POST GAME PHILLY - AWAY - SEASON OPENNER 2019 -2020

Maybe 41 & 41

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I am afraid you may be right. We don't have much size in the middle.  Fortunately all teams aren't as loaded with big players as Philly.  GH is about the only player that was any good on offense,  but his defense was not that good.  Lots of room for improvement.  I think everyone was a little tight trying to play well in a difficult arena.  We will be able to tell a little better when we play Toronto in Boston.  If we don't take care of them that may be a cause to pause.

Our core guys of GH, JT, and KW all combined for 35% shooting. they will improve on that. (I hope)

Tough start, but should get better. We're not going to be that bad from the foul line often, if ever again.

Boston still needs time to sort out a few things, and maybe tighten the rotation a bit. Although the center rotation will probably stay at 3. 4 if you count Tatum in the small(est) lineup.

Philadelphia playing to their strength; take it inside and dominate the paint. Rebound battle wasn't close, and Embiid sat a lot, maybe only played 20 or so minutes. Their team is built for a slug-fest, and they'll be nasty when they really gel. Going to be interesting to see them play Milwaukee. Could be one of the more physical contests you'll see.

One of the ugliest games ever. Trash it.

Hayward looked frisky if we are looking for bright spots

If you can believe it Terry Rozier actually shot worse than Kemba did tonight.

tardust wrote:If you can believe it Terry Rozier actually shot worse than Kemba did tonight.

Let's call that a bright spot so we can chalk one up in the + column.

Maybe just re-phrase it as 'See? Walker outshot Rozier!'

I feel better already.

(I'm sure both will be significantly better than their respective opening nights. Walker especially.)

Philly won because the Celtics could not make even a reasonable number of foul shots, they could not defend without fouling and they shot the ball like crap from the perimeter.

I guess I will watch a few more games before throwing the towel into the ring.  

Brad is searching up and down his roster.  I think that is a mistake.  Get your top 8 or 9 guys into a rotation together.  Playing 12 guys is not needed at this early stage of the season.  

I would say that the defensive effort was solid but putting Hayward on Simmons their best and quickest guy with the ball was one dumb ass move.  Once Brad changed that Hayward pretty much took over the offense.  

Kemba did not play well tonight.  Enough said.  Pick your poison.  turnovers, poor shooting, an assist and very little defense. 

Jaylen got in early foul trouble.  Did grab 7 boards and shot 3-6.  Those early fouls hurt the team.  

Kanter's defense is just as poor as advertised.  It's like, the guy went to the right.  What are you looking at?

Tatum was inefficient on offense partly caused by his 4 turnovers.  Dude, shoot, pass or take it to the rim.  There were 2 turnovers where he had tunnel vision and he should have passed but he turned the ball over.  He did have 10 boards.

Smart was Smart, no problem there.

Theis was okay in his first rotation but was completely ineffective in the 2nd half

Welcome to the NBA Carsen Edwards and especially Grant Williams.

I saw some good plays by RW but he only logged 11 minutes.  He still looks like our best big man defender.  

Semi played, of course,  Wannamaker

A cast of 1,000's

Toronto is up next.    In their game the other night it went into OT and Toronto won.  They only played 8 guys.  The 8th guy only played 15 minutes.  

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401160623

With the shortened preseason, it is going take time for Brad to work this out but the process may be easier by shortening the rotation.

Also, Brad needs to implement a big line up option in the frontcourt.  Fast Break basketball?

Aside from the justifiable criticisms already posted, what bothered me almost more was that the Kemba Walker Celtics look very much like the Kyrie Irving Celtics. Dribble, dribble, dribble; stubbornly drive into a clogged up lane with little chance of success and a lack of ball movement. It's early in the season, but I hope they can find away to play together. They sure as hell couldn't last night.

Berlin-T

Stevens played damn near the entire roster and jaylen only played 21 minutes.


Kj

Whatever Brad said at halftime needs to never be repeated again. They probably got the "Hey, things are going good. Better than I expected.
Let's go with the same thing in the 2nd Half" speech instead of The house is on fire, we're going for the jugular and beat these goons" speech. Brad gets 25-30 games to figure this all out or we and Danny will have to accept the fact that he is the problem and must exit stage left.

Hayward played great, leading scorer. Game ball to him. Kemba OK given everyone else was off on both teams. His first real game with the Celtics. All is forgiven.

Jayson Driving to the Hoop, still not getting fouled. Unbelievable. We literally avoid the And 1's or we're just not ever going to get those fortuitous calls like the rest of the league does.

Probably could have used a couple more preseason games. Never thought I'd say that, but it's true.

Edwards a no show. 1st NBA game. Hostile environment. Good learning experience. Forgiven. PHI did get the stat sheet on him and played him about as tight as you can get. That will change going up against the rest of the riff raff teams in the league.

Much rather have nowhere to go but up than be on top and nowhere else to go but down any day. Embiid and Horford will be out part or most of season with injuries with Father Time and history. After that, PHI is FAR less than ordinary.

We gotta dunk that shit against Embiid. Get him in foul trouble. Take it to him. Shouldn't have been a problem getting that done last night given happy ref whistles.

PHI is a better, tougher team, but not much better or tougher. Simmons didn't take the summer off. Looked a lot better. Good for him.

Anomalies - FT's, Fouls and 3's. All of those will reverse themselves next game. Expect us to be one of the best in FT's and 3's. Fouls are fouls.

Everybody got what they wanted. PHI said they were going to win and did running away. Media got a Celtic loss that made us look WAY worse than we really are. Celtics, in a good way, got what they needed early in the year...an Ass Whoopin'. Run with it, Brad. Glad this came early if you ask me IMHBAO.

db

Missed the second half but on foul shot stats GH went 9 of 11 meaning the rest of the team went 11 of 23. Junior Varsity high school teams do better than that. Sorry, but Kyrie dropping 50 is a statement - I never blamed him for changing his mind and going back home to NY, just for quitting against Milwaukee. On to the next game.

Kanter's defense was better than I expected last night on Embiid. and it seemed Brad knew Kanter was the only guy on his roster with the size to give Embiid ANY trouble at all.

where was the Frenchman?

some thought he was an NBA ready big man, Since he was never in the game I guess the coaching staff left otherwise (at least last night).


Hayward's defense was terrible and he won the worst defender award last night. Not that I am surprised, he does a lot of good things, but he's never been a good defender, IMO. Brad should have never tried having him guard Simmons, this 'aint Butler Stevens!

Jaylen really earned his new money last night.....looked a lot like last year to me.

Walker...great scorer who always put up a lot of points/stats for a LOSING team his whole career. Will he be a great player for a winning team? Time will tell, but he's getting PAID to be a great player, so STEP UP!

overall...last night was actually better than i expected, The team hung with them until the second half and still had chances to steal the game later even.

We'll see how this team jells over time, but I think we know its a work in progress.

Pluses for me after ONE GAME:

Kanter's defense

Haywards' offense

Rob W.'s aggresiveness

Smart being Smart


Minuses:

Tatum playing with his head down too often

Haywards defense

Jaylen looking last years version

Walker's bad shooting

overall lack of size (still).

The sky is not falling, at least not yet.

We shot < 37% on the game.  You're not going to win many games shooting like that, and yet, we hung in there for most of the game.

We shot 58.8% from the line as a team.  Tatum is a career 84% frito shooter, he was 1-3 last night.  Kanter was 2-7 but normally shoots 77.8%.  Kemba is an 83.5% frito shooter that shot 3-4 last night.  Hayward was 9-11.  But 10 of our 34 fritos only got 3 points (3-10) when the Law of Averages says we should have gotten 8.  Is 5 points the difference in the game?  No, but that would have gotten the loss down to single digits and, when the teams are only 2-3 possessions apart, that changes things.  

Where I have a problem with last night's game is that they outran us.  They had 14 fast break points while we only had 8.  If you're going to go small you have to run, all the time and at every opportunity.  Period.  We didn't.

Gordon Hayward had a very nice game.  GAME HIGH SCORER with 25 on a very efficient 8-15.  He also was 9-11 from the frito line.  Remember how we used to bemoan our lack of trips to the line?  If Gordon gets to the line even half that many over the season we're good.  My beef with Hayward last night wasn't his offense, that was great, it was his defense.  Simmons just dominated him.  Simmons is 2" taller (6'10" vs 6'8") but only 5# heavier.  He was allowing Simmons to just trot down to the middle of the lane and stop and call for the ball.  You MUST keep Simmons out of the paint, we all know that, and Hayward didn't try to muscle him at all.  His defense was really soft.  Part of our problem is that we don't have good baseline defenders that Gordon can just funnel Simmons, or any other penetrator, towards. Even then, you have to move your feet so you stay in front of him and Hayward didn't.  

Tatum 8-22.  his 21/10 double-double looks good, but his fg% hurt. He was 4-8 from 3, which means he was 4-14 from 2. That's pretty bad.

Kemba was, well, awful.  I'm cutting him slack for this game like I am with everybody else.

Our top 3 scorers (Hayward, Tatum, Walker) were a combined 20-55, 36%.  If you look at Walker and Tatum as our "top scorers" and pigeonhole Hayward as a primary ballhandler and secondary scorer, then our top two scorers were 12-40, 30%.  We took a very nice 90 fgas.  40 = 44.4% and 55 = 61.1%.  My point is that our top two or three scorers took a very high percentage of our total fgas between them and they cannot shoot like that and have a reasonable expectation they'll win.  Am I expecting this to be the norm?  No, that's why I said the sky isn't falling, but it was a bad night.

Kanter's defense is pretty bad (for what it's worth, I thought Hayward's was even worse) but, on the other hand, Embiid only had 15 points on 5-14.  That's not bad.  However we got there, that's not bad.

Jaylen with quick fouls was a non-factor in 21 points.  He still grabbed 7 rebounds.

Welcome to the NBA Carsen Edwards and Grant Williams.  Pre-season it ain't.  I don't think it's fair to read too much into Williams' performance, nor into Edwards going 1-5.  First game jitters.  That "new car" smell will wear off quickly.  It's just unfortunate we played Philly and not Cleveland or some other doormat on opening night.

Our bench was largely non-existent.  A total of 88 minutes is not unreasonable for a 240 total minute regulation game but 33 of those 88 were Smart's 33.  Smart was 2-7 but, of course, did other Smartie things.  The rest?  Rest of whom?  3-14 sucks.  Not enough shots and certainly not enough fgm.

Interestingly, the only Celtic who got a DNP - Coaches Decision was Poirier. His defense couldn't have been worse than Kanter's.

Philly is being talked up like they are a SuperTeam.  Well, if they are then we're not too far off too.  I didn't see where they outclassed us.  Are there aspects of the game they can do better than us?  Yeah, they're a BIG team, for one, but they didn't clown us in their house on Opening Night and, other than Tobias Harris who's their outside threat?  We lost, but we didn't look like we didn't belong.  There'll be plenty of time to panic, there's no need to panic our way into panic.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401160630



bob




.

And, in a little post-loss schadenfreuden, let it be noted that:

Kyrie Irving scored 50 points in his opening night game, and lost, and

Terry Rozier, The Legend in His Own Mind, had 7 points on 2-10 shooting in 30 minutes in Charlotte's squeaker of a win over the equally hapless Chicago Bulls.

Let's give Kemba some time to settle in. Kyrie went from being a ME-baller in Boston to being a ME-baller in Brooklyn and Scary Terry went from being a bricklayer in Boston to being a bricklayer in North Carolina. Kemba's neither, he's just in a new situation with new teammates playing in a new system. He's not sure how much to assert himself, but he'll figure it out quickly enough.


bob



.

Brining back the greatest hits.

Patience.

Philly is a good team, with an elite big man. Most teams do not have that, nor will the Celtics shoot that poorly from the line again, nor will Kemba have too many games like that.

kdp59 wrote:Kanter's defense was better than I expected last night on Embiid. and it seemed Brad knew Kanter was the only guy on his roster with the size to give Embiid ANY trouble at all.

where was the Frenchman?

some thought he was an NBA ready big man, Since he was never in the game I guess the coaching staff left otherwise (at least last night).


Hayward's defense was terrible and he won the worst defender award last night. Not that I am surprised, he does a lot of good things, but he's never been a good defender, IMO. Brad should have never tried having him guard Simmons, this 'aint Butler Stevens!

Jaylen really earned his new money last night.....looked a lot like last year to me.

Walker...great scorer who always put up a lot of points/stats for a LOSING team his whole career. Will he be a great player for a winning team? Time will tell, but he's getting PAID to be a great player, so STEP UP!

overall...last night was actually better than i expected, The team hung with them until the second half and still had chances to steal the game later even.

We'll see how this team jells over time, but I think we know its a work in progress.

Pluses for me after ONE GAME:

Kanter's defense

Haywards' offense

Rob W.'s aggresiveness

Smart being Smart


Minuses:

Tatum playing with his head down too often

Haywards defense

Jaylen looking last years version

Walker's bad shooting

overall lack of size  (still).

I was checking in to post some random thoughts, but they're all here in kdp's post already, so I get the morning off!

I especially agree that when looking at the bright spots, Kanter's D was better than I expected.

Also, I expect all the minuses, with the exception of size, to reverse themselves. I do hope Jaylen continues to look like playoff/pre-season Jaylen and not '18-'19 regular season Jaylen with more time and when not in early foul trouble.

I think we're all grading Kanter on a sliding scale....LOL.

I wasn't sayin' he'll ever be the best defender in an NBA game. But he did MUCH better than I thought he would.

We’ll be fine, bad game, our defense was okay overall, didn’t get killed by Embid, 2 J’s have to defend Simmons, not GH. Obviously FT’s killed us, I think we have some time to get it together....Al had 2 boards

Here is a bright spot not mentioned.  The Celtics only had 10 turnovers.  

Also you cannot fast break if you do not get the ball.  I saw one play where R Williams got the ball and immediately looked up the court and passed it to Walker for a layup attempt.  Other than that all we saw was our team dribbling the ball across halfcourt.  That is not fast break basketball.

I thought Boston lost continuity because of all the players that were rotated in and out of the lineup.  That is a difficult situation.  Once guys get more comfortable playing with each other they should execute much better.

The best thing that I saw last night was Gordon Hayward on offense.  He was aggressive and assertive.  He got to the rim.  

I saw too many forced shots last night.  The Celtics seemed to cave in and did not move the ball.  Brad will iron out those wrinkles.

I did not see a concerted effort to get the ball in the post.  I saw a couple of plays where they drove to the rim and fed Kanter for easy layups.  

Philly won the game but quite frankly I was not impressed.  They do not look like world beaters to me.

dboss wrote:Here is a bright spot not mentioned.  The Celtics only had 10 turnovers.  

Also you cannot fast break if you do not get the ball.  I saw one play where R Williams got the ball and immediately looked up the court and passed it to Walker for a layup attempt.  Other than that all we saw was our team dribbling the ball across halfcourt.  That is not fast break basketball.

I thought Boston lost continuity because of all the players that were rotated in and out of the lineup.  That is a difficult situation.  Once guys get more comfortable playing with each other they should execute much better.

The best thing that I saw last night was Gordon Hayward on offense.  He was aggressive and assertive.  He got to the rim.  

I saw too many forced shots last night.  The Celtics seemed to cave in and did not move the ball.  Brad will iron out those wrinkles.

I did not see a concerted effort to get the ball in the post.  I saw a couple of plays where they drove to the rim and fed Kanter for easy layups.  

Philly won the game but quite frankly I was not impressed.  They do not look like world beaters to me.

Right those 80’s Bird teams ran all the time by passing fast, not dribbling....

dboss wrote:Here is a bright spot not mentioned.  The Celtics only had 10 turnovers.  

Also you cannot fast break if you do not get the ball.  I saw one play where R Williams got the ball and immediately looked up the court and passed it to Walker for a layup attempt.  Other than that all we saw was our team dribbling the ball across halfcourt.  That is not fast break basketball.

I thought Boston lost continuity because of all the players that were rotated in and out of the lineup.  That is a difficult situation.  Once guys get more comfortable playing with each other they should execute much better.

The best thing that I saw last night was Gordon Hayward on offense.  He was aggressive and assertive.  He got to the rim.  

I saw too many forced shots last night.  The Celtics seemed to cave in and did not move the ball.  Brad will iron out those wrinkles.

I did not see a concerted effort to get the ball in the post.  I saw a couple of plays where they drove to the rim and fed Kanter for easy layups.  

Philly won the game but quite frankly I was not impressed.  They do not look like world beaters to me.

Pretty much agree with everything you said, especially Philly not looking like world beaters. Would also like to see more running, tighter rotations, and maybe take advantage of one Enes' greatest skills by getting it to him in the post a little more often, which might open up other things..

on the other hand....IF Philly IS the best in the East this year...that would make us that much better, right?

I mean...I would rather lose by 14 to the best team in the east, then lose by 14 to mediocre team.

Jaylen on Simmons for 36 minutes? Different game outcome.