POST GAME - PLAYOFF ROUND 4 - FINALS - GAME 5 - GOLDEN STATE - AWAY

18 turnovers vs 6.  22 GSW points off of those 18 Celtic turnovers vs 9 Celtic points off of those 6 GSW turnovers.  You can't win a game when you have 12 more turnovers than the other guys.  The story of this series, way too many live turnovers had them racing up court.

We shot 4-15 and had 4 turnovers in the 4th quarter.  They shot 12-24 and had zero turnovers.  Non-Championship focus and effort vs Championship focus and effort.  

We took 31 ftas vs 15 for them.  Those 16 additional opportunities to score points could have produced the 11 points we needed to win.  They didn't because we shot 21-31, 66.7%, from the line.  They shot 13-15.  We shot 81.6% from the line during the year.  If we shot that last night we'd have been 25-31.  There's 4 points, makes it a 6 point game and that's a very different game in the final minutes.  

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
about 8 hours ago
Jayson Tatum: "Am I happy with the shots I’m getting? Yeah. I just gotta hit more of them.”

Jayson Tatum was 2-6 from the line.  If you're a shooter and aren't happy with fritos then you're not going to be happy because you won't get better, easier, less contested shots than fritos.

Speaking of Tatum, 4 assists and 4 turnovers.  When Smart had the ball in his hands and ran the offense we scored and came back from that 16 point deficit.  When Tatum was the floor general we were right back at iso ball.  He doesn't make decisions quickly enough.  A fast team doubles him and he gets swallowed up.  Then it's just a matter of playing the most obvious passing lane because he's not Tom Brady.  He's not going to check off the 1st, 2nd and 3rd receiver before he picks who to pass to.

When it was crunch time we reverted to what we're comfortable with, and that's iso ball.  It was made worse by virtue of the ball being put into the hands of one of the team's biggest iso players.  That's bad coaching.

And that's on Ime.  Ime's decided to run the offense through Jayson even though he started the season telling Marcus Smart that he's the team's point guard and will be running the offense.  Where did he come up with that?  Not in San Antonio, Pop had Parker running the offense there.  Not in Philly, the ball ran through Simmons who, although not a shooter, engaged his teammates (perhaps precisely because he's not a scorer and can't do it himself except in the open court).  Not in Brooklyn, Kyrie and Harden, both point guards, ran the offense there.  I don't get it.  We are averaging 103 ppg through the Finals so far.  However, we have scored under 100 points in 3 of those 5 games.  We scored 116 in Game 3 and 120 in Game 1.  Other than that our offense has been awful.

It was Jaylen's turn to kill us.  5-18, 0-5 from 3.  5 turnovers.  He just cannot stop himself from dribbling into double teams.  Also, have you noticed how little he moves without the ball now?  Same with Tatum, but that's because Ime is running the offense through Tatum, so he's going to have the ball in his hands more.  That's not so with Jaylen.

And Derrick White sure didn't help either.  1 point on 0-4.

Our entire bench scored 10 points, and 6 of those 10 points came from Luke Kornet and Aaron Nesmith in 1 minute of garbage time.  White scored 1 point, Pritchard scored zero points on 0-3 in 5 minutes and Grant scored 3 on 2 fgas.  Our rotation players weren't just useless, they were practically invisible.  4 points on 1-9 for our rotation bench players, 2 less than our garbage time players scored in a minute of play.  

The Warriors bench got 31 points, 14 from Poole and 15 from Gary Payton Jr.  That's what a bench is expected to do.  And we can't blame it on youth.  Poole is almost 22 and GP is 29.  Derrick White is almost 28.

Legs were going in the 4th.  Curry's were all but gone, he shot 7-22 on the game and 2-6 in the 4th.  His shots were all off the front of the rim, evidence he was losing lift.  But Tatum's legs were going too, his shots were just about all short, airballs, in the 4th.  Not that it stopped him from shooting.  He was 1-5 in the 4th.  What do you expect when you put the ball in the hands of a tired shooter?

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
yesterday
Ime Udoka said the Jays may have lost some steam and their decision making and fatigue from playing the whole second half could be a part of why their offense burned out.

No shite, Sherlock.  That's what happens when you decide to only go 7 deep.  You can't sit anybody long enough for the lactic acid to get out of their leg muscles.  We started winning in January when Ime shortened the rotation to 8 players, but 8 players is too short.  That's Brad.   Brad needs to give Ime the bench players he has confidence in.  He has confidence in Grant (lots!).  Who else?  He has confidence in the player he coached in San Antonio and the player he has known for many years back in Portland where they both grew up.  That's it.  Is this a comfort thing, or a talent thing, or both?  Nesmith flies around the court, not shooting well but good effort, but is given inconsistent opportunities.  Brad signed shooter, and 5 year NBA veteran, Nik Stauskas to a 2 year contract.  Takes off his warmups before showering, that's it.  Luke Kornet?  Ok, that's a talent thing.

Ime gets T'd up for crossing the center line.  Really?  It's Game 5 of the Finals and the ref gives a shoot about a coach coming over to talk to him?  Awful.  Smart gets T'd up because he's getting tired of getting thrown down on the ground, which happened repeatedly.  But Draymond Green and Gary Payton Jr are allowed to follow Tatum to the Celtic bench and there's nothing.  That's awful.  You know what's even more awful?  Nobody on the Celtics peeled Green away from Tatum.  6'6", 235# Grant Williams walked 6'3", 195# Gary Payton Jr away (what a profile in courage, angling off a player you're 3" taller and 45# heavier than) but nobody got The Thug out of Tatum's ear.  That disappoints me more than anything.  No freaking stones.  Could you imagine Green doing that if Tristan Thompson was still on the roster?  Hell no.  If someone got into Tyler Herro's face like that what do you think PJ Tucker would do?  Robert Williams is fragile, Al Horford is a gentleman and Theis isn't that way neither.  Grant's the only one with some sand and he went after the smaller intimidator.  This altercation, the failure of the refs and especially of our players, did more to suck the spirit out of me than anything else.  People ask me about various NBA games and I tell them I only watch the Celtics.  When they ask me why I tell them "the fewer NBA games I watch the fewer NBA referreed games I watch".  Evidence for the Prosecution, Game 5 of the 2022 NBA Finals.  Three refs watching only 10 players on a surface that is only 94' X 50' and, for the most part, they don't have to watch the back court because most of the action happens in the half court.  So it's really only 47' X 50'.  2350 square feet.  Imagine a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house.  You might even live in one.  Now imagine its interior stripped down to the studs.  No walls.  If you can, imagine that interior without even the studs, imagine the roof being supported by the rafters and the interior is completely empty.  That's about how much square footage these 3 blind mice have to watch.  Pre-school teachers with 2 dozen rug rats running around like goonies know more about what actually is and is not going on than those clowns watching 10 grown men, all conveniently clustered together.




It's do or die time.  If this doesn't make their hearts and minds come together and focus then it's time to ship some people out.  We play with Pride.  Win or lose we do them with Pride.  Always.  That is non-negotiable.

And, for God's sake Ime, these are the Finals.  It's not a training center for aspiring point guards.  Point Guard is probably the most difficult position in the game.  It takes years of mental development to be good at it (I tend towards the philosophy that point guards are born, not trained, but you can get better at it over time.  I'm just not sure you can/will ever be trained enough to be a starting NBA point guard without being a natural in the first place).  If you're going to 7-8 players because you can't afford the risk that comes with player development then maybe this isn't the time for point guard development?


Bob


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