Post Game Thread - vs Detroit Pistons, Home

[bobheckler]

IT is unreal.  He puts up 24 points in the 4th and you hardly notice.  He is now the #1 4th quarter scorer in the history of the NBA, less than a point ahead of Kobe Bryant and that was before last night's 24 point 4th quarter explosion that will pad that lead a bit.  The thing about great players is that everybody knows what they are going to do, you just can't stop them.  Everybody knew Moses Malone was going to crash the offensive boards, you just couldn't stop him.  Everybody knew Stockton and Malone were going to do a pnr or pnp, you just couldn't stop them.  That's IT, in spades.  Everybody knows he's going to score, especially in the 4th, you just can't stop him.  What makes it even more amazing, of course, is that he's only 5'9" in heels.  But here's another great thing about IT this year, he's not just doing with more volume.

....................FG%..........FGA..........3PTFG%.....3PFGA.....FT%..........FTA.....AST.....TO
2016-2017......46.6%........19.9.........38.7%........8.1.........91.4%.......8.5.....6.4......2.5
CAREER..........44.2%........13.6.........36.6%........5.1,,,,,,,,,87.2%.......5.2.....5.2......2.3  

So he's up on efficiency as well as on volume.

It's kinda scary to have a player that is scoring 36% of your points, and that doesn't even take into account his assists but it's what we have and it's working.

Crowder with 21 and 8.  He has been on fire the past week or so.

Smart tied with IT for assists with 8.  He also shot 3-13.  If IT has become more efficient with more volume, Marcus Smart has taken a different route.  His volume is up on fgas and ftas, but his fg% is even lower than his career fg%, which is already excrement.  His assists are up but so are his TOs and they are in the same ratio, so no improvement in efficiency there.  His ft% is up.  I know about his defense, I know about his intangibles, but his shooting is beyond cringeworthy.  A player's fg% is supposed to get better as they age into maturity thanks to practice.  His isn't.  He has little to no shooting touch.  You can see the ball not come off his fingertips, but off the palm of his hand.  I don't know what to think about this anymore.  When he doesn't shoot much I'm ok, but when he takes more fgas/minute than Jae Crowder, Al Horford, Gerald Green, Kelly Olynyk and Jaylen Brown then I am not.  In fact, the only player who took more fgas/minute last night than Smart was IT and I think that says it all.  On an absolute basis, nobody took more fgas last night than Marcus Smart except for 41 point scoring machine IT.  More fgas than everybody not named Thomas, more fgas/minute than everybody not named Thomas.  Please stop shooting, Marcus.

Tobias Harris is now coming off the Detroit bench.  I wonder what they would want for him, he's really good.  Our bench was killing theirs until the 4th quarter when Harris tortured Kelly.  Harris is just way too fast for Kelly to stay in front of.  Bad matchup for us, probably should have put Brown on him instead since Crowder had his hands full with keeping Morris under control.  Boban Marjanovic got a Coaches - DNP last night.  What that tells me is that he isn't that good in a pace-and-space game.  That means he'd have limited utility for us except when we need him for bulk, which we actually could use more of.

Despite Drummond getting 22 rebounds we only lost the rebound battle by 7.  We don't have a monster like Drummond, but we have good rebounders at multiple positions.

Differences in the game?  Well, for one, Detroit shot 3-27 from 3 while we were 13-32.  That's hard to overcome.  Furthermore, we had 23 assists on 36fgm (64%) while they only had 18 assists on 43fgm (42%).  So we had more people involved in our offense than them.  We also had 10 more ftm.  So, why was it so close?  They had 15 more fgas than us, 97-82.  Pace, they had better pace.  We got lucky, in essence.  If they had hit any better than 11% from 3 we'd be in OT or losers.


Toronto didn't play, so we are now a full game up on them.  Cleveland lost and we are now 2.5 back from them (3 in the loss column).  Brooklyn lost, Miami won, Dallas won.  The only team who didn't do what we want them to do was Phoenix, who lost.  Still, a healthy 6 game cushion between Brooklyn and Phoenix for butt-bumping-bottom.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400900142


















bob



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