhaps give Tatum, Brown and Smart lobotomies to make them pay attention to details more. The science might not be there but investigate possibilities at least
Smart was a magnificent distributor in the first half of G1 racking up 10 assists by halftime with a mix of pinpoint bounce passes and lobs. Somehow he picked up only one assist across the entire 2nd half. I hope he more consistently finds his facilitator mojo throughout G2.
G1 vs Miami had some similarities to G1 vs Philadelphia in that early in the games the Celtics had runs including virtual lay up lines and generated a bunch of points in the paint. In both cases the hot inside game led to lower than normal 3PA for the game. The Celtics are averaging 38 3PA through this playoff run. In Philadelphia G1 the Celtics had 26 3PA and in Miami G1 they had 29 3PA.
The Celtics are the top of the league in 3P% for the playoffs. I will not be surprised if it is bombs away in G2. They may have 50+ 3PA again.
G1 vs Miami had some similarities to G1 vs Philadelphia in that early in the games the Celtics had runs including virtual lay up lines and generated a bunch of points in the paint. In both cases the hot inside game led to lower than normal 3PA for the game. The Celtics are averaging 38 3PA through this playoff run. In Philadelphia G1 the Celtics had 26 3PA and in Miami G1 they had 29 3PA.
The Celtics are the top of the league in 3P% for the playoffs. I will not be surprised if it is bombs away in G2. They may have 50+ 3PA again.
I think the biggest thing is that each team automatically uses a timeout each quarter. Using a timeout to stop momentum if you are otherwise going to lose it is basically zero risk. Doing it otherwise is probably a mistake because the non mandatory timeouts have a lot of value late or for a challenge.
This calculus also advantages the visiting team slightly. If you are the visiting team, you can basically “burn” a timeout anytime in the first 9 minutes of a quarter once per quarter at no cost (there’s a slight cost in letting the home team use theirs later in the quarter). As the home team, you can do so in the first 5 minutes, and possibly in the next 4 if and only if the visiting team took one of the first 5 minutes.
I think using those “free” timeouts to try to stop runs makes a ton of sense because even if timeouts don’t matter, there is no downside. This is also why the third quarter criticism doesn’t really hold up. By the time the Celtics first lost the lead, their opportunity for a free timeout had expired. And in any event, the third quarter wasn’t the sort of brief spurt run that this strategy, even assuming it works, applies to. Miami steadily gained ground all quarter. They did it before the Celtics scorer’s timeout at 6:30 and before the Heat one around 3:00, and after that timeout too. Stoppages didn’t help Boston at all.
In contrast, to start the fourth, Boston went on a quick 7-0 run in the first 1:30. Spo had a “free” timeout there because Boston hadn’t used one yet. So why not call the timeout (and he did).
In contrast, the Boston timeout at 2:51 in the first was awful. The next stoppage is an official timeout assessed to the Heat. So Mazzulla wasted a timeout to stop the clock maybe a possession or two before it otherwise would have been stopped, and burned a timeout he could have preserved. Absent a really really good reason, that is a mistake. It’s probably not a huge one, but it is the timeout decision that actually deserves criticism (it has gotten some).
I think the tactics on timeouts is one of the areas that the depletion of our coaching depth really hurts us. I don’t fully blame Mazzulla, or anyone, for that and think it’s an issue we’ll likely see get resolved next year once Brad and Mazzulla can fill out our coaching ranks. I also think Mazzulla’s preference to retain 2 timeouts for the end of game scenarios is absolutely correct, but suspect he hasn’t had a ton of time to really think through the intricacies of timeout management beyond that because he’s a rookie head coach with a shallow set of assistants who has a ton of more important things to worry about.
Very well stated---thanks for all the thinking there. To your last point, this is the kind of thing Belichick not only had Ernie Adams thinking about during games, they did modeling of this kind of thing in the offseason (or so it has been reported). No rookie coach with a partial staff is going to be in the same place judgment and data wise as that...
The bolded is not true. If you had done even a cursory googling, you would not assert such. I recommend this economics senior thesis, which used as its basis ~3700 games covering 3 NBA seasons, applied a reasonable definition and several different measures (ratio over the next N seconds, who scored the next points, etc) and ended up with ~18k usable observations to analyze. Conclusion:
"The most significant of these results, the home-team with the first-half restriction, shows a .21 increase in average ratio for the next ten points, meaning that calling a timeout predicts that the home-team will score 5.47 out of the next ten points as opposed to 5.26 points when a timeout is not called. This result is small, but supports the idea that timeouts can be a marginally effective tool for coaches to use to help their teams win."
A more mathematically complex study from Northwestern is here. It, too, was unable to reject the null hypothesis that timeouts have no effect on momentum. However, it did find an interesting correlation: the impact that coaches' timeouts have on the teams' short-term performance thereafter depended on coaching experience, and in particular, the more experienced a coach was, the less of an impact was seen on the team's first few possessions after timeout, relative to their average performance. In other words: experienced coaches are already getting their points across to teams even in the flow of play, and timeouts add little in their ability to convey them. Inexperienced coaches find them to be more valuable. One's interpretation of that conclusion relative to Joe Mazzulla, however, is probably determined by your priors about him, since you can argue it either way.
Meanwhile, this study on NCAA D-1 data suggests more of a substantial effect from calling timeout, but I am rather unpersuaded by its study design (definition of variables in particular), and in any event there are a lot of other confounding differences between college and the pros.
Regardless, point is, we have done some fairly good evaluations of it, on sufficient sample sizes - and our best guess is that the effect is either zero, or indistinguishable from zero at any meaningful level of statistical significance.
To put it kindly, you should very much lose the attitude. First, and most fundamentally, my comment was a response to people saying timeouts do not matter. Invective aside, worth noting the first and third study you cite suggest the same. Which is different than your second study suggests. If there are three studies with different assessments, that for most of us means the question is not clear----which was, so you know, my point. Thanks for backing it up with all that googling!
Second, as those who follow analytics closely presumably caught (and you missed) the reference I made to clutch is that at a point in time analytics can conclude there is no evidence of something, and later that can be demonstrated by additional and different analyses. Bill James, who you may google if you haven't heard of him, wrote a foundational piece on this years ago you might want to read as you are missing a big part of how sports (and other) analytics works. https://sabr.org/research/article/underestimating-the-fog/ You are, at best, guilty of the problem he is suggesting.
To state the problem more simply for you: absence of evidence in an analytic study is not proof something does not exist. As you yourself stated, what is above is a guess---and I agree we each have guesses on the impact of a timeout, not a clear analytic conclusion in either direction.
Most home playoff losses for an NBA Championship team:
4 - Boston Celtics, 1966
4 - Boston Celtics, 1968
4 - Houston Rockets, 1995
4 - San Antonio Spurs, 2003
4 - Toronto Raptors, 2019 —
2023 NBA Final Four:
0 - Denver Nuggets
0 - LA Lakers
0 - Miami Heat
4 - Boston Celtics
View: https://twitter.com/DanKelley66/status/1659665874209624074?s=20
4 - Boston Celtics, 1966
4 - Boston Celtics, 1968
4 - Houston Rockets, 1995
4 - San Antonio Spurs, 2003
4 - Toronto Raptors, 2019 —
2023 NBA Final Four:
0 - Denver Nuggets
0 - LA Lakers
0 - Miami Heat
4 - Boston Celtics
View: https://twitter.com/DanKelley66/status/1659665874209624074?s=20
If the Celtics had won games 6 and 7 against the Warriors, they would've been champions with 5 home playoff losses.
What happens when a more talented team goes up against a much better coached, more disciplined, more mentally tough team? This. Mazzulla is like an up and coming chess master who suddenly finds himself up against Magnus Carlsen.
I doubt this even goes to 6. The Heat are without question the better team. They aren't more talented, but everything else is in their favor and it's enough.
I doubt this even goes to 6. The Heat are without question the better team. They aren't more talented, but everything else is in their favor and it's enough.
