POST GAME CROOKLYN - AWAY GAME #5 - PLAYOFFS

Celtics Wrap: James Harden Notches Triple-Double; Nets Win Game 5, Eliminate Boston
And with that, the Celtics are done


NESN by Marcus Kwesi O'Mard

To the surprise of no one, the Boston Celtics didn’t do against the Brooklyn Nets. Instead, the C’s died at the hands of one of the NBA’s most-talented teams.

The Celtics fell to the Nets 123-109 on Tuesday night at Barclays Center in Game 5 of their first-round NBA playoffs series. The result clinched the series win for Brooklyn and ended Boston’s 2020-21 season.

James Harden dominated proceedings, notching a triple-double with 34 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists on his unstoppable night. Fellow superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving chipped in with 22 and 23 points, respectively.

Jayson Tatum led Celtics with 32 points, nine rebounds and five assists. However, without the services of the injured Jaylen Brown, Kemba Walker and Robert Williams, Celtics unsuccessfully relied on Marcus Smart (who scored 14 points), Evan Fournier (17) and Romeo Langford as Tatum’s primary sidekicks.

The Celtics shot 43 percent from the field but just 27.5 percent on 11-of-40 shooting from 3-point range. The Nets shot 51.2 percent, including 15-of-32 and 46.9 percent 3-point shooting.

The Nets win the series 4-1.

Here’s how it all went down.


STARTING FIVE
PG: Marcus Smart
SG: Romeo Langford
SF: Evan Fournier
PF: Jayson Tatum
C: Tristan Thompson


OUTGUNNED
The Celtics either led the Nets or kept a tie score until there was 2:41 remaining in the first period. However, the C’s weren’t able to pull away during their most-competitive period largely due to an inability to make shots that plagued them throughout the quarter: 9-for-29 field-goal shooting (31 percent), including 3-for-16 (18.8 percent) from 3-point range.

Furthermore, the Nets hurt the Celtics in transition, scoring 22 of their 31 points in the paint.


Brooklyn led Boston 31-24 after the first quarter.

HANGING IN THERE
The Celtics’ second unit tried to keep pace with Brooklyn in the second period, with Jabari Parker scoring 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting, Grant Williams influencing proceedings with his rebounding and energy and Payton Pritchard boosting Boston with four assists in the first six-plus minutes alone.



However, Harden continued to serve as an expert facilitator, dishing out nine assists in the first half alone.


That’s in addition to the Brooklyn superstar scoring from far and near.

In addition to his nine assists, Harden led all scorers in the first half with 18 points. He also grabbed seven rebound. Irving was second in scoring with 15 points.

Meanwhile, Tatum continued to struggle from the field. He shot four-for-13 for 30.8 percent from 2-point range, and one-for-five for 20 percent from 3-point range.

Brooklyn led 59-51 at the half.

3RD-QUARTER EDGE
The Nets initially extended their lead to double-digits early in the third period, with Durant, Harden and Blake Griffin providing much of their offense.


Boston was down by 14 with with 6:55 remaining but cut Brooklyn’s advantage in half with a 7-0 run, with Parker, Smart and Tatum each scoring in quick succession.

Tatum scored nine points in the third quarter, Smart added seven, and Langford had six, including three from long range.


Boston trailed 86-79 after three.

FOURTH QUARTER
The Nets pulled away for good in the opening stages of the fourth quarter. Nicolas Claxton stuffed home a pair of alley-oops, extending Brooklyn’s lead to 13. Later, Durant and Irving hit back-to-back 3-pointers, and Harden added another in a mid-quarter surge, which put Brooklyn up by 15 with 6:47 left to play.


From there, the game effectively was over, bar some more shooting.

PLAY OF THE GAME
Tatum’s third-quarter-ending 3-pointer wasn’t so bad.


UP NEXT
The Celtics’ 2020-21 NBA season reaches its merciful and predicted end. President of basketball operations Danny Ainge recently said offseason changes are afoot, but those likely will come weeks or months down the road.

112288

THANK GOD THIS SEASON IS OVER!

The only bright spot of the whole night was when we fielded Parker, Langford, Nesmith and PP.

Please keep Tatum from playing point forward and his BULL shoot ISO PLAYS! 3 turnovers and a minus -14 while scoring 32 points.  He is a catch and shot player, not a good ball handler period in a crowd. He is no Koby Bryant for sure playing iso ball.

Langford is a keeper and I see him possibly starting next year but at a strong off the bench player at the very least.  

Why Stevens gave Nesmith limited minutes (13) is beyond me.

I like Parker, 14 points in 13 minutes and a plus +5.  He has good height at 6'8", #2 overall pick by Mil Bucks. Hopefully he can get beyond his past injuries and be a solid off the bench player.

Hoping Danny grows a BIG SET and starts making some noise in the off season.

112288

Well, it's over.  We all at least suspected it would be, but now it's official.  I think we would still have been the underdogs even if we were healthy but, without Jaylen for the whole series and RWill for a lot of it and Kemba for 2 games, we were really in trouble.  I cannot think of a single NBA team that would have won more than one game in this series without 3 of their starters.  As I pointed out on another thread, the Lakers lost by 30 last night to Phoenix, and the Lakers weren't down 3 starters.  Their starting back court, Schroder and Caldwell-Pope, combined for 0 points, ZERO, on 0-10 shooting.  Marcus Smart, at 5-17, beat the snot outta the entire Lakers starting back court.  I'm not saying all this as a putdown of the Lakers, I'm saying we did better despite being bigger underdogs.  We overachieved.  If that sounds like I'm talking about a 'moral victory' that's because I am.  We lost.  There's no two ways about it and nobody likes losing, but the 300 lost too.  Anybody looking down their noses at them?  We fought, against a vastly superior force, and lost.  Painful, but not shaming.  Would the results have been different if we were healthy?  We will never know.  You compete against the opponent you're facing with the team you have in the era you are playing.

This was Romeo Langford's best game as a professional, by far.  He guarded Durant a lot and made him take a lot of tough shots.  When KD is on there isn't anybody on this planet who can stop him but you can make him make the tough ones and that's what Romeo did.  When you can make Kevin Durant take a wrong-legged fadeaway Dirk shot you've done your job whether it goes in or not.  KD had 24 on 8-16, but only 6 ftas.  He had 11 last game.  On offense Romeo had 17 points on 7-12, 3-7 from 3.  Think about that!  Romeo Langford within 7 points of Kevin freaking Durant.  He has a lot of work to do this offseason but, for perhaps the first time, I am really seeing possibility in Romeo beyond just a defensive role player.  And here I was all in favor of trading him.  I still am, I just think his price went up.  A box of Krispy Kremes ain't gonna cut it no more.

Fournier with 18 on 8-17, 6 rebounds and just plain awful defense.  When was the last time you saw Evan Fournier move his feet fast enough to stay in front of his man instead of just trying to funnel him towards one side of the lane?  I don't know how much he wants to sign here, but he plays only one side of the ball from what I've seen.

Parker with his best outing.  He's on a 2 year "please save my career" contract.  He's never expressed any interest in playing defense before, we'll see if he finds some religion with a Brad Stevens camp under his belt.  If he applies himself on defense he is an answer to a question we have about our roster.

Nesmith 0-2.  Pritchard 1-2.  3 points combined.  Better than the Laker starting back court but not nearly enough for us.  PP had 4 assists in 18 minutes, and that's good.  It's hard to get a handle on what we've got because these two are not just rookies, they're rookies without a summer league or preseason to speak of.  So, yeah, they're a little lost in the playoffs, it's a whole other level.  Romeo, despite having roughly the same total number of career NBA minutes as Nesmith, is in his 2nd year and looked like he knew wtf was going on.  It's about how much you can absorb in a short time.  Going from college to the pros, even 4 years in college like PP, is like drinking from a fire hose.  Twice as many games, each game is 8 minutes longer and fewer days in between to prepare and the players they went up against in this series are beyond merely "more veteran".  PP guarded Kyrie.  AN guarded Harden.  Those two are going into the HOF, and they're still in their prime.  Same thing can be said about Romeo, he guarded Durant, who is also HOF-bound.  Forget about how PP and AN did vs their men, of course they got overwhelmed.  The question is "did they look like they can play in the NBA playoffs once the game slows down for them or not?"  


Bob


.

Can’t stand seeing Frenchy on defense, everything gets amplified during the playoffs. How many times did we see he needed help on defense and when the help came it led to a pass or 2 quickly leading to a dunk? That’s obviously not winning basketball. This series confirmed to me his defensive liabilities outweigh his offense vs contending type teams. Danny Green gets 15 mill a year and has played on championship teams, he’s a sniper playing his role off stars and plays very good defense. I would really hate to give Frenchy even 15 mill, when we have 2 young 2 way wings in RL and AN that can only get better.

cowens/oldschool wrote:Can’t stand seeing Frenchy on defense, everything gets amplified during the playoffs. How many times did we see he needed help on defense and when the help came it led to a pass or 2 quickly leading to a dunk? That’s obviously not winning basketball. This series confirmed to me his defensive liabilities outweigh his offense vs contending type teams. Danny Green gets 15 mill a year and has played on championship teams, he’s a sniper playing his role off stars and plays very good defense. I would really hate to give Frenchy even 15 mill, when we have 2 young 2 way wings in RL and AN that can only get better.

Cow,

I agree with everything you said.  I'm willing to cut Fournier some slack, he's a mid-season acquisition who never had a training camp with Brad, but not tons of it.  What really struck me is that he had no idea how far away from his man he should be, considering his relatively lack of foot speed.  Remember Chris Ford?  6'4", the slowest player in the league (including Larry) but an above average defender.  That's because he knew exactly how far off his man he could fall but still be close enough that if he went up for a shot he could close the gap and contest it, and if he tried to drive on slow-footed Ford he was far enough off him to be able to cut the angle  and stay in front of him.  That's what Fournier has no grasp of.  He doesn't know that he can't get right up into a faster player's face because he'll get blown by.  He doesn't know how to cut the angle to stay in front of him when he drives, he only knows how to funnel him out of the lane, but not far enough away where it's not much more than a layup.

As far as the money goes, it's not my money.  Furthermore, there are plots within plots going on here.  Right now, if we want to pull off a good trade we either have to give up a J (no thank you), Kemba (good luck with that) or Smart.  While there might be other players on the roster of value and interest (e.g. Thompson, RWill) their contracts are so small they aren't going to bring us a high quality veteran player with the size contract high quality veteran players have.  It will take a Smart-sized contract to make the numbers work.  Giving Fournier $15M, just to use your number, would then make him an appropriate sized contract to include in a big deal, instead of Smart.


Bob


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https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/kevin-durant-pays-celtics-jayson-tatum-ultimate-compliment



Tatum reacts to Kevin Durant paying him the ultimate compliment



22H AGO


BY DARREN HARTWELL
CELTICS



If there's a silver lining for Jayson Tatum to take from the postseason, it's that he earned the respect of one of the NBA's best players.

In the latest episode of his podcast, "The Etcs. with Kevin Durant," Nets star Kevin Durant discussed what it was like facing Tatum during Brooklyn's first-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics.

While the Celtics lost in five games, Tatum showed out by averaging 30.3 points in the series and dropping 90 points combined in Games 3 and 4 -- many of which he scored with Durant defending him.


Durant admitted he had his hands full with Tatum in the series.

"Guarding him the whole playoffs — he’s shifty with it," Durant on the podcast. "He’s got long arms, too, so it’s like you don’t want to give up the 3 because he can get hot and that’s how their teams gets going. He’s just so good off the dribble. He gives you five or six dribbles, hesitations, then he’s so long to get to the cup he can finish over bigs. He’s a tough, tough cover."


Boardroom
@boardroom
“He was a tough, tough cover.”

@KDTrey5 reflects on the Nets/Celtics series + @jaytatum0’s incredible performance on a special YouTube-only edition of #TheEtcs.

“He’s that elite level of player already at 23…it was an honor to play against them.”

: https://youtu.be/-F_fYLIuCOo


If that wasn't praise enough, Durant then put Tatum in the same category of NBA legends like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Tim Duncan as elite players who he's battled with in the postseason.

“I’ve been in the league for 13, 14 years and I started to tally-mark the matchups, the series, the players that I’ve played against,” Durant continued. " ... I’ve had series against Kobe, LeBron, Tim Duncan, the Memphis Grizzlies — Jayson Tatum is in that conversation.

"He’s that elite level player already at 23 and I’m like, 'All right, I can see where this is going. It was an honor to play against him.'"

The competitor in Tatum probably wishes Celtics-Nets was a closer series, but Durant's comments are a pretty cool stamp of approval that Tatum didn't take lightly.


Tatum has an extremely bright future after averaging 26.4 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.3 assists in his fourth NBA season. And if new president of basketball operations Brad Stevens can surround his superstar with more talent, perhaps the Celtics can give Durant's Nets a run for their money down the road.

"I hate that we’re in the same conference," Durant said. “Because I know as he starts to get older and their team -- we’re going to be battling them year in and year out.”


Bob


.

fait de accompli

That is what the Nets' series was. But it did not have to be that way.  The Celtics collapsed could not even secure a 4th or 5th seed.  Better chance of beating the Knicks or Hawks and then going up against a Sixers team with a less than healthy Embid.  And you avoid both the Nets and Bucks in round 2.

bobheckler wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Can’t stand seeing Frenchy on defense, everything gets amplified during the playoffs. How many times did we see he needed help on defense and when the help came it led to a pass or 2 quickly leading to a dunk? That’s obviously not winning basketball. This series confirmed to me his defensive liabilities outweigh his offense vs contending type teams. Danny Green gets 15 mill a year and has played on championship teams, he’s a sniper playing his role off stars and plays very good defense. I would really hate to give Frenchy even 15 mill, when we have 2 young 2 way wings in RL and AN that can only get better.

Cow,

I agree with everything you said.  I'm willing to cut Fournier some slack, he's a mid-season acquisition who never had a training camp with Brad, but not tons of it.  What really struck me is that he had no idea how far away from his man he should be, considering his relatively lack of foot speed.  Remember Chris Ford?  6'4", the slowest player in the league (including Larry) but an above average defender.  That's because he knew exactly how far off his man he could fall but still be close enough that if he went up for a shot he could close the gap and contest it, and if he tried to drive on slow-footed Ford he was far enough off him to be able to cut the angle  and stay in front of him.  That's what Fournier has no grasp of.  He doesn't know that he can't get right up into a faster player's face because he'll get blown by.  He doesn't know how to cut the angle to stay in front of him when he drives, he only knows how to funnel him out of the lane, but not far enough away where it's not much more than a layup.

As far as the money goes, it's not my money.  Furthermore, there are plots within plots going on here.  Right now, if we want to pull off a good trade we either have to give up a J (no thank you), Kemba (good luck with that) or Smart.  While there might be other players on the roster of value and interest (e.g. Thompson, RWill) their contracts are so small they aren't going to bring us a high quality veteran player with the size contract high quality veteran players have.  It will take a Smart-sized contract to make the numbers work.  Giving Fournier $15M, just to use your number, would then make him an appropriate sized contract to include in a big deal, instead of Smart.


Bob


.

Totally agree that Frenchy has no clue how to defend, besides having bad athleticism to defend. Having said that I might have mentioned this on another thread, but watching the Hawks right now doing really well against 76ers, this team is stacked, this playoffs looks like a coming out party for Trae Young and the Hawks. Can’t believe we/Danny was asleep at the wheel, he should have done everything in his power to get Capella, when Rockets were practically giving him away. If Brad nixed it because he doesn’t like bigs that can’t shoot, fu.k him; Capella is a stud, a poor mans Moses Malone and a great coach should be able to adapt to different effective contrasting pieces, instead of being so rigid to a system.