National Celtics discourse
- Thread starter RorschachsMask
- Start date
WTF are you all talking about? The correct move is for them to try and win game 4
If JT's stock going down means the celts can save a few millon off of the max contract, awesome.
But I doubt that will happen
Windy has been saying this stuff from the jump. One of the only national NBA media guys who has this right.
Before the series he said the Celtics might be one of the best teams of the last 20 years, and great teams win titles, not great players.
LOL.. it's funny how you're always the first one bringing up the contrarian take .. though you're probably right on this one.
edit: every one of your posts def has a 'moops' vibe
Also going to put this out there.. the Celts have grown over the past few years.. and there are zero media members that have grown with them.. past champs had writers and reporters that were worthy of them.. not sure if there are any out there that have the same gravitas/voice of those from champions of old. are there any writers that are worthy of this possible championship?
edit: and by that I mean local guys.
edit: and by that I mean local guys.
Lowe and the Hoop Collective are great. McMahon who is clearly a Luka guy has been nothing but awesome with his coverage.
lol.. I did add local media after the fact.. but it is sort of funny that awful coaching has been praising their defense almost more than anyone else.
Writing is almost completely irrelevant now, so I'm not sure it's a fair comparison.
Out of podcasters, I'd say Timpf has grown along with this particular team the most and had the most insightful things to say about them as the season and playoffs have gone on.
Timpf has been excellent. The Garden Report guys are the best local guys. Bontemps will end up writing the story on this season for the World Leader. All that said the real parade will be Simmons on the Sunday with Russillo. I wonder how bad Bill will grind into him.
Yeah..I guess Reiss was the last good Boston writer.. at least in the papers? Weird that nobody has taken up the calling in the blogosphere.
ESPN analysts post-game on Luka. More Windhorst here:
Fill in the blank: Luka Doncic's Game 3 performance was ______.
Windhorst: Completely unacceptable. No one can tell Doncic anything. Not teammates, not coaches, not executives, not media, not fans, not referees. There's been a lot of pleas and promises that he'll improve but this one is going to leave a mark. He is a truly brilliant player, once in a generation. But he's going to have to look in the mirror and confront his weaknesses before he's on the other side of a Finals. His defensive effort in these Finals has simply been crushing to his team, his complaining to the referees is painful and his frustration fouls probably just cost his team a chance at making this a series because he fouled out. He's one of the biggest stars in the league and that means he's held to a higher standard, especially at this level. He failed to meet it in this game and he's going to have to deal with that whether he likes it or not.
Bontemps: Not good enough. Doncic scored a lot of points but the Celtics once again put the clamps on Doncic and Irving's teammates, forcing the duo to try to beat the best offense in NBA history by themselves. And, for all of their individual brilliance, that wasn't ever going to be enough for Dallas to win. And Doncic's defense -- which was an ever-present issue during the first two games of this series -- was even worse in Game 3. Boston has the ability to put more pressure on Doncic than virtually any other team in the league by having either Brown or Jrue Holiday attack him for 94 feet defensively while any of Boston's perimeter players go at him on the other end. And, as this series has gone on, it's appeared to take a toll on Doncic's energy levels, which led to some of the fouls that caused him to foul out of Game 3.
Herring: Incredible in some ways. Some of his baskets were a thing of beauty. But the nature of some of the looks he created, for himself and his teammates, still weren't good enough for chunks of the game. (This doesn't even speak to the times he failed to get back defensively after a call didn't go his way; especially during the two plays to end the first quarter, which helped Boston pick up five quick points.) The third period, in particular, was a massive contrast in style: The Mavs took 21 shots in the quarter, with 15 of them coming off the dribble, while the Celtics took 20 attempts with just seven of those being off-the-dribble. The quality of the looks have consistently been the difference in this series as Doncic and Irving are having to work too hard to simply keep it close.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40322250/nba-finals-2024-luka-doncic-miscues-biggest-questions-game-3-celtics-mavericks
Fill in the blank: Luka Doncic's Game 3 performance was ______.
Windhorst: Completely unacceptable. No one can tell Doncic anything. Not teammates, not coaches, not executives, not media, not fans, not referees. There's been a lot of pleas and promises that he'll improve but this one is going to leave a mark. He is a truly brilliant player, once in a generation. But he's going to have to look in the mirror and confront his weaknesses before he's on the other side of a Finals. His defensive effort in these Finals has simply been crushing to his team, his complaining to the referees is painful and his frustration fouls probably just cost his team a chance at making this a series because he fouled out. He's one of the biggest stars in the league and that means he's held to a higher standard, especially at this level. He failed to meet it in this game and he's going to have to deal with that whether he likes it or not.
Bontemps: Not good enough. Doncic scored a lot of points but the Celtics once again put the clamps on Doncic and Irving's teammates, forcing the duo to try to beat the best offense in NBA history by themselves. And, for all of their individual brilliance, that wasn't ever going to be enough for Dallas to win. And Doncic's defense -- which was an ever-present issue during the first two games of this series -- was even worse in Game 3. Boston has the ability to put more pressure on Doncic than virtually any other team in the league by having either Brown or Jrue Holiday attack him for 94 feet defensively while any of Boston's perimeter players go at him on the other end. And, as this series has gone on, it's appeared to take a toll on Doncic's energy levels, which led to some of the fouls that caused him to foul out of Game 3.
Herring: Incredible in some ways. Some of his baskets were a thing of beauty. But the nature of some of the looks he created, for himself and his teammates, still weren't good enough for chunks of the game. (This doesn't even speak to the times he failed to get back defensively after a call didn't go his way; especially during the two plays to end the first quarter, which helped Boston pick up five quick points.) The third period, in particular, was a massive contrast in style: The Mavs took 21 shots in the quarter, with 15 of them coming off the dribble, while the Celtics took 20 attempts with just seven of those being off-the-dribble. The quality of the looks have consistently been the difference in this series as Doncic and Irving are having to work too hard to simply keep it close.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40322250/nba-finals-2024-luka-doncic-miscues-biggest-questions-game-3-celtics-mavericks
Luka was, without a doubt, awful tonight. Looking past the usual lousy defense and the inexcusable fouls, he had just 27 points (TS% of .469), 6 assists and 6 rebounds. A couple of the roleplayers showed up tonight (Washington was good, and Lively quietly had a monster game including the only field goals they made in the final 3:30) and Kyrie was as good as you can reasonably hope for, but in the biggest game of the season, Luka was a complete dud.
Anyone who thinks the media and general public won't turn on Doncic at some point (assuming he doesn't win a title in the next 13 months) should be watching how the next 48 hours go, because he's getting killed now. The title for best player in the league (at least as seen by the general public) was on the table for him a week ago, and now he's not even in the conversation.
And a special shout out to Tim Hardaway Jr, the Mavs 3rd leading scorer during the regular season. 0-5 tonight, his last points were against OKC.
Anyone who thinks the media and general public won't turn on Doncic at some point (assuming he doesn't win a title in the next 13 months) should be watching how the next 48 hours go, because he's getting killed now. The title for best player in the league (at least as seen by the general public) was on the table for him a week ago, and now he's not even in the conversation.
And a special shout out to Tim Hardaway Jr, the Mavs 3rd leading scorer during the regular season. 0-5 tonight, his last points were against OKC.
This hopefully is a preview of (Moar of) The Nation’s Tears:
View: https://twitter.com/thepettiestla/status/1801086032924016796?s=46&t=1S4eWjX_rzBBrpPNddRPAg
View: https://twitter.com/thepettiestla/status/1801086032924016796?s=46&t=1S4eWjX_rzBBrpPNddRPAg
Hey I was just being cautious. It is the coach in me. It appears your prediction is coming true.
Its easy because the Mavs are on the ground in a heap, but Windhorst is going at Luka pretty hard on the WWL
It's funny how much the Finals games have indeed resembled the two regular season games between these teams (lower-scoring versions but with similar dynamics) despite very media person telling us before the Finals that those two regular season matchups DID NOT MATTER because Dallas DID NOT HAVE THEIR GUYS YET (never mind that the second matchup happened weeks after the trade deadline).
Meanwhile, Boston allegedly had no chance against Denver on the basis of two close regular season losses. Oh, ok.
Meanwhile, Boston allegedly had no chance against Denver on the basis of two close regular season losses. Oh, ok.
There were a lot of reasons for the gold-rush towards Dallas heading into the series, most of them dumb. But the one I'll be filing away for future reference is this weird bias towards overrating "closers" and "crunch-time execution." This also shaded the Denver vs. Boston analysis. People seem to assume these games will be close, as if NBA games start with flipping a coin and giving one team the ball with a 2 point lead and six minutes left. It's similar to the bias where people over-weight close wins and discount blowout wins, whereas statistical analysis shows that the real hallmark of dominant teams is winning blowouts.
Yup, hopefully these playoffs put to bed the bizarre idea that the first 43 minutes barely matter.
Heck, leave Boston out of it: Denver was eliminated because they sucked too many times in the first 43 against a meh crunchtime offense.
This postseason is (re)teaching us what basketball is all about.
Janos is humble. His pants are too tight some days too.
View: https://twitter.com/isjanosnba/status/1801112320640266674
View: https://twitter.com/isjanosnba/status/1801112320640266674
It feels like anything is on the table for game 4 for Luka:
- not even playing
- getting T'd up twice in the first quarter
- playing but faking an injury out of there
- fouling out in the 3rd quarter
I also look forward to Kyrie's incoming 3 for 17 type swan song
- not even playing
- getting T'd up twice in the first quarter
- playing but faking an injury out of there
- fouling out in the 3rd quarter
I also look forward to Kyrie's incoming 3 for 17 type swan song
You mean the Jason Timpf who said that BOS didn't think JT was good enough so they got Jrue and KP?
One of the arguments of this horrible Ringer article is especially nutty to me, as basically summed up in this sentence and a later paragraph
Treating Luka fouling out as a wild thing that happened which had nothing to do with the Celtics, as opposed to it being the inevitable result of Jaylen Brown hunting him mercilessly in the 4th quarter.
While we've all watched the videos of the blow-bys and Luka's disinterest 8 defense, Herring is the first writer I've seen (granted I'm not on Xitter and don't read that many pieces) that has mentioned that Luka killed DAL in transition too. And it wasn't just arguing with the refs. Most times Lula got in deep, if the shot was missed, BOS had numbers going the other way because Luka couldn't sprint back on D. (I would lo e if someone put clips of these plays together).
Al is the happiest guy on the team right now - and will be the happiest petson in the woeld when he wins - but I get the feeling that KP 7s not far behind since people are finally starting to speak what he's always known about Luka.
Yeah, that caught my attention as well. It's just a writer trying to jam everything into the procrustean bed of "Celtics have avoided the other team's best player" narratives. I think at some point the article begrudgingly gave credit to the Celtics for attacking Donka and putting him in position to foul out, but the author clearly wanted to overfit the data to align with "Butler, Mitchell, Haliburton... now Doncic," which is super lame.
Who wrote this? I don't want to click through given how bad the article seems to be. Txs.
Seth Partnow is making a fool of himself on Twitter.
View: https://twitter.com/SethPartnow/status/1801222994510983548
View: https://twitter.com/SethPartnow/status/1801222994510983548
Luka complaining about getting called for fouls while simultaneously doing this on back to back possessions is something else. Instead of drawing two fouls he gifted the Celtics any easy 5 points while his fat ass sat on the court complaining.
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=144&GameID=0042300403&Season=2023-24&flag=1&title=MISS Doncic 26' 3PT Step Back Jump Shot
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=148&GameID=0042300403&Season=2023-24&flag=1&title=MISS Doncic 26' 3PT Step Back Jump Shot
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=144&GameID=0042300403&Season=2023-24&flag=1&title=MISS Doncic 26' 3PT Step Back Jump Shot
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=148&GameID=0042300403&Season=2023-24&flag=1&title=MISS Doncic 26' 3PT Step Back Jump Shot
Title of Kram's article after game 2.
Pretty sure Kram was a kid that was hired as a baseball analytics guy but Simmons has no interest in baseball so he writes about football/basketball but doesn't know much about those sports.
I just love how take committed everyone is. People just can't bring themselves to say "yeah, I was wrong and the gap between these teams is larger than I had anticipated".
yeah Kram is just a fringe writer who writes on everything and has no insight beyond looking at +/-.
Pina is the good basketball writer at the Ringer.
Pina is the good basketball writer at the Ringer.
Lowe managed to lead his reaction pod with the greatest hits. Luka was wronged, Luka doesn’t play defense because he’s hurt (lol), C’s haven’t played anyone this postseason, and the 4Q was who this team really is. It gets a bit better deeper in the show, but he can’t help himself.
Increasingly, I get the sense that at the start of the Finals some people felt compelled to make the argument that Dallas was a worthy opponent because "Celtics have fantastic regular season, crush competition in playoffs, look and feel like the inevitable champions this year and all seem like likeable guys to boot" is a pretty difficult narrative to sell to a national audience. Then, being 2024 and all, Dallas couldn't just be "pretty good" it had to have "the greatest backcourt in history", "a generational player who was like prime LeBron with 3 point shooting", etc. The takes took on a life of their own and seemed to get increasingly wild in order to justify the original argument that Dallas was going to win.
I know this sounds like MMQBing but when I saw so many pundits pick Dallas at the start of the series, I had flashbacks to that situation in 2011 where Ron Jaworski was hyping up Tyler Palko(!) in a MNF game against Brady. It came out afterwards that Jaworski was just trying to manufacture interest in a game that was likely going to be a slaughter (NE won 34-3) rather than provide any kind of cogent analysis. Now maybe this matchup isn't as lopsided as Palko/Brady, but the number of people picking Dallas was stunningly high in context.
I know this sounds like MMQBing but when I saw so many pundits pick Dallas at the start of the series, I had flashbacks to that situation in 2011 where Ron Jaworski was hyping up Tyler Palko(!) in a MNF game against Brady. It came out afterwards that Jaworski was just trying to manufacture interest in a game that was likely going to be a slaughter (NE won 34-3) rather than provide any kind of cogent analysis. Now maybe this matchup isn't as lopsided as Palko/Brady, but the number of people picking Dallas was stunningly high in context.
I can’t ever remember a narrative that a 50 win 5 seed was a consensus pick against a 64 win team that had just went 12-2. It’s just bonkers.
+1 for B Robb
Also whenever our own Chad Finn at the Glob writes about hoops it’s a joy. I would also suggest John Karali at BSJ if youre a subscriber.
I was thinking about this yet again this morning (heaven knows why)...
One part of it is this "zero sum" mindset that, since Team A beat Team B who beat Team C, Team A must be great. That seems to be how people were looking at the West, whereas all evidence suggests that that Dallas won a kind of random rock-paper-scissors contest between several pretty evenly-matched teams (and may in fact have been worse but benefitted from luck of the bracket, coaching malpractice and exhaustion from the other teams).
The other thing is that most pundits and fans want a close Finals, so there's a natural assumption to assume that the games will be close and come down to 'closing ability'... at which point, recently bias and Starz-bias kicks in and they just remember Luka looking awesome hitting step-back game-winning threes over Golbert and the analysis doesn't run any deeper.
edit: although Dallas wasn't a 'consensus pick'. IIRC, the punditry was evenly split, Vegas favored Boston, most of the money had come in Dallas.
Love how everyone is pointing out the Celtics offense in the fourth quarter was bad, without also talking about how bad the Dallas offense was in the third quarter. It's like the Celtics have to play a perfect 48 minutes on both ends to impress anyone. It's complete bonkers.