What you said is a big part, but I'd say limiting the turnovers is the #1 key to victory. 22 points given up off TO's and they lost by 10.
Celtics vs. Warriors, NBA Finals
- Thread starter Devizier
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Also would have been Klay's fifth foul. He extended the arm to get open.. it's a foul all day even if Smart flopped (I think he did or he was already off balance)
Edit: Klay is also just another example of a front--running GS team. The games he's hot he tells you about it.. the games he isn't? He completely disappears.
You are probably right with sitting Tatum for a bit more each game, but they have only themselves to blame for Tatum and Brown's minutes because their self-inflicted errors have been the biggest part in these last 3 series extending as far as they have gotten. Games 1, 3, and 5 against Milwaukee were winnable and they lost all of them forcing it to have to go to 7. Games 1/3/6 in the Miami series the same thing. In particular, the showing in Game 6 against Miami is looming large. They could've had 6 days off going into the Finals and saved themselves another to and from Miami.
No doubt they only have themselves to blame, what’s done is done. The question is, what should they do now?
I’d opt for seeing if Tatum in crunch time on minutes 36-40 is better than what we’ve seen of Tatum in minutes 41-45.
Otherwise, Luke Kornet may end the 2022 NBA finals with more points in the last 5 minutes of games than Jayson Tatum.
Is this true? I find him to be 2b of the least likable players on the Warriors. I respect him for coming back from injury, but I find him just a little less likable than Poole and Draymond. He is playing a ton of minutes and has been solid the last three games, though.
With the caveat that the Celtics have been logging pretty heavy minutes, it really seems like they should be able to run GS out of the building. Slowly walking the ball up the floor just seems to take a lot of time off the 24 and allows GS to set up their defense the way they want. The Celtics need to push the pace. That's going to result in some more turnovers, frustratingly so, but dead ball turnovers aren't nearly as damaging as live ball turnovers.
Total of 4 points from their bench, so there were 3 pumpkins, not just one. (discounting the 6 points the garbage time guys scored).
My thought would be to rest him the first 2-3 minutes of the 2nd quarter and the last 1-2 minutes of the 3rd quarter.
I bet in Game 4 Williams was +12 or thereabouts if you exclude his last stint or two on the court. He was cooked at that point and not contributing anything (offensive rebounds given up to Wiggins & company were killers as far as keeping GSW within striking distance).
Talk of limiting turnovers is mostly that to me. That doesn't mean the Celtics shouldn't focus on taking care of the basketball - its just that this stuff is so variable and difficult to control.
In short, the Warriors have won the turnover battle this series but they are worse overall in the playoffs than the Celtics. Outside of obvious ones like passes to the crowd or straight to a Warrior, its not clear that this is something Boston can do anything about at this point (Udoka isn't running dribbling drills for Tatum and Brown today).
Lawyering the league about officiating isn't likely to win them game six, they aren't going to get the rules changed and new wrinkles are probably not happening. At this point, all that is left is winning match-ups and making good adjustments.
Klays very well liked by players in the league and the media so the media pushes him as someone that it’s “impossible to hate”.
I didn’t really care one way or the other about him going Into the series but I think he’s been a pretty big jackass. Exhibit A for me was him clutching his pearls about meanie Boston fans using the F Word…and then seeing the video of him mocking LeBron for “getting his feelings hurt” because a fan cursed at him
I think as I have gotten older I have just come to realize that every fan, player, coach, and owner is a giant hypocrite. Ok for me but not for thee.
That would be reasonable. Hard to predict exactly as it depends a bit on the flow of the game. But generally speaking, I'd like to see Tatum sit the last 2 minutes of the 1st/3rd and the first 2 minutes of the 2nd/4th.
That puts him at 40 minutes for the game and hopefully his last 5 minute production is a little better.
He averaged 35.9 minutes per game during the season (5th in the NBA) for what its worth. Asking him to play basically an extra quarter of basketball at the end of this playoff run is too much IMO.
Well they have to focus on it because they are giving up a lot of easy transition buckets to the Warriors. Limiting turnovers and making more shots, if you want to make it pretty simple, is going to win the game. GS got 13 more shots because of Boston turnovers so limiting the turnovers helps on both ends.
In terms of adjustments, I wonder if one will be sitting Horford for either Grant or White and getting that 4 guard/1 big lineup a chance at the start of the game. That lineup with 4 guards surrounding Rob helped get them back into the game in the 3rd quarter.
The Celtics have six rotational players, one rotational/situational player (Grant Williams), and a bunch of situational guys. So they’ve been playing playoff rotations for nigh on five months now and it’s beginning to wear on them. I won’t lament the picking of Nesmith over Bey again (although if they had that one more wing capable of handling the high leverage defensive minutes to spell Tatum..).
If there’s a bright side, ring chasers are going to look at the cruft riding Boston’s pine and see real roles for themselves here. If they’d managed to land a couple of ring chasers last summer, we’d all be making plans to attend the parade about now. But depth shouldn’t be a problem next year.
The thing that bothered me more than the non-call was the ref staring down Marcus through the whole sequence. It just seemed like ref showboating...equivalent to home plate umpire exuberant strike 3 call in playoffs.
While it's true his offensive game is hit and miss and when he's missing his tendency now is to fade into the background he always plays strong defense so I wouldn't say he ever disappears.
As for good guy/not good guy...who cares? There are a few guys who are clearly bums (let me re-introduce you to Laimbeer, B.), but in the main I never understood the idea we can judge these guys as people based on watching them play basketball or proforma press interviews.
I don't think I was judging him as a person, was I? I just dislike how he is on the basketball court. One thing I've felt this entire series is that Klay hand checks a lot.. I'm not sure where the line is for one or two hands being illegal, but I feel like he crosses it a lot.
Also I don't understand how him bumping Jaylen obviously with his body while Jaylen was trying to stay inbounds wasn't a foul in game four. As it was it was a crucial turnover at the time. I know it was one call/non-call in see of calls, but that one was odd to me at such a critical moment in the fourth quarter.
Yeah, I think Ime has to find places to pull these guys for a few minutes. I was just watching Skip and Shannon dump on Tatum's fourth-quarter performances, but they didn't acknowledge his heavy minutes. He's gotta be exhausted for the last four, five minutes of the game.
Man if only pass fakes were more a part of creating their shots. GSW bit on one and left Smart wide open in the paint. I was thinking “that is how you punish jumping passing lanes right there”.
Without a Warrior TO it isn’t possible to effectively push pace when they are retreating the 4 players who aren’t taking the shot. We aren’t ever having numbers as rushing into a set defense with our ballhandlers is more likely to result in a real break with numbers going the other way. The defense controls the pace which is why this series is slowing to a crawl as both teams are retreating everyone on the shot to deny transition.
Did you see our 5 offensive sets last game when Tatum was on the bench? A Jaylen layup on a missed rotation, 3 non-rhythm shots against the clock and a turnover. If we played Tatum 40 min last game the 4Q may not have mattered. We saw similar earlier in the series when Ime sat Jaylen and Smart with 3:30 in the 3Q…….in the next 5 game minutes the deficit went from 9 to 30. The playoffs function much differently than the regular season in this regard as teams aren’t coasting while going through the motions.
I saw, I agree it hasn't always been pretty. I'm not advocating playing game 6 of the NBA finals the same way you would 2nd night of a back to back in November.
But asking Tatum to play 44 minutes a night while being the focal point of the offense and an elite defender isn't working... he looks gassed at the end of games. He has already being asked to play far more than anyone else in the NBA and to expect he should magically be fresh down the stretch because he is 24 is wishful thinking.
If they can't survive 8 minutes a game with Tatum on the bench they most likely will lose regardless. The Warriors don't exactly have a Curry replacement either and he is averaging 37 minutes a game in the Finals. It might be a good time for Ime to try door #2 here.
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If you remember back to Game 1 it was Kerr sitting Curry for a long 2Q stretch which effectively cost the Warriors the game. Nobody expects Tatum to be fresh in the 4Q but as I stated earlier in this thread he was making the same plays and the same badly missed shots in the 1Q as he did in the 4Q. In an elimination game I think we have a better chance of seeing 48 min of Tatum than we do 40.
We'll see. After the game Ime said he thought they looked tired in the 4th.
Would be an interesting strategy to say that publicly... only to then up the ante and not take Tatum out for a minute all game.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not exactly looking forward to the potential of extra bench minutes filling the gap here. I'll be cringing if it happens and it certainly may end up not working out well. But I do think it's worth a shot, within reason, in an effort to give Tatum a better chance down the stretch.
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I think it all depends on the execution when he’s on the bench in the 1Q. If guys could have knocked down a couple 3’s I’m sure Ime would have bought him a few more minutes in the 1Q. It could be easier at home on Thurs when bench players typically perform better.
I would like to see Tatum’s rest align with when Curry and Poole are on the court together and/or when Wiggins is in the bench. They could run the offense through MS in the post or through JB after getting Poole switched onto him and he can then shoot over him. The current rotation of Tatum coming out mid-first quarter while the Warriors starters and best defenders are all in the game is not surprisingly not working.
If you try to steal some more minutes of Tatum off the floor I would stagger them having Al on the floor and letting him run the offense from the post or FT line. See if you can get him in a mismatch against a smaller player to back them down, or make good passes out of help D to open shooters.
Al has been doing less but to my eye they have been asking him to do less when I think they could squeeze some more offensive sets out of him to give the others a little rest. It's less likely to result in chicken-with-head-cut-off possessions because Al is usually making the right decision with the ball.
Al has been doing less but to my eye they have been asking him to do less when I think they could squeeze some more offensive sets out of him to give the others a little rest. It's less likely to result in chicken-with-head-cut-off possessions because Al is usually making the right decision with the ball.
The non-effort of Grant Williams getting back on this play is pathetic.
If he bothers to run back at all, he's probably in the passing lane to Poole.
Even more galling from a bench player, who doesn't have the excuse of being gassed like the starters could be. (and they all got back)
It's only the finals Grant.
This is probably true though I think coaches in general cling to this mindset too much. Especially in the playoffs.
If PP gets a couple 3s and misses both “it’s not working tonight”. If he goes 1 for 2 he earned himself a 6 minute stint in the 2nd half?
I get that sometimes there are particular matchups that may or may not work, but I don’t think these tiny 2 or 3 shot first half sample sizes should dictate much about the 2nd half playing time decisions.
I put a thread in the ticket swap forum but figured would be good to make a post here:
I (probably, assuming my friend's covid doesn't miraculously clear up in like one day) have an extra ticket to game 7 if anyone is in the Bay Area.
I (probably, assuming my friend's covid doesn't miraculously clear up in like one day) have an extra ticket to game 7 if anyone is in the Bay Area.
This reminds me of the problem Steve Kerr (coincidentally) described when he was playing--he said/suggested that he felt pressure because he would only get a few shots each night and therefore each shot he took had outsized importance. I would assume Pritchard feels this kind of pressure even more as a 24 year old playing in the finals. Under these circumstances, Udoka may have no other choice than to make decisions in the way you describe, at least for now in the context of the finals.
100%. It’s an unfortunate reality for these bench guys, particularly ones that add value primarily with their shooting.
Obviously guys can have generally good or bad games, and certain matchups might not favor certain people on the fringes of the rotation.
But assuming PP plays “as expected” in every facet aside from shooting in the first half, I don’t think Ime should really determine 2nd half playing time based on him going 0-3, 1-3, 2-3, or 3-3 in the 1st half. Just not that predictive of how it’ll go in the 2nd half.
The only out I'll give him is that he did roll his ankle pretty badly at one point. I don't recall if it was around that point in the game, but he was limping after the box out attempt in the clip.
I believe that was during the C's big Q3 run because I remember being annoyed that he had taken himself out of position on the play attempting to strip Looney who was frozen with the ball at the FT line. He hurt himself contorting to make a steal attempt and Klay ended up wide open at a time when the lead had opened up to 5.
I don’t think it’s about “It’s not working” as much as recognizing that you’re playing with fire to have your star on the bench in todays NBA when you could go from down 6 to being down 20 within 90 seconds if you don’t react to having inferior players on the floor against a run the opponent is about to make.
My point about “making a couple threes” was about keeping up on the scoreboard during Tatum’s time on the bench which could then allow him to retain for maybe another 2-3 min if we can keep pace.
For what it's worth on falling ticket prices:
The "get in" price on Stub Hub, before fees, is now $563.
I am in Section 330. Prior to game 5, prices ranged from $1700 to $3000, maybe higher, in my section.
Now they are $853-$2055
And yes, undoubtedly, that there is no chance to see them win the title at home is a huge factor in the price drop. As has been their play in the last two games and the sense that some fans may have of impending doom (given how much recency bias affects so many).
I am still going to the game and what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, I'm going to catch the Sox game on Thursday afternoon, too. But yeah, that they cannot clinch tomorrow night made me think twice, given my four hour-ish ride up and back.
Here's hoping that the reduced prices and chance for the Warriors to clinch doesn't result in a huge influx of Dubs fans.
The "get in" price on Stub Hub, before fees, is now $563.
I am in Section 330. Prior to game 5, prices ranged from $1700 to $3000, maybe higher, in my section.
Now they are $853-$2055
And yes, undoubtedly, that there is no chance to see them win the title at home is a huge factor in the price drop. As has been their play in the last two games and the sense that some fans may have of impending doom (given how much recency bias affects so many).
I am still going to the game and what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, I'm going to catch the Sox game on Thursday afternoon, too. But yeah, that they cannot clinch tomorrow night made me think twice, given my four hour-ish ride up and back.
Here's hoping that the reduced prices and chance for the Warriors to clinch doesn't result in a huge influx of Dubs fans.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but I think you’re also “playing with fire” asking Tatum to play 44+ minutes a night as well.
It’s just not going to show up right away, but rather with missed FT, short jump shots, less hustle, and worse decisions at the end of the game.
Of course it’s a balancing act. It would be great to have 8-9 awesome players on the team, but no one has that luxury.
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The problem they’ve had is 6-10 have turned into pumpkins.. and a couple of the starting five can’t be counted on either every game.
The more I think about it.. the more I worry about GW. He either has to mature a lot in the off-season or he has to be upgraded. His play in the finals has been the most shocking. He’s down graded from the Bucks series significantly. He ignores Ime too much of argues with him. That can’t happen with a role player… or any player really. I hope he shows up on Thursday and hits some threes because the team needs him to shut up and play and hit some daggers.
Decreased ticket prices are always a nice silver lining to disappointing games.
I remember getting last minute 2004 ACLS game 4 tickets under face value while I was in college.
Might be a better crowd this way.
Much like Draymond I think Grant’s primary issue is the matchup as he doesn’t really have anyone to defend which is a ton of his value to the team. It’s just a weird series for him which isn’t uncommon for role players to find themselves fairly useless against certain teams.
Brad is definitely upgrading the 6-10 role players this offseason, and that includes Grant. There will be far better players looking to join this team during the offseason.
Any chance Ime gives Nesmith some run tonight? I'm not talking about a major role, I mean something like 3 minutes total, around the quarter breaks, to try to buy starters a bit of rest.
I guess you haven't been to Foxboro for a Pats-Niners game. Motivated fans will fly. If the Celts win tonight, some Massachusetts residents will say "F it" and get their asses to SF on Sunday night.
Probably not since I don't think he's disciplined enough with team defense for this series. However, he's the type of wing who can match Wiggins' energy by crashing the boards to end up with a couple random rebounds you don't expect - that would be my expectation from him if we do see him.