Fan's View - Updated Rotations

No time to over-think rotations.  

Brad Stevens needs to nail down his playoff rotations right now.  That will not be an easy task because every game someone is missing and that opens up rotation minutes for different guys.

The one player on this team that alters things recently, has been Aaron Nesmith.  The very possibility that he may be an important part of our playoff rotation is a big surprise.  I had already resigned myself to the 'wait until next year'  improvement cycle but it looks as though the next year wait may not be needed.

Aaron may very well be able to help us right now.  

This season may look like an unintentional accident but I think we can hang our hat on three bright glimmers.  Both rookies PP and AN are NBA quality players.  They are proving to be really quality selections by Danny.  This becomes even more apparent when you considered the previous draft.  RW is that 3rd glimmer in this triad.

From what I have seen the guy who should move down in the rotation is Grant Williams.  His small ball option at 5 looks pretty dim and his ongoing lack of skills reduces his contribution at the wing.  AN should eat up his minutes at the wing along with EF.

PP can play off the ball because he is an excellent catch and shoot guy.  

Here is my 9 man updated rotation plus 5 situational guys

Tatum
Brown
Walker
Smart
RWilliams
Fournier
Thompson
Pritchard
Nesmith
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ojeleye
G Will
Parker
Langford
Kornet

The rotation will be smaller.  Our top guys should be seeing extended minutes.

If Fournier, Pritchard and Nesmith make their open looks I would venture to say that Boston will be one tough out.

Ditto +1

Love what I’m seeing from Nesmith and Frenchy. I think Frenchy will have just enough time to further shake off the covid cobwebs and could be a real asset as a sniper, as will Nesmith who looks better each game and can be a real spark plug both ends. Kemba looked great last night and the idea the whole season on his load management was to have him primed for the playoffs.

If we can get this team fully healthy by playoff time, even the play in could be good for us if we have to play in it, to get all our guys more time to play/gel together. The 2 players I’m most excited to see in the playoff scenario is the 2 J’s, seeing how much growth to their games from the previous runs.

dboss,

I agree with your 9 man playoff rotation.  I'm not happy that two rookies are in it although I am happy with their play this season.  What I mean to say is, if you look at the rosters of other teams that are expected to go deep into the playoffs you don't see that much youth in the top 9.  It was said by Mike Gorman last night, probably quoting Dick Lipe, that the Celtics have the 2nd youngest team of all playoff-bound teams.  That's not good. Do some of our young'uns have experience?  Yeah, the Js for example have been to the EC Finals 3X already, but we've also all seen how they still make mistakes of the young in their play.

I think Kornet might get more minutes than you think, and than I'd like because of foul trouble and/or injuries to RWill and TT.  That, or Grant Williams.  I'm not crazy about Grant playing a lot in the playoffs but let's give some credit here.  He struggled last year, Brad stuck with him nevertheless, and he had a good playoffs.  He averaged 10mpg in the playoffs and shot 58.8% from 3.  This year, season-to-date, he's shooting 37.1% from 3.  That's solid, not great, but solidly average (league average is 36.7%).

It will be interesting to see how much run Parker gets.  He gives us some size at 6'8".  His defense isn't good, even 2" shorter Grant Williams plays better defense against bigs and smalls than Parker, but he is unquestionably more offensively adept.  He could be Brad's Gerald Green this year, the "break glass in case of emergency" player that you put in when you just cannot get points from anyone else.  Remember the Chicago series?  He started Green and that started our comeback against Playoff Rondo.

To me, it's all about health.  If we're healthy I think we can make some noise.  We don't have a large margin for error, though, especially at big and at floor general.


Bob


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Rosie
Jaylen also made a huge jump this year and at times was rolling better than Tatum. He plays thru injuries, hope he allows himself the time to heal properly, if both guys are fully rested/functional we are going to be a real problem.

Rosalie, I always like your enthusiasm and forward thinking. I am having a hard time seeing this team even winning a playoff game much less a series with the way we've set ourselves up.

Now granted, all we have to do is win the last game of the series and we're on to the next round! And in the end, worst case scenario is we have to win one more game than we lose.

I just get on a slippery slope with these guys. Win/lose/win 2/lose 2/win 6/lose 6....We are our record. I can't gain any confidence from our overall performance beyond saying we have a snowball's chance of getting out of the first round. If you recall our 2008 run, we just about went the distance in every round except against the Lakers. Just be the first team to win 4 games. I think we were 16-11 when all was said and done. And we hung Banner 17.

Not much difference between winning and losing. As along as we're still winning, we're playing!

db

I’m actually more upbeat about the playoffs than I thought I might be after some agonizing non Celtic performances earlier, call it growing pains, discontinuity, injuries all made for a lot of uneven play. Seeing how well Nesmith has played recently and Frenchy when he is right and Tatum’s recent monster performances and Jaylen’s continued stellar big play makes me think with the right beaks and right chemistry we can make a very good showing. A big key is which Kemba Walker is going to show up, either J is capable of a prime time playoff performance and can take a game over. Name me a team that has 4 better wings than us in the East? Okay Nesmith is a rookie, but I see a lot of grit in his game and playing off the other very good/great players on this team he can flourish IMO. Pray we can get healthy, then bring it on!!!

RosalieTCeltics wrote:I heard them say last night that Jerry Stackhouse.worked with Nesmith in the last year. So the kid has some basketball IQ and is a worker. That was so interesting to me, these young stars have the world at their finger tips, stars looking to give back to the game and training these young college kids (for all I know he worked with him in high school, they find these kids early).  So the kid wants to win.  Always a plus

I believe Stackhouse was his college coach too, I remember Stack saying positive things about the kids game and work ethic around draft time last year. So far everything Stack said seems to have merit and is coming out at the perfect time....I remember even reading about drills Stack was putting Nesmith thru and Nesmith saying something along the lines of as long as he sticks to his routine he will continue improving his shooting technique at the next level. There are a lot of balancing drills and running to spots over and over and hitting shots so that it gets very instinctive. I’m sure J’s have been doing similar drills for awhile now and time for Romeo to start a routine like this.

Excellent points Rosalie and cowens/oldschool! I'm usually a very optimistic person. But as close as I am to the Celtics, I become more critical. Same with family. The more you care, the more you expect perfection from those around you and will relentlessly criticize more than you praise, which now that I type it out doesn't sound or look right!

db

Rosalie and Cowens,

Jerry Stackhouse was Nesmith's coach at Vandy.  I cannot think of a better college coach for a shooter.  Stackhouse said, earlier this season when Nesmith was still behind the curve (especially compared to Pritchard), that "once he figures it out, watch out!".

He has started to figure it out over the last 2-3 weeks and he looks night-and-day compared to 2-3 months ago. Just as Pritchard has moved up in any redrafting of last year's class I predict next year they'll be saying the same thing about Nesmith, "he should have gone higher".

Excellent drafting by Danny on both of those two picks, especially at #14 and #26. Excellent. I should try and find that post I wrote where I analyzed what the reasonable expectations should be in the draft and then compare who Danny drafted and where he drafted them and update it to reflect AN and PP. Not sure where I'd go to find it though, there's been a lot of posts over the dam since then.


Bob


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