Post Game Thread - vs Spurs, Away 1/27/21

[bobheckler]

Ugly on both ends. A passive 2nd quarter and a lineup to start the 4th with Smart/Kemba/RWill/GWill/Green that went 1-9 and got outscored 7-2 killed us. That 4th quarter line up had RWill with a dunk, Green missed a layup and the rest were all Smart and Kemba misses. Tatum replaced Kemba with 8:22 left and Jaylen replaced GWill with 7:44 left. The quarter started with the Celtics up 84-82. When Tatum came in after 3:38 gone the score was 89-86 Spurs. When Jaylen came in :38 later it was 91-86. That's still very much a game, we were only down 5 with over 7 1/2 left.

They shot 56%. It was layup drills as they turned the corner and their man didn't stay in front of them and nobody switched to stop the ball. And they had 19 turnovers. They lead the league in fewest turnovers, we got them to commit 19, and that wasn't enough. They shot 29% from 3, so it wasn't that either. It was just lazy, not-into-their-bodies defense by us. #29 pick rookie Keldon Johnson looked like an All-Star, 18 points and 10 rebounds, 3 offensive. He's 6'5". That's Jaylen's man.

Offensively, we scored 17 points in the 2nd and 22 points in the 4th. We had 30+ in the other two quarters, so very on-off-on-off. That's not championship ball. The Js were 2-5 (Jaylen) and 3-5 (Jayson), 7 points each, after one. At halftime they were 2-9 (Jaylen) and 3-10 (Jayson) at the half. That's an 0-4 and 0-5 2nd quarter for the Js. That's part of the reason why we went from up 9 to down 14 at the half. The other is 4 turnovers. 4 in the 2nd quarter. We shot 7-24 in the 2nd quarter. 7-for-freaking-24, with the Js accounting for only 9 of those 24.

Teague went 0-3 in the 2nd, of course. I am done with him. He's shooting 31.9% for the year. He's shooting 41.7% from 3, that's very good, but only about 1/4 of his fgas are 3s. His 2pt fg% is 28.4%. I never thought I'd be begging for a late first round rookie to hurry back and take a 13 year veteran's minutes, but here I am.

Jay King @ByJayKing
6 hours ago
The Cs played zone defense. A lot of zone. Stevens went to the wrinkle because his team’s so-so defense couldn’t stop the 19th-ranked offense. “We were going to zone out of necessity,” Stevens said, “because we couldn’t stop a nosebleed.”

Poor defense doesn't explain only 17 2nd quarter points.

The last real half court set we ran before time ran out was for Jaylen, NOT Jayson. As we all know Brad liked to put the ball into Tatum's hands and let him go one-on-one. Was last night a recognition of Brown's ascendancy by Brad? Tatum brought the ball up at the end and passed to Smart for the corner 3, but that was with only 8.2 seconds left and no timeouts, so it had to be fullcourt do-or-die. It wasn't a set play. The last set play ran through Jaylen. He had a dunk that was blocked (?) by Poetl at the rim, but he got to the rim. Can't complain about that, getting to the rim or passing out for an open 3 is what today's NBA is all about.

We had 15 assists on 42fgm. If Brad doesn't talk about that in the next team meeting I give up. Our lead assist player was Jaylen, with 5. Not Smart, not Teague, not Kemba, not anybody whose job is ballhandling and/or floor generalship.

Shout out to The Time Lord, who made the most of his 13 minutes. 7 rebounds, 4 of them offensive, and a bunch more that he wasn't able to corral but kept the ball alive with tips. San Antonio only had 3 fast break points. Can't run a break if you don't have the ball and you don't have the ball if you've got someone who is contesting possession off the board. One of several reasons why I adore offensive rebounding. Not only do they give us a chance at scoring, usually from pointblank, but they disrupt transition to offense. Even contesting for offensive boards does that. RWill is inconsistent. This game he was great. Last game he wasn't. The game before that he was. This has been his one consistency over his career, his inconsistency.

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
about 6 hours ago
By grabbing 4 in 13 minutes Wednesday night, Robert Williams is now leading the NBA in offensive rebound percentage, taking over the league lead from... ...Enes Kanter. He's 5th in total rebound percentage, trailing only Andre Drummond, Kanter, Clint Capela and Rudy Gobert.


https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401267440


Bob


.

[dbrown4]

4 words that stick out? "That's not championship ball."

That says it all. I've got nothing to add to that. And they don't have too much time to lick their wounds because championship ball is coming to town Saturday. Thanks to the Sixers and LAL's "we don't lose two in a row" mentality (which by the way really deserves some high praise as a mantra and battle cry because it's like old school jerking a vicious dog up on a chain choke collar to get it's attention once and for all when a loss occurs for LA. I honestly believe LeBron has them believing that should win EVERY game. They play like it. We don't.) means we will really need to get our shit together in a hurry or it's the start of another losing streak. IF we have a repeat of last night's performance Saturday, it will be a 30-point blowout.

So far our response after a loss or two to a team we should have beaten has been mediocre at best. This is compounded with LAL coming to town. We don't know who is going to show up for us. We do know who's showing up for LAL and they are pissed at last night's loss. Good luck. My money's on 0-2. Sorry.

db

[dboss]

We dropped another winnable game to the Spurs 110-106.  The Celtics played several games last night.  they had a good QTR, a Bad QTR, a good QTR and then a bad QTR.  Go figure.  This was the strangest game I have seen,  Brad was hell bent on playing everybody on the team in the first half.  The lineup rotations were unique to put it mildly.

This game was the first time the J's have both played with Walker so I thought we would see them reestablish their chemistry.  That did not happen.  The game flowed away from some guys.  Some guys took too many bad shots.  And some guys did not get enough shots.

The Celtics played a fairly clean game with only 10 turnovers.

Theis only played 12 minutes and went 2-3 from the field.  It will not be easy to find minutes for all 3 centers unless you start 2 of them together.  TT finished with 8 points and 8 rebounds in 23 minutes.
 
Robert Williams played 13 minutes and score 6 points and had 7 rebounds and he had a steal, a block, an assist and a turnover.  He was 3-3 from the field.

The 4th qtr is where this game was lost

Smart came in for Brown at the 12:00 minute mark with Boston up 2  (84-82)
After a miss jumper by Walker and an ill advised 3 point attempt by Smart, Robert Williams scores on a dunk  putting us up by 4 (86-82) at the 11:06 mark.

The Celtics did not score again until the 6:59 mark.  The sequence of missed opportunities included:

Javonte missed layup
Kemba missed jumper
Marcus missed jumper
Kemba missed 3 pointer
Marcus missed jumper
Jayson missed jumper

JB comes back in the game at 7:44 and drains a 3 pointer at 6:59 and we are down 4, (93-89)
Tatum follows that up by scoring 5 points including n AND 1

Kemba finally make a much needed 3 pointer at 3:18 Knotting  the score at 99-99.
Tristian makes a layup and we are up 101-99 with only.

Decisions, decisions.  Kemba misses an ill advised 3 pointer.  Theis come in the game and Jaylen finds him for a dunk.  The game is tied 103-103.

In the meantime coach Stevens is switching guys in and out of the game  including:

TT in DT out
DT in TT out
GW in KW out
DT in GW out
KW in TT out

With the Celtics down by 2 (105-103)  Kemba who just came back in the game gets the ball stolen by Dejounte Murry who dunks and gives them a 4 point cushion.

Tatum gets foul and scores and make the freebie.  It's a one possession game, they got the ball we have to foul and they win.

Once again Brad Stevens leaves JB on the bench too long.  He sat him for over 4 minutes in the 4th quarter plus a timeout.  Whatever Brad is searching for he certainly did not find it last night

This team has evolves.  Kemba Walker is no longer our second scoring option.  Marcus Smart needs to temper his shot attempts.  He does not help this team going 6-15 from the field including 2-7 from deep. Marcus has played really good this year in a lot of areas but  he is still shooting 32 % from deep.  So far this month he is shooting a dreadful 27.1% from deep through 11 games.  He can help this team by reducing his 3 point shot attempts.  It is the same old story here.  Nothing has changed.  not trying to knock him but I can tell you that coach POP would not stand for it.

The Celtics continue to drop close games down the stretch because of poor execution and poor decision making.  There is another rung on the ladder that the team must reach that will lift them up to a higher level of maturity.

[cowens/oldschool]

That second quarter obviously set us back, turnovers galore, sure JT learned something, awareness not to be so nonchalant on simple inbounds plays. Were also some lineups with the youngsters in 2nd, part of the game. You have to let them play thru their mistakes and gotta believe they will still help us more than hurt us down the road. Tatum was also 0-3 from 3 and missed a few easy bunnies, but still had his signature moves, as he’s so talented, when he makes mistakes, throughout game he still flashes incredible skills/talent.

Pop is a great coach, that team actually has a winning record and their defense was set up to stop the 2 J’s, wasn’t quite done, but was a much better team defense than a lot of teams with Pops imprint all over it. Jeff Teague is killing us, he plays like a rookie, doesn’t know what to do, how does a vet play like this?

RWill has got to get more minutes, he adds so much playing with/off the 2 J’s, figure it out Brad, his stats in limited minutes back up everyone’s eye test. Jaylen with a bad shooting 2nd quarter, had some really nice feeds, great to see. Wish he did a floater off the backboard, instead of the dunk attempt in 4th, just one play here or there and we still pull it out. Pop got just enough out of his team to pull it out and his defense stopped the J’s from having monster games. They always play us tough and take away a few things. If this team had Pop coaching all our young talent, that would be incredible scary. Looking forward to Lakers game and seeing how we and J’s respond.

[sinus007]

Hi,
Shameful, inexcusable loss.
I don't have to add to what was said in the above posts. Just one observation.
I was watching the game on LP and on some occasions they didn't go to commercial breaks but showed the Celtics bench during the time-outs. During one of those I saw Evan Turner (I think it was him) deriding (judging by the body language) JT. If it was about the game I quite agree with ET. I didn't notice anything from Brad.
BTW, here's an interesting contrast. I think it was the 1st quarter. After 2 turnovers in a row, Pop took a time-out and walked onto the court. His body language was crystal clear: I'm going to kill you if don't stop this crap.

AK

[dboss]

Hi,
Shameful, inexcusable loss.
I don't have to add to what was said in the above posts. Just one observation.
I was watching the game on LP and on some occasions they didn't go to commercial breaks but showed the Celtics bench during the time-outs. During one of those I saw Evan Turner (I think it was him) deriding (judging by the body language) JT. If it was about the game I quite agree with ET. I didn't notice anything from Brad.
BTW, here's an interesting contrast. I think it was the 1st quarter. After 2 turnovers in a row, Pop took a time-out and walked onto the court. His body language was crystal clear: I'm going to kill you if don't stop this crap.

AK

Pop manages the nuances of the game. He does it early and he does it often.

[Vankisa]

I think I have said it in another thread about another game, but dbrown just summed it up perfectly.

"That's not championship ball."

I keep seeing this game after game. TT and JeT additions have really hurt our defense cohesion. I do understand why in JeT case. He is just a terrible signing by Ainge. I do not understand why TT is making our defense worse.

I have this sinking feeling this is not on him but actually on Brad's shoulders. He knows how to teach "wing prevalent defense", but perhaps is unable to adapt now that he has LESS wings and MORE Bigs... Just based on fundamentals from the players available we should be BETTER defensively not worse...

Do not want to spoil the generally optimistic and upbeat tone of the forum so I am going to stop myself here. As I see it we are worse than 50% team at the moment. Apart from a lucky shot win vs the Bucks we have been (which will hurt even more from the Lakers later this week) outhustled, and generally outplayed by every single serious team in ALL 17 games so far. The road from this to a championship team seems non-existent to me at this point. (sorry I did say I am shutting up )

[dboss]

It is hard to complain about the volume of 3 point shots by the Celtics. They only put up 32 attempts per game. That puts them at #21.

The league has change dramatically. Scoring continues to increase because more 3 point shooting and efficiency results in higher scoring. As a team we are shooting 38.1% from deep ranking us at 7th. Not bad. However 5 of the 6 teams ahead of us in 3 point percentage are all top 10 teams.

Does this mean that we need to increase our volume of 3 point shots to keep up with the trend? The answer has to be yes but there must be an essential understanding as it relates to who takes these shots.

This also puts more emphasis on defensive ball pressure because with so many teams building their offense around the 3 point shot, we will continue to see the same things over and over again.

With respect to Jeff Teague and Tristian Thompson defense. Teague has not been as bad as we may think. His net defensive rating is 104. Thompson on the other had has a net defensive rating of 110. I think that both Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown need to be much better at the defensive end. Our worse defender by far has been Walker but he has only played in 4 games so maybe his numbers will improve. Currently his net defensive rating is a whopping 116.3

Playing defense is a team sport and all it takes is for one weak link to break the chain.

[Vankisa]

As I have said in some other discussions, metrics in Basketball, specifically "advanced metrics" all of them "derived" have some way to go before they can be trusted to make general statements.

The bias in defensive metrics is much worse than in offensive ones as well, there just have not been good approximations of efficiency in all those derived statistics, mostly in my opinion as the actual data being collected is heavily targeted on the offensive production and therefore is understandably hard to generalize or derive a meaningful representation of defensive efficiency/production.

While I do track those numbers when I lack the time to watch, I have discovered for myself that my eye test is much better to pick out good defense vs bad specifically regarding individual performance or on a "play-by-play" basis.

Hmm, seems a bit winded doesn't it. This entire block of tesxt pretty much says: I trust my eyes when I have the time to actually watch much more than defensive stats. And they are telling me JeT is a much worse defender than Kemba at this point in his career/season and that TT is slower footed than expected, less communicative and does not do as well as expected 1v1 vs big centers.

And to build on dboss' 3 point ball comments - I think our new acquisitions are part of the issues we are having defending the 3 ball this season. My eye test is telling me we are getting beat on PnR more and we need to collapse more, although I am not sure what the reason for that is - pnr? slower inside rotations are making the wings collapsing to help more?

One stat that is generally meaningful when inversed as well in my opinion (over significant amount of time however) is team fg%.
To highlight my point look at some improved stats on NBA.com:  NBA Opp Shooting Stats (used to be just opp FG%, opp. fg%) the numbers are still a bit low in terms of totals (540 observations), but it does show we are not as good as other years in defending the 3 point line.

Just a small snippet from there:
2020/21 Above the break 3: 35.9% (18th)
2019/20 Above the break 3: 32.9% (2nd)
2018/2019 Above the break 3: 33.7% (4th)
2017/2018 Above the break 3: 32.5% (1st)

[dbrown4]

Great!! Now the LAkers have lost 2 in a row!! Just saw the early line for tomorrow's game:

Lakers -42

db

[BingBang!]

The highlight was the zone defense worked to get the team back in the game. The lowlight was Kemba getting stripped in crunch time. JTs lethargy at the end of the first half I’ll put to COVID and move on. Good night for the Brad bashers as he did play nearly everybody looking for cohesion, etc. More of a preseason approach than an in season win this game approach. Separately good article in the Globe yesterday with Danny really panning the defensive effort so far this year.

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