I am already seeing people worrying about who the NBA will have officiating Game 3 because there has been so much interest in the series.
Celtics vs. Nets, Round 1 Discussion
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I'm a longtime believer of the league putting a thumb on the scale in favor of a longer series. Game 3 of last year's Finals was as close as you could get to a Milwaukee lock once the officials were announced. Given that this will be a home game for Brooklyn, I'd certainly be hesitant to bet on the Celtics this Saturday.
To clarify, I'm not talking about physical play as I don't think that was the main culprit last night. I'm familiar with the Jordan Rules, and that was a lot harsher than anything KD saw last night. I'm talking about how the rules have changed: Illegal defense vs. defensive three seconds. In the 80's and 90's, you couldn't leave your guy to shade over towards a scorer like KD. You couldn't build a wall at the top of the key like teams do to Giannis. You defended a guy in straight man-to-man, or you committed to a full on double team which the best playmakers would pick apart. These hybrid zone concepts that every team uses now would have been illegal 30 years ago.
View: https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1517165928089333760?s=20&t=etBoik0VAmgDA1EKBSyqMw
Shams Charania
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Brooklyn Nets three-time All-Star Ben Simmons plans to make his season debut in Game 4 vs. Boston on Monday as long as rehab remains on course, sources tell
@TheAthletic @Stadium. Simmons is set to play his first game since June 2021.
Shams Charania
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Brooklyn Nets three-time All-Star Ben Simmons plans to make his season debut in Game 4 vs. Boston on Monday as long as rehab remains on course, sources tell
@TheAthletic @Stadium. Simmons is set to play his first game since June 2021.
Durant has not shot well. However, if my math is correct, in his 13 missed shots, BRK got an offensive rebound on 7 of those shots. It only resulted in 6 points off those rebounds, but still changes the calculus a little bit
What do we think Simmons can do after one year of rust in a hotly contested playoff series? 24 minutes a game? Can he slow down Tatum? It's hard to see this succeeding.
You make a valid point that a lot of the hedge and wall actions that are commonplace in 2022 would have been illegal defense calls back then. I kinda agree with the opinion though that the handchecking and whistle-swallowing that marked the era would have more than offset that for Durant. If guys could lean and batter him today like they could under those rules, it would significantly impact his game.
Whether 2022 Durant would do well in 1985 is a tangent imo. Of course he would. He's on the left side of the beef bell curve now, but he'd have a lot of physical advantages over those cats. He's probably playing 15 pounts heavier than Bird did.
Now Giannis...that's a guy who would have his life changed if you couldn't build a wall to stop him.
IF he plays at all I'd expect like 12-15, maybe 20+ if it goes 7. I think he will play better man D than anyone they have, but he hasn't practiced with the team much, so switches might be sloppy, certainly brings more rebounding. On offense... doesn't solve spacing issues, but he can drive, though will he hit FTs?
I'd be surprised if they ran him out there in G4 if they lose G3. At that point the risk of reinjury, either of body or soul, is too great to make it worth the slim chance that they could come back and win the series. But his camp sure seems set on getting him out there, so who knows.
I'm intrigued to see whose minutes he soaks up:
- if it's Bruce Brown, is he improving the defense considering how well Brown played Tatum? And even though Brown hardly shoots, he's STILL more of a threat than Simmons
- Claxton or Drummond - They've needed their rim protection and that's not a strength of Simmons, who's more of a perimeter defender - he is likely an improvement on offense for them though
- Curry/Dragic - Nets, as we've seen, have really needed their offense, though he'd obviously improve the defense in those minutes
I guess the 20 minutes that are going to Patty Mills might be where Simmons fits in? It's just kind of awkward because if shares the floor with Claxton/Drummond and Brown, he's adding to their shooting issues (and introducing more FT weakness), but if he subs for Claxton/Drummond, he's probably downgrading their defense by removing their rim protection (and who knows what kind of shape he's going to be in or how long it'll take for him to get to game speed)
I'm pretty bearish on Simmons in the playoffs generally - he's the definition of an 82 game player to me - but it's hard for me to see the obvious areas where he's going to impact the game significantly.
I wonder if Simmons would best be used as the sub for KD or KI, so that there is always a second viable ball-handler on the court.
I think you play him with one or the other, maybe both so that when the Celtics collapse there is a guy who can take the pass and swing to the open shooter. Also keep Horford honest by flashing to the rim.
This has been covered but it seems like a terrible idea to bring Simmons into this kind of situation. If he could have knocked off the rust with 5+ regular season games and gotten some familiarity with Durant and Irving (who, I believe, don’t engage in practice much), I think he could have contributed. But when the Nets are down 3-0(!), what is going to be the point?
Agreed. Some people have discussed how he's been successful against Tatum in the past, but two massive caveats to that, beyond the elephant in the room (that Simmons hasn't played a real game in almost a full year, and is on a new team):
-All of his previous games were with Embiid behind him, and having a top flight rim protector is a massive advantage for perimeter defenders.
-He's played a grand total of 1 game against Tatum since 2/1/2020, before the latter had even made an all-star team. That was a turning point in Tatum's career, he went from a borderline all-star to a legit all-nba player, and he's clearly leveled up again since. In that one game (4/6/2021), Tatum scored 20 points on 17 shots and the Celtics won by 10.
I don't think there's all that much information to be gleaned from Simmons' success against Tatum prior to that point.
Tough to expect Simmons to be much more then 15-20 minutes of net neutral coming off of a year long layoff. Will be very interested to see what the game 4 spread is/how the market is valuing his return.
edit: and double interested to see what impact RW's (potential) return has
edit: and double interested to see what impact RW's (potential) return has
I agree, I think he’ll block one of Pritchard’s three point shots (as that’s about the only way he’ll hit a three point shot in a pressure situation).
If Simmons is on the floor, I wouldn't even pretend to guard him until he reached the free throw line. If he's taking the ball out of Kyrie's hands on offense and bringing it up, I'm just fine with that. Then when he inevitably passes it, the guy who was "guarding" Simmons will be standing there at the free throw line waiting to double Durant and Kyrie when they catch the pass.
Defensively, he'll help on the perimeter. The C's ball movement will make that irrelevant. I would have Brown run his ass all over the court until he fell over due to lack of conditioning.
Defensively, he'll help on the perimeter. The C's ball movement will make that irrelevant. I would have Brown run his ass all over the court until he fell over due to lack of conditioning.
Celtics need to do a better job of targeting Dragic when he is in there. If he is going to score as he does, they need to make him pay. He is the only Net to have a positive +/- in both games
Hayden Smith reporting that the Nets are eying a game four debut for Ben Simmons.
EDIT: can't seem to make links work, so here it is: https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2022/04/21/ben-simmons-reportedly-debut-game-4-celtics-nba-playoffs-celtics/
EDIT: can't seem to make links work, so here it is: https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2022/04/21/ben-simmons-reportedly-debut-game-4-celtics-nba-playoffs-celtics/
Agreed though its harder than it looks. Dragic is pretty slippery and he appears to have cheat codes when it comes to what he can get away with while shedding defenders. As others noted, the Nets (or KD/KI) went away from him in the second half after he was getting to his spots in the first. He was really taking advantage of the big match-ups and did well against Theis, Horford and Williams so you wonder if they try to go back to that. Given their adjustments overall, I am pretty confident the Celtics will be prepared.
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I will take an L on that one. The first half of the year Al was taking and missing the 3 with the quicker release and it seemed like a bad decision to speed up the release. Of course, Al knows and kept with it and it is a great weapon.
Ben would face a new kind of aggressive Celtic hand slapping defense (see Claxton) with the worst outcome being Simmons shooting FTs
So the Nets would be playing 4 on 5 on offense. One good defensive player, like Simmons, won't correct their deficiencies on D. Whomever he guards will go to the corner and at worse the C's will play 4-4 on offense
IME is licking his chops at the thoughts of Ben Simmons playing minutes for the first time in a year
We should probably talk about the Khris in the room. This is a pretty significant development for non-Milwaukee teams hoping to grind it out of the EC.
For sure, huge injury. He also kills the Celtics. That looked worse than 3-4 weeks. I like him as a player so I'm glad it's not a longer term outage for him.
Game 1 was a one possession game down the stretch (Chicago could have tied it with 29 seconds left), the Bucks were a bit lucky to escape with a win. Then they get down big in game 2...everyone is waiting for them to turn it on and just flatten Chicago, but we haven't seen it yet. This won't make it any easier.
OK, thanks for explanation. Makes sense.
OTOH, KD isn't getting many free layups without being knocked to the ground and he isn't going through the lane without getting an elbow or a hip or what-not. I wonder how much of that he would be able to take.
Portis also left last night's game with an eye abrasion, which sounds pretty fucking painful. Wonder if he'll have any lingering effects from that also.
Have had those, son did too in a game. Fingernail to the cornea is pretty common. So's the treatment--hard contact lens for a few days. I wouldn't think that he's missing any time at all, if it's not a bigger eye damage thing.
It was obvious in the fourth quarter; but the Nets really have a huge disadvantage with Kyrie/Dragic/Mills/Curry out there in any significant minutes. Either Brown or Tatum gets the switch onto them and they are too small to really contest their shots around the basket.
Exactly KD would have to beef up to play then. And it is not 100% he could.
George Gervin weighed a buck-eighty and did just fine. I think KD would have been transcendent in any era.
You guys were luckier than I was. I took a tennis ball to my left eye fucking around one night in high school with some friends. The fuzz cut through the cornea all the way to the lens, and I was in an eye patch (arrgghh) for like 6 weeks, and I lost some of my vision in my left eye. To this day, if I close my eyes and look at a light, I have a small black line in the field of vision where the scratch was. Never really got it looked at years later, but I've always guessed it's some kind of scar thing.
I thought the Nets were much better on defense last night. BKN cleaned up their issues on the defensive boards and cut way down on the number of rim attempts by the C's. The C's just made more/tougher shots than they did in game 1.
On the other hand, the Nets shot distribution was god awful. 43.42% rim or 3 frequency (56%! of their shots were midrange jumpers) and a rim frequency of 15.8% (NBA average is 28.9%). Their average 2 point shot distance was 12.5 feet (league average is 6.7), which would have been the largest average 2 point shot distance in a single game by any team in the regular season this year by over 1 foot.
On the other hand, the Nets shot distribution was god awful. 43.42% rim or 3 frequency (56%! of their shots were midrange jumpers) and a rim frequency of 15.8% (NBA average is 28.9%). Their average 2 point shot distance was 12.5 feet (league average is 6.7), which would have been the largest average 2 point shot distance in a single game by any team in the regular season this year by over 1 foot.
yeah KD is the same height and about 10 pounds lighter than Olajuwon, the idea that a guy with the size of Olajuwan and way more perimeter skill wouldn't dominate that era is crazy.
No sport has ever been better in the past than the present, every present day star would crush in the past, just domination from start to finish.
He misses the first three or four games of Round 2 if it's closer to three weeks. Misses the entire round if four.
Ice as an example proves my point. He is lauded by players, etc, but when it mattered people were able to manhandle him.
Gervin never lead a great team. He was just abused on defence. He was not close to the guy you wanted to build your team around. Gervin would be unstoppable today. That may be flaw in the game then.
I really don't think comparing a 6'6" 180lb guy to someone who is 7' 245" is proving any kind of point. Especially when the big guy is also faster, jumps higher, is better at literally every single basketball skill, etc.
No discussion about the No Goal tend that turned into a Nets3? Or the way Thies nailed Smart (after being pushed) somehow was a boston Foul? (Granted Smart took a make up charge the next play down).
I think for the most part NYNs have had a pretty good whistle, while the Celts have been getting mauled when driving. If not for JBs and JTs finishing ability this would be a major issue.
I think for the most part NYNs have had a pretty good whistle, while the Celts have been getting mauled when driving. If not for JBs and JTs finishing ability this would be a major issue.
That's not true. The NHL was better the year before it doubled the number of teams. The nba was worse when Jordan played baseball. Mlb was worse when most of the infields were concrete and half the players on coke.
The idea the game is a straight line up is as dumb as it is a straight line down. Decisions about coaching, reffing at times make the game worse. The general trend is up. The players are better but the game can get worse at times.
That you take the listed height and weight as gospel, especially for a guy notorious for lying he is shorter than heavier he is is hilarious. KD has cast doubt on his ability to play the physical at times. He would be great in the 80/90s, but maybe not a top 5 guy. There are guys better in certain eras and he would struggle more then.
That said KD probably drops 50 next game
Seriously. Kevin Durant would be Kevin Durant level awesome whether it was 1950, 1990, or 2040
I think it was clear from context that the point was that star players of each era are better than their predecessors. The top stars of today would work any 1980's star (yes including Jordan), this idea that a bunch of slower guys less athletic guys many of whom aren't bigger, and few if any of whom are stronger than current players would "body them up so they couldn't play" is nonsense.
I have to wonder if there is some advantage to having Simmons play this year in his grievance against the 76ers for his withheld pay. There is no reason for him to make a Cameo in game 4 except for the fact that 20 million can be very motivating.
Another possibility could be that he is trying to change his image from someone who avoids the spotlight to someone who “trying to get back in it so he can help his team.”
Because he is in the clutches of Klutch, I find it very difficult to believe that there is not an ulterior motive for this.
Another possibility could be that he is trying to change his image from someone who avoids the spotlight to someone who “trying to get back in it so he can help his team.”
Because he is in the clutches of Klutch, I find it very difficult to believe that there is not an ulterior motive for this.
I thought this was one of the most poorly-officiated NBA games I have ever seen.
The idea nba forwards were not stronger in the past shows you are either young or unaware. This group of nba guys went to the Olympics and complained it was too physical. That would have been impossible. This speaks to the reffing. The NBA does not allow the physical play of the past.
As I have said in the past the nba went too far with physical play. There are not Rodney Rodgers, Anthony Mason, Danny Fortson, etc. That there is no room for a guy whose greatest/only asset was bulk and strength is good, but today's players are not stronger.
I also laugh at young fans insisting everybody today is more athletic. Skilled yes. What Olympic events are Curry, Luka, Jokic winning? The game is more about skill, and that is awesome. At one time all 2s were like Westbrook, more athleticism than skill.
Boy, the national narrative (from radio) is that the Celtics are really physical with Durant and the refs are letting it all go and generally not calling much but that should change in Brooklyn.
Even though...they’ve called a ton of fouls...Durant had twenty free throws...and calling more fouls might favor players who drive to the hoop and initiate contact, like Tatum and Brown
Even though...they’ve called a ton of fouls...Durant had twenty free throws...and calling more fouls might favor players who drive to the hoop and initiate contact, like Tatum and Brown