Suns burn Celtics 111-103

Rebounds, rebounds rebounds.

The Suns hammered Boston on the glass 56-37. Celts were uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball with 16 turnovers. The 21-9 advantage on the offensive glass also helped produce more FGA for the Suns, 96-85.

I only could read the play by play. Sorry to see them lose. Sorry to read again that Jaylen underperformed. Jayson and Kyrie are still winners. Jaylen scoring, rebounding, and with 4 blocks. Robert Williams seems from the box score to have played well. 8 points. 5 blocks. How DID he play? A serious glimmer? I am just looking for a silver lining in this dark cloud of a loss to the lowly Suns.

Hi,
Suns didn't burn Celtics. Celtics burned themselves. Very sloppy.
A real stinker.
The question is is it an occasional blooper or a "back to the drawing board"?
And as the icing on the cake - Baynes is out with broken hand.
I hope they'll get out of this funk by tomorrow night against Bucks.

AK

Is this all part of Danny's secret plan to turn Time Lord into an All Star by April?

I don't know...with this performance coming off a brief rest, I don't see us getting out of 4-5 place slot for the playoffs. I do know one of the Celtics teams from the 60's won the title from 4th place. That's what we are looking at.

Really inexcusable. Way too many OR's giving up and to add insult to injury they defaulted to the always losing strategy of firing up 3's first, ask questions later theory. And that's what you got. Another Loss.

MAYBE one of either TOR, PHI, IND or MIL will fall out of one of the top 4 spots by season end and gift us 4th place, but it's going to take a huge amount of effort on the Celtics part (several double digit win streaks) to move up and not drop games to the worst teams in the league on home ice.

4th or 5th in the East. That's it. Those 4 teams are just better than us.

db

P.S. And yes, I'm pissed!!

Expect the GF to go off for about 70 points as he will school Williams and Thayes to no end. 0-2 streak starts now.

db

Dboss got it right--totally blasted by a young team on the boards.

This rebounding issue has not been as much of a problem this year until last night, but with Baynes now out with Horford still out it (rebounding) may become a big issue very quickly unless the other players pick up their rebounding efforts.

Last night not only did their young big man rebound well, but the depth of their total team rebounding killed the Cs.

We won the first quarter, bigly, and then lost the next 3.  Kyrie was the offense.  Tatum scored too, and had 4 blocks, but he also played matador defense.  

The rebounding issue was created by the absence of Horford, Morris, Yabusele and the loss of Baynes due to a broken hand.  We were doing QUITE well before tonight.  When the only bigs you have are 6'9" 3rd string center Daniel Theis and 6'9" rookie Robert Williams you are going to have problems on the boards.  I don't know when Al will be back, I think Morris' issues are not an issue past last night, but someone better get back because we are extremely thin up front right now.

Jaylen started off hot and then went icy cold when he fell in love, again, with outside shooting.  This is becoming an issue.  It's not just that he's missing shots, it's that he's not seeing what's working for him and doing that.

10 points for Hayward in 29 minutes.  He took only 8fgas.  Very unproductive.

I like Theis but I am really starting to see him as a 3rd string center in the NBA.  He's good, he has skills but he does not seem to be able to stop any legit NBA center.

The Time Lord (tough shit, Danny) did his part.  8 points on 4-4, 8 rebounds with 5 of them offensive and 5 blocks.  Unfortunately he is NOT a good frito shooter, he shot 54% @ Texas A&M and 47% in his sophomore year.  If he wants to be a crunch time player he needs to fix this.  The final score doesn't show it but he missed 2 ftas with 3:32 left and the Celtics down only 6.  He hits just one and it's only 5 and that's only 2 possessions to win @ home with 3 1/2 left.  That's big.  He's a little weak on positioning, but he's a rook.  He's working hard, he's learning, he just isn't there yet.  His shot blocking instincts and the quickness he leaves his feet (and can jump a 2nd time if the first one is a fake) with cannot be taught and they are impressive.  He is going to be getting 15-20+mpg for the next month with Baynes out.  Brad is not going to risk Al's knee by playing him MORE minutes than usual, so it will be Theis and Williams.  Which one gets the lion share of Baynes' minutes will depend upon matchups.

Kelly Oubre came off the Suns bench and scored 13 points.  Most of them came off of Tatum and his abovementioned matador defense.  Ole!  and get out of the way.

Rozier hit some big shots, was 4-8 from 3, but he ended up 4-11.  Simple math, that means he was 0-3 from 2.  He's forgotten how to attack the rim.  Both he and Jaylen are going for Hero Ball to redeem themselves and that's not the way to do it.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071139


bob


.

We sure could use some help up front.

Then there's Gordon still recovering from his injury, mentally and physically, and Jaylen deep in mental funkytown.

https://www.google.com/search?q=funkytown&rlz=1C1EODB_enUS594US613&oq=funkytown&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4123j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Here's the game flow.

Did the loss of Baynes affect us more that would be expected? YES.

This year's team has always been thin at center. Injuries to Baynes and Horford may help us by spring by forcing us to use Williams now, although we'll have to live with his mistakes. Theis is a 4, and a good one, but not a 5. Horford is a 4, too, although he can play bigger in short stretches when it matters. Right now, it doesn't. We might need to rent a behemoth. Hawk

Or lease one.

The rebounding issue was just plain old fundamentals.  We have seen it many times where guys do not block out.  They become spectators.  The Suns were very aggressive on the glass with 8 guys getting an offensive rebound.  5 of those 8 had at least two OR and Ayton killed us with 8 offensive rebounds.

This is a very fixable issue and I think a film session will highlight what went wrong.

The Celtics should have won this game but this just goes to show that even if one area of your play is compromised, you can lose.

The bad news is that they lost Aron Baynes who will be out for at least a month.  AH is out and we do not know what the time table is.  That leaves us with Theis and Williams.  

I really like Theis but in case you haven't noticed he is not an actual center.  He is a PF that can rotate to the 5 spot in small ball groupings but that is not a position that he can play or will be effective over a long stretch of minutes.  Basically he is too small to check big centers.

So you guessed it,  our rookie Robert Williams who has played around 2 hours of basketball is going to be needed.  It's time for the Timelord.  He logged 24 minutes last night and I thought he got a little tired in the 4th QTR and I could tell that with the speed with which he was getting up and down the court.  Stevens could see that and periodically would get him a 2-3
blow.  

This kid has great athletic ability and great instincts. Now he must learn how to adapt those god given talents into a very structured defensive scheme that demands specific assignments and rotations.  He is able to block shots now he needs to learn how to block shots.

He looks like a very able shot blocker.  Calling Bill Russell, calling Bill Russell.

Hello Bill, look we got this kid that can jump through the roof and he has enormous length.  He's a shot blocker.  Remember how you used to block all those shots but rarely blocked the shot out of bounds?  You know those soft blocks where you tipped the ball to yourself?  Can you talk to the kid and maybe help him learn the technique for doing that?  He's a good kid and picks things up pretty quick.

Williams is going to play now and that is a good thing for Boston because come April the Celtics are going to need him.

All is not lost just because some bum team ate our bacon.  No need for the Celtics or their fans to lose faith.

Agreed Dboss. Keep the faith. Now tell that to Jaylen.

worcester wrote:Agreed Dboss. Keep the faith. Now tell that to Jaylen.

Brown is like Alice deep inside the rabbit hole. The deeper he goes in, the further he gets lost but that idea could only be true if we were inside of Jaylen's mind and we knew his thoughts and we knew his feelings. We don't. We only know what we can see and it has not been very good.

We do not know what his makeup is. But i think the more focus on him the worse it gets. I'm taking my expectation for him back to ground zero and then i will go from there.

“You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you've got it, you ain't got it. No pussycats, please.”
-- Bill Russell

Russ really knows basketball.