POST GAME MIN. TIMBERWOLVES - AWAY

Celtics Wrap: Boston Drops Second Straight In Heartbreaking Fashion
The Celtics fell apart late Monday


NESN by Patrick McAvoy

It seemed very promising Monday night for the Boston Celtics, but a second-half collapse once again did them in as they fell to the severely shorthanded Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center, 108-103.

With the loss the Celtics fell to 16-18, while Minnesota improved to 16-17.

ONE BIG TAKEAWAY
The Celtics built a big lead early and then surrendered it down the stretch. Boston had an 11-point halftime lead and at points looked like it was poised to blow out a Timberwolves team that was missing four of its five starters and eight players overall but it continued to let Minnesota stick around.

The Timberwolves stormed back in the second half and took a lead in the final quarter after opening with a 14-2 run, and would maintain the momentum for the rest of the contest to earn the win. Boston was undermanned themselves with nine players missing the game due to a mixture of COVID-19 and injuries, but blowing big leads is a trend it has shown all season.

Boston did the same Saturday against the Milwaukee Bucks after building an early 15-point lead then falling a part in the second half.

STARS OF THE GAME
— Brown stuffed the scoresheet for the Celtics, leading the way with 26 points. He also nabbed 10 rebounds and dished out four assists. It was Brown’s sixth straight game with 20 or more points since returning from a hamstring injury midway through December.

— Payton Pritchard moved into the starting lineup with Marcus Smart shelved due to a hand laceration and responded with arguably his finest game of the season with 20 points, eight rebounds and six assists along with a steal.


— Jaylen Nowell entered Monday’s bash averaging just five points per game this season and responded to his extended opportunity by dropping a game-high 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting off the bench.

WAGER WATCH
If you were feeling Pritchard early on, he could’ve made you some scratch with his performance. The Celtics guard’s over/under for points scored was set at 14.5 by DraftKings Sportsbook with -115 odds so if you were to bet $115 on the over you would’ve walked away with $100.


UP NEXT
The Celtics will take Tuesday off and return to action at home Wednesday against the Los Angeles Clippers, with tip-off scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET.

Hope they sign IT. Not that I think he has much left, but he will always give it max effort and is easy to root for.

Do not understand management. IT is a Celtic. He lives and breaths Green! What the F does it really matter at this point, your season is going nowhere. Bring the guy in and see what type of energy he can bring to the team.

A total cluster F!

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The popular chatter about bringing back IT may not be far-fetched or a bad idea. This last game may even give some leverage to the idea.

I would expect the ownership group is already exploring how they can keep the fan base happy and still look like a serious destination for free agents and trade targets to find attractive.

Bringing in an enormously popular player would speak volumes about the atmosphere in Boston. I don’t think he has the game to make the team more competitive, but his presence would be a morale booster to fans and players alike. You have to market your product. Forget 10 days, a move like signing IT for the remainder of the season should not be hard to accomplish. If the team had to trim a couple of contracts, there are enough end of bench candidates to make dollars and head count work.

Salvaging some type of entertainment value for this season might be a move worth exploring.

Always some bright spots. PP had a Kemba Walker-like put me/keep me in coach game. His legs gave out in the 4th but that's because he's not used to playing all those minutes. That will come. But if Ime puts him back on the end of the trash bench once (if) normalcy returns and no moves are made from the front office as mentioned above, this week may be the beginning of the end for this season. RWIII played well. JB was very smooth also. Again, in it until the end again. Just ran out of gas. Poor shooting by both teams when all was said and done. Only thing other than that that killed us was FT's and tired lags in the fourth as everything we shot was front rimmed.

Also note the Nets still manage to win decisively down two of their Big 3. To quote Kenan Thompson, "Wazzup wit' dat?!!"

This stint by the league just to keep things open presents a product on the floor that looks an awful lot like scab/scrub ball during a strike. For me as a fan watching and paying, I can be accommodating and understanding but only up to a point before I shut my part down and find other things to do with my time and money. I can't be the only fan across the league that feels this way or has started thinking this way.

Let's see what happens Wednesday night.

db

They were without ALL of their stars; KAT, Edwards and Russell.  We were without Tatum, Smart, Schroder, Richardson, Nesmith, Enes (as well as Justin Jackson, CJ Miles and Bruno).  So, we were down most of the hardship players we signed because we were down so many players.  Some good news was that Horford and Grant were back, but you could see from their conditioning they didn't have it.  They played well for a while, they played hard, but they got gassed quickly.  It's amazing how quickly you can lose it.  Grant was out 5 games, I think?  But that was long enough.

Payton Pritchard got the start, the middle and the finish because he was the only point guard we had.  A total of 44:32, meaning he sat only 3:28 the whole game.  That's tough to do when you had only played a grand total of 361 minutes all season in 28 games.  Asking him to play Ironman Minutes would have been tough if he has been playing the 19mpg he played last year but but 13mpg he's getting this year?  You could see his legs were going in the 2nd half because every long shot of his hit the front of the rim.  Dead on, it would have gone in if it had reached the cylinder, but short.  He had 13 points in the first half on 4-7 from 3 (but 4-12 overall.  That's 0-5 from 2?  WTF?) but ended up 8-22, 5-14 from 3.  That's 1-7 from 3 in the 2nd half.  He had 8 rebounds and 6 assists, with only 2 turnovers (maybe one of Jaylen's turnovers could have been assigned to Payton, so 3 for him?).  Still, if Ime wanted to see if PP could do more than just shoot this game showed him something.  This kid has heart, absolutely positively no doubt about it.  He was dead on his feet but he kept battling.  

We needed Jaylen to show he was not just an All-Star but a franchise player.  He didn't show us that.  26 points, yes, but on 8-24, 2-8 from 3.  6 turnovers (5 if you take one away and give it to PP).  His turnovers are almost all ones of arrogance.  He just cannot accept that he should not, can not, dribble through multiple defenders.  Both he and Jayson have been thoroughly scouted.  Let them start their move, swarm them and they won't pass out until it's too late.

In his first game back from protocols Grant just started where he left off.  15 points on 4-7, 3-5 from 3, 6 rebounds in 28 minutes.  You could see his mouth hanging open too.  Nevertheless, a solid game from a player that, to the best of my knowledge, didn't have any conditioning days to before getting back on the court.  He was put on the active list on the plane to Minny.  Grant is now shooting 46% from 3.  That makes him 3rd in the NBA behind Keldon Johnson of SAS @ 47.2% and Joe Harris of Brooklyn @ 46.6%.  It's a little mindblowing when you remember just how truly historically poor he was from 3 in his rookie year.  0-25 is an NBA record, but now?  Looking very good.

A very good defensive game from Romeo.  He has great instincts, I love how he always goes to the front of the rim.  Great anticipation.  Unfortunately he was 2-9 last night.  This is the limiting factor on Romeo, of course, his offense.  He may never be more than just another Matisse Thybulle but that'd make him a pretty valuable player too, just not a starter.  Every team needs a defensive stopper on it, especially at the wing position in this NBA, Romeo may be that but nothing more than that.

If you thought Jabari was half-hearted on defense you haven't been watching Juancho.  Defense is spelled, and almost spoken the same, in Spanish as it is in English so he has no excuse.

Horford had a good game back from protocols but he was getting beaten repeatedly by Nathan Knight.  This is embarrassing since Knight had only played a total of 74 minutes this season before this game.  His total NBA experience is now 384 minutes.  That's a month for Al.

We needed a big game from RWill and, with KAT out, there shouldn't have been a reason why we shouldn't have gotten it.  4 blocks and 11 rebounds, yes, but he should have been eating up a team with an inexperienced front court.  Instead Knight and retread Greg Monroe ate our frontcourt.  Greg freaking Monroe.  Hasn't played in the NBA since 2018-2019, signed a 10-day contract with Minny and just killed us.

Why didn't Ime play Joe Johnson when our offense started to sag in the 2nd half? We scored 47 points in the 2nd half. ISO Joe could have improved upon that. Isn't that why we signed him? Nobody has ever signed Joe Johnson based upon his defensive reputation. I'm not understanding something.

My overall takeaways?

1. We're not that good. Period. We have moments of 'good', periods of 'good', we have the talent to be 'good', but we're not.

2. We played well offensively in the first half when we moved the ball and had legs. When our legs went so too did our offense because this is a 3pt shooting league now and 3pt shooting needs legs. Pritchard has an excuse, he played almost 4X the minutes than he normally plays, but Jaylen? Jaylen played 35 minutes, almost 10 fewer than Pritchard, and he's averaging 33.5mpg this year so 35 isn't that many more.

3. We gave up a lot of open shots to Minny in the 1st half which they missed. They stopped missing them in the 2nd half and our legs were getting heavier on rotation.

4. The bottom of our bench sucks. I realize that the bottom of almost every NBA team's bench suck, that's why they are at the bottom of the bench, but ours don't seem to be able to step up. I'm speaking about Juancho in particular but Jabari is so one-dimensional we could include him too. Jabari's cheapy cheap but Juancho is not. We couldn't get good minutes out of him despite this being a revenge game for him and they were so depleted. How much more useless than that can one get?

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360322


Bob


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When we begin to accept that the 2 J's are not true superstars in the mold of Kobe, Jordan, Pierce, Curry and James, the better off everyone on the board and Celtic management and Ownership will be.

We have to accept them as who they are - really good players who can fill a stats sheet on occasion with starlike results, but not the group I mentioned above who possessed an intangible trait........they all made their teammates better overall players.

I will say this, if the Celtics were able to bring in a true superstar point guard like Damian Lillard and a great power forward with height or a stronger dominating center that can truly attack the paint without being muscled out, you may be able to get the 2 J's to kick it up a notch in regards to a more balaanced quality of play.

I guess that time is coming around the corner where the Celtic Brain Trust must either get the needed talent, or move on from one or both and reboot. The 2 J's will not stick around if results are not being achieved in the W column. They will fade away to a more popular team like the Lakers or Miami or Chicago.

I feel as most of all of you do, that this is becoming too frustrating to watch a once great and proud franchise begin to fade into mediocrity.

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Something has to give.

Really…??? Damian Lillard is on a big max contract and is 31. He’s shooting 32% from 3 this year, we don’t need another 6 ft PG on the wrong side of 30.

cowens/oldschool wrote:Really…??? Damian Lillard is on a big max contract and is 31. He’s shooting 32% from 3 this year, we don’t need another 6 ft PG on the wrong side of 30.

I agree. One would have thought we would have learned from the Kemba experience. Nice idea at first, then he couldn't stay on the floor.

We need a player that is younger and for less $$$.

I always find it interesting how these late in career moves with players that are sans a championship pan out. Despite the ridiculous amounts of money involved, the NBA has proven time and again you still can't buy a championship. You can sort of do it in baseball (Marlins), but basketball is a tough nut to crack.

The big issue is how badly do these "Charles Barkleys" want a championship on their resume. They still aren't promised anything. Getting 15 guys on the same page for 100+ games is not as easy as one would think. You would think the $ would still reign supreme in their late in career life decision since there are no guarantees for a championship. The Lake Show is the most recent case in point of trying to stack a team and they currently look like the horse's ass. There's at least 3 teams out West that will crush them even if LAL gets back to full strength or even makes the playoffs.

Only 15 guys a year get to hoist the trophy. Odds are not in your favor regardless. Way too many landmines along the way that trip you up to get to that goal. Better love what you do during the season! It's kind of hard not to given the money involved.

db