Joe Mazzulla officially named head coach

lovegtm

lovegtm

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Eric Fernsten's Disco Mustache said:
Was travelling for work since after game 1, just getting caught up around here, and so may be posting some thoughts that others have already said somewhere else

People talk about the 'chess match' between coaches in playoff basketball, but I think that sometimes 'rock, paper, scissors' is the better analogy. Both coaching staffs make decisions before a game, and then you find out what happens when they come together.

In that vein, my read of game 2 & 3 is that a few things happened at once:
  • Joe and Boston's coaching staff decided to try a defensive strategy along the lines of 'make sure to not give up dribble penetration, with less of a contest of outside shots if needed' at the same time that Miami's coaching staff told their team something like 'get into our offense fast, look and take the first good three you can, take as many 3s as possible'
  • Once the game started the 'soft contests are OK' part of 'deny dribble penetration', in practice, turned into much less ball pressure and lots more open Miami 3s than Boston expected or wanted. On paper, when Boston's coaches drew it up, the game plan wasn't to turn Miami's outside looks into a version of pre-game shoot-around. But once our guys tried to implement the plan things shifted too far in that direction.
  • Joe being a numbers guy, he might have watched the first half and thought "Miami can't keep shooting this good forever; we're up at the half; I'll keep telling my guys to tighten things up; law of averages kicks w/r/t Miami's shooting and we'll win this thing comfortably'
  • Law of averages did not kick in. And both our offensive safety valve (Porzingis) and our 'things have gone to crap create something off the dribble' guy (Jrue) had their worst shooting nights in a while.
  • So then, after game 2, Joe and Boston's coaching staff probably looked at each other and said something like 'Fuck it, that defensive strategy was too cute by half. Let's go back to pressuring them all over the court, running them off the three point line, and then rotating aggressively to deal with dribble penetration when it happens.' Which is more or less that we've done all year. And in game 3 lo and behold that defense worked much better, Porzingis had a nice bounce-back game, and we won comfortably
So-- I'm not sure if this has been said somewhere-- but to me the big irony / story about game 2 was the Joe (who keeps getting hammered for how he's not as good as Spo at things like playoff adjustments) didn't need to make big defensive adjustments. But he did, perhaps thinking he was getting ahead of whatever Spo was going to do. And then it didn't work. And so we switched back and were fine.

Sec-- who hasn't posted over here in lord knows how long-- used to have a great point about the mistakes people can make when they feel public pressure to be seen taking action.

As he used to say: "Don't just do something --> stand there!"
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Love it. I think we also forget that "adjustments" can't just be robotically implemented. The players clearly had trouble executing the scheme, probably due to effort issues, but maybe lack of familiarity too.
 
wade boggs chicken dinner

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lovegtm

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Cellar-Door said:
Interesting stat....
View: https://twitter.com/MichaelVPina/status/1785313908045033802


Joe Mazz appears to be winning the ATO battle against Spo (in fairness he has better talent to work with).
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The talent is way better, but given how many people were ready to crown Spo's ass in this coaching matchup, CJM needs to get a lot of credit.

Even the one "bad" gameplan in game 2 probably looks a lot better if the players execute closeouts properly and play with effort.

He's doing a lot better in his Heat Challenge than Brad, Ime, or Joe 1.0 did. The team is so, so focused, and one step ahead of most of Spo's moves.
 
Cellar-Door

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lovegtm said:
The talent is way better, but given how many people were ready to crown Spo's ass in this coaching matchup, CJM needs to get a lot of credit.

Even the one "bad" gameplan in game 2 probably looks a lot better if the players execute closeouts properly and play with effort.

He's doing a lot better in his Heat Challenge than Brad, Ime, or Joe 1.0 did. The team is so, so focused, and one step ahead of most of Spo's moves.
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Spo also isn't really an ATO wizard, he's good at it, but most of his stuff is gameplan, defense switching.

The big thing I've noticed is.... even after KP went out... the Celtics just are not phased by zone anymore. They went to it last night with KP out, and even without the KP cheat code, Celtics worked it, got a mistake out of the D, hit a wide open 3 from White, went down, worked it some more and Spo swapped out.
 
slamminsammya

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Cellar-Door said:
Spo also isn't really an ATO wizard, he's good at it, but most of his stuff is gameplan, defense switching.

The big thing I've noticed is.... even after KP went out... the Celtics just are not phased by zone anymore. They went to it last night with KP out, and even without the KP cheat code, Celtics worked it, got a mistake out of the D, hit a wide open 3 from White, went down, worked it some more and Spo swapped out.
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weren’t the back to back dwhite dunks on zone too?
 
Leon Trotsky

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This belongs here, I think:

“It started with Joe [Mazzulla],” White said. “Ever since he took over, he’s given me the most confidence and I can talk to him and he can talk to me and that relationship is just getting better and better each day and it’s amazing to play for him and I love it. We’ve got such great players on the team but they allow me to do what I do and believe in me.”
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wade boggs chicken dinner

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lovegtm said:
Even the one "bad" gameplan in game 2 probably looks a lot better if the players execute closeouts properly and play with effort.
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Scal said after G3 - and I agree with him - that from the Cs POV, this isn't a series about adjustments. It's not like the Cs have to figure out who is guarding whom or where help is coming from. It's not like the Cs are changing substitution patters or where players are being stationed or what actions they are running.

The Cs are better than MIA and if they play with intention and physicality, they are going to win. They just need to keep doing what they've done in the regular season and what they are doing here in this series.

Which is not what happened in G2.

It was great that CJM didn't overreact to that clunker.
 
lovegtm

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No one's going to give him credit because they were supposed to beat the corpse of the Heat, but Mazzulla did great stuff to attack mismatches out of empty PnR and on the move. Instead of iso'ing Herro, they kept bringing his man in to screen, and then were able to attack him while he was switching and chasing the play. Really good stuff to exploit a shitty defender while not letting Miami load up with late help.
 
m0ckduck

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Leon Trotsky said:
This belongs here, I think:
“It started with Joe [Mazzulla],” White said. “Ever since he took over, he’s given me the most confidence and I can talk to him and he can talk to me and that relationship is just getting better and better each day and it’s amazing to play for him and I love it. We’ve got such great players on the team but they allow me to do what I do and believe in me.”
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In the calculus of "CJM vs Udoka as better head coach", White's startling improvement has to count in Mazzulla's favor. Maybe the same improvement would have happened under Udoka, but I doubt it when I recall how tentative White looked during the 2022 playoffs.

Lots of athletes are wired with irrational swagger and confidence. White comes across as more of a normal human in this respect, both for better and for worse. Probably having a hard-ass like Udoka was valuable for certain players on the roster at a certain point in their collective development, but it seems clear that White has benefited from having more of a "players' coach."
 
Eddie Jurak

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https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2024/05/joe-mazzulla-makes-savvy-move-to-fuel-celtics-game-5-rout-vs-heat-robb.html

The Heat made the decision after Game 1 to have Bam Adebayo spend a lot more time defending Jayson Tatum. That trend continued out of the gate in Game 5 where Adebayo was the All-Star primary defender.

Mazzulla saw this tactic and made a point of emphasis to use it against the Heat particularly well in Game 5. Miami has no meaningful rim protection and plenty of subpar defenders when Adebayo is otherwise occupied out of the paint. So Boston made a point to keep Tatum far away from offensive actions in the early part of the first quarter.

With Tatum on the other side of the floor or outside the arc, Adebayo’s ability to be a help defender was thwarted constantly. It’s hard to get across the floor as is and leaving Tatum open is not really an option. Mazzulla and to his credit, Tatum, were happy to take Adebayo out of the equation and let Boston’s supporting cast feast against what was left of Miami’s defense.
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Eddie Jurak

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lovegtm said:
With the caveat that Spo's available talent was extremely limited, CJM and Tatum played him like a fiddle this series imo.
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That caveat matters. But Joe has to coach against, and the Celtics play against, the actual opposing team, injuries and all. Have to give Joe and the team credit for doing it.
 
lovegtm

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Eddie Jurak said:
That caveat matters. But Joe has to coach against, and the Celtics play against, the actual opposing team, injuries and all. Have to give Joe and the team credit for doing it.
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I also give them credit for blowing Miami out in every win. Beating the lesser team is great--not letting them into the game at all is much better (and harder).
 
tims4wins

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lovegtm said:
I also give them credit for blowing Miami out in every win. Beating the lesser team is great--not letting them into the game at all is much better (and harder).
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To this point, the Celts hit 99% win probability:
game 1 - 3:28 left in Q3
game 3 - 1:26 left in Q2
game 4 - 5:25 left in Q3
game 5 - 8:35 left in Q2

I think I got that correct. That's crazy.
 
changer591

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I laughed out loud last night when they showed that the money line was off the board and it was like a few minutes into the third quarter. I believe Scam said he had never seen that before.
 
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