POST GAME SPURS - HOME

Tell the truth:  how many of you turned the game off at the half?  Scout had to go out, but I know BobC came back.  Ktron, on the Game On! thread, was there.  Other than them, that I know for sure, gave up no later than halftime?  This team is the most frustrating team I have ever rooted for because you just never know which team will show up and, in the case of this game, it was a half-by-half Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  This one was crazy, maybe the craziest ever, but it is also a learning opportunity.  "Never give up.  Never.  Never.  Never." - Winston Churchill.  Not with this team and certainly not with any team that wears the green.

Tuck your napkin under your chin and get ready for a large plate of Schadenfreude in the Comments From The Other Side later today.


Mark Murphy @Murf56
about 10 hours ago
More from Mr. Lipe: The Celtics scored 95 points after halftime (including OT), the msot in franchise history. It was also their first 80-point second half since 1991.

The only Celtic to score in the 1st quarter whose name was not Jayson Tatum was Tristant Thompson, and that happened with only 44 seconds left in the 1st.  So, the rest of the team went 1-13 in the first quarter, 0-12 if you take Thompson's offensive putback out.  The Spurs, on the other hand, were running a Gregg Popovich Clinic.  It was beautiful basketball, albeit painful as Hell for a Celtic fan, to watch.  It's what "motion offense" is all about.  It wasn't just drive the ball and kick to a shooter at the arc, it was drive and know that one of your teammates was going to be cutting while you do that.  So they got good shots in the paint even when the original driver was cut off.  Brad doesn't like 2 point shots, he wants layups/dunks and 3s.  Well, I'm going to address that later...

With only 3:58 left in the 2nd half we were down 32 points.  20 minutes into the game, 28 left, and we were down 32 and looking very G League-ish on both ends in the process.  They hung 77 points on us by the half, and we were only able to gin up 48 for ourselves.  That's a 29 point halftime deficit.  Down 32 with 28 minutes left, still down 29 with only 24 left.  Turns out we had them right where we wanted them.

I've been down on Tatum just like everybody else.  His inconsistency and, more than anything, his skyrocketing turnover rate have given me my share of agita but last night was his perfect storm.  Think about what it means to say that he was a missed frito away from setting a new Celtic franchise record.  He tied Larry-freaking-Legend.  He had 5 assists and, get this, zero turnovers.  In Pop's post-game interview one of the San Antonio media asked him about what he thought about Tatum tying Bird's record and Pop said "I don't want to think or talk about it", and that was the end of that!  Pop was stunned, and he's seen it all, probably more than any other living coach, certainly more than any active coach.

Chris Grenham @chrisgrenham
about 2 hours ago
Jayson Tatum has scored at least 35 points on 52% shooting or better in three of his last four games.


Chris Forsberg
@ChrisForsberg_
“I said I was going to do it again while Deuce is here. I think that was the most special part."

Jayson Tatum on his 60-point night, tying Larry Bird, how the Celtics came back from 32 down, and the team's playoff potential.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1388325093714145286



Chris Forsberg @ChrisForsberg_
about 2 hours ago
It’s wild that Jayson Tatum had 0 turnovers as part of his 60-point game. He had 98 total touches, made 50 passes. 20 of his 37 shots were contested. He attempted 14 shots on 16 drives, often into traffic. And never coughed up the ball. This after having 22 TOs in last 5 games.


Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
about 10 hours ago
Jayson Tatum is the first player in NBA history with 60 points, 5 assists and 0 turnovers in a game, per @Sportradar

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As great as Jayson was Jaylen was equally awful.  5-24, 2 assists and 4 turnovers?!  Holy crap.  He was in the wrong place offensively and defensively all game.  His handle was awful.  He was making one bad decision after another.  Mentally, though, he's resilient.  He came into this league as a non-scorer but he definitely has a scorer's mentality now.  In his post-game presser he said that he has supreme confidence in himself and that the next shot will go in.  That's how scorers think.  Extremely short-term memory, positively amnesia.  Good thing too, because Jaylen hit that big 3 from the left corner with 16.7 seconds left in OT to put us up 2.  Without that it would have been Spurs ball, barring us stealing an O-board, and them up 1 and we'd start fouling them and putting them on the line instead of the other way around.

Another player of note was Tristan Thompson.  15 rebounds, 8 offensive.  We shot worse than them on the game, just not as bad as the first half.  We won this with more fgas.  We had 105 and they had 92.  That's 13 more fgas and that's a lot.  We had 22 fgas after 1, 46 at the half.  That's a normal pace, we were just shooting < 36% at the half, but Thompson had 9 boards at halftime, 5 offensive and was 2-6.  He had 6 in the 2nd half, 3 of them offensive.  I love it when Tristan goes into Beast Mode, we have an inside threat.  He also had 5 assists, from kicking out his offensive rebounds.  13 extra fgas, more than 13 extra possessions (because we didn't shoot 100%) is huge and Thompson did his part.

The Time Lord did too.  He only played 23 minutes, coming back into shape and maybe being careful not to play too much too quickly, but he had 10 points and 9 rebounds anyway.  All in all we crushed them on the offensive glass 17-8.

Gotta give Jakob Poetl some credit though, this is the best game I've ever seen him play.  RWill was running the floor and Poetl kept blowing up really good fast break finishes by RWill by keeping up with him step-for-step.  He ended up 15 and 10, and got 6 of SA's 8 offensive rebounds.

Smart with 10 and 12 assists, only 3 turnovers.  He only took 6fgas, was 1-4 from 3.  I like this Marcus Smart.  Not so happy with the Chuck Master.  You can shoot, Marcus, that doesn't necessarily mean you should.  Unfortunately that's Brad's system, he wants players to stay at the arc and catch-and-shoot if you're open and that includes Smart.  This game, however, Smart did what he's best at, running the offense and defending and look at the results.  An eye-opening, ear-popping resurrection.

Fournier continuing to not impress.  His defense is awful.  He is constantly getting beat off the dribble, mostly to the left, his right.  Why can't a right handed player move his feet quickly to his right?  But we need his scoring, right?

Wrong.  We have the new kid on the block, Aaron Nesmith.  16 points on 7-9, 2-3 from 3.  6 rebounds, 2 offensive.  Of course.  I'm having trouble imagining Nesmith not rebounding the ball, you know he'll be sticking his nose in there and is sure to grab some.  Man, has he ever blossomed over the last week!  Brad is starting to trust him because he played him 20 of the last 29 minutes.  He played 10 minutes at halftime, played 15 minutes in the 2nd half (that's 15 out of a total of 24 available) and, get this, ALL of the OT.  He never came out of the game in OT.  That's real crunch time confidence in the young'un by Brad.  I've read people complain about how Brad doesn't play the kids enough to develop them, not just this year but since he's been here, that he leans too much on his veterans.  They said it about RWill, they said it about Jaylen in his rookie season.  Well, Brad sat former NBA starter Evan Fournier the entire OT (except for the final 4.9 seconds when Brad pulled poor frito shooter Tristan Thompson and put in a reliable frito shooter because we all knew Pop was going to foul the worst frito shooter on the floor) and instead played a rookie who had a grand total of 485 NBA minutes under his belt before tip off last night.  He responded with 2 points on 1-1 and 2 rebounds in those 5 minutes.  Say what you will about Romeo (#14) and Grant (#22), I think Danny hit home runs with Nesmith (#14) and Pritchard (#26).  I'm not down on either of the first 2, I think Romeo is coming along with his obvious strength being defense and Grant is a mediocre but serviceable cog (not that I'd be upset if he was traded), I just think Danny hit the cover off the ball with the second 2 and they're proving it in their 1st season.  Romeo and Grant are both sophomores.  




Devin Vassell was picked #11, 15 spots ahead of Pritchard.  Who would you rather have, straight up?  Then consider the salary saved with the lower pick, $4M vs $2M, on a team that's going to need to find money for signings in just a few months.  Pritchard didn't have a great game last night, but season-to-date?

Parker with another Coaches - DNP.  Maybe there's a reason why he was on the garbage pile after all?  Teams do pay you to play defense, Jabari, especially if you want to them to renew your contract and whomever filled your head with that shoot should be shot.

Ok, so here's my mini-rant about 2s and 3s.  The Spurs shot 45% from 3 last night, but were only 24 out of 92, 26% of their total.  Sure, they made the extra pass, it was beautiful albeit frightening how well they did it, but they didn't overdo it.  When we ran them off the arc they had no problem pulling up for the old school mid-range 2.  They didn't necessarily try to go all the way to the rim, not unless the way was clear.  They didn't lose this game because they didn't shoot well, they lost it because they didn't rebound well and because Jayson Tatum was on a whole other planet.  Furthermore, look at aforementioned Mr. Tatum's game.  He was 20-37, 5-7 from 3.  He only took 7 3pt fgas out of 37.  What he did have instead of all those 3pt fgas were 17 chances at the line.  He went 15-17.  That's the equivalent of 5 3pters from the line, and they were easy shots, nobody was running at him, no shot clock to beat.  I'm repeating myself, but the road to the All-Star game travels through the frito line.  All-Stars take a lot of ftas.  17 is a ton of fritos and it resulted not only in an All-Star worthy game for Tatum, it was HOF worthy.  If he stays healthy and has a career as long as is reasonable to expect he's going into the HOF and this game, the one where he tied Larry Legend's 60 points on the strength of 17 ftas, is going to be in his highlight film there.  Drive the ball.  Attack the rim.  Screw the "touch the paint and kick" crap, take it to the iron and force the defense to make the difficult play to stop you and, if the defense will let you have the mid-range shot but run you off the arc and pack it in the paint, then take the open 2.  DeMar DeRozan is almost 32 and is a 4X All-Star and 2X All-NBA (1X 2nd Team, 1X 3rd Team) and he has thrived in the mid-range.  Jayson can shoot as well as DD in the mid-range and can shoot better than him from 3.  He should do both.  Use the 3 to set up the 2 and use a lot of 2s to force the defense to fall off you and take the open 3s.  Don't take 3s just because you're lazy.  End of rant.

A glorious victory.  Glorious, for tons of reasons.  Glorious because it showed this team has some serious, serious ganas.  Serious Celtic Pride, after getting booed off the court at halftime.


Jayson Tatum, on last night's game:

Chris Forsberg @ChrisForsberg_
about 2 hours ago
“That was a tough one, man. I think that’s just what being a Celtic is all about. Never quitting, never giving up.” pic.twitter.com/OPB9nxerKb


Hawks lost.  We are now tied in the loss column to them, and they're still ahead of us because they own the tiebreaker.  The Knicks have some days off, but their schedule is tougher than ours, especially if we play with as much grit and Pride as we did last night.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401307753


Bob


.

I am amazed at the transformation of “Crash” Nesmith!

Early this season he looked as lost on the court as I have ever seen a rookie look. Now, with very little real practice time, he plays the 4th quarter and all of OT and looks quite comfortable out there.

Kudos to Nesmith and the coaching staff for somehow improving so much during this Covid impacted season. Can’t wait to see him next season in what hopefully is a “normal” year.

I bet we see Pop retire after this season. Kind of pull what Roy Williams just did at Carolina. Get out before they fire you. Leave with some dignity still left in your pocket. He certainly deserves it with his distinguished record. Let's just hope his dignity is greater than his pride. Otherwise, you'll have the reverse situation.

db

Just another look at Nesmith's hustle, energy and production.

Scal makes a good point, somewhere in this film, that Brad is using Nesmith to double because of his energy level has him flying all around the court.  Watch how many times this kid goes to the front of the rim.  How many lucky bounces he got because he was around the rim.  How many rebounds because he was around the rim.  His steals and jump balls because he was around the rim.

He looked very lost in his first few months, the game was too fast for him, but it's almost like a light bulb suddenly got turned on over the last week or so.  And now that the game is slowing down I fully expect his offense, which is really his forte, to blossom too.  There will be more rhythm to his play, and shooting is about rhythm.

5 minutes of pleasure here...




Bob


.

Doris Burke could not stop talking about Jason last night during the GSW/Houston game. She was falling all over him, and she made one remark that really hit home. Tatum had 16 free throws during the Spurs game. It is a known fact that Tatum does not get the benefit of the doubt from referees, who fall all over the stars when handing out F/T. She said if this continues to happen, watch out. These kind of games are going to happen again, Interesting, we are not the only ones who notice the Boston snub by ref's. Wish she mentioned the fact that Kemba kets creamed under the basket and they refuse to give him the star treatment.

Also, she said with these last few games where Jason has scored in high numbers, May make him an invitee to the Olympic Basketball team

Not a huge Doris fan as she runs with the winners most of the time, but it was an interesting ten minutes last night

Don't have much reason why Pop should retire. You just don't see a lot of 72 year old coaches anywhere in sports. Not saying he can't continue to do it at his age. I don't think he get another Spurs team to prominence like the old days. Hence you will be left with exactly what you've got there now.

But there's a point when the grandfatherly coaching image runs its course. I think it has reached that point. We'll see.

db