Post Game - Preseason vs Knicks - Monday, October 9 (L)

Celtics-Knicks takeaways: Pritchard, Banton impress in second preseason game

https://sports.yahoo.com/celtics-knicks-takeaways-pritchard-banton-023009386.html


Justin Leger
Mon, Oct 9, 2023, 10:30 PM EDT·5 min read

On the second night of a back-to-back, it was the Boston Celtics second unit's time to shine in Monday's preseason tilt vs. the New York Knicks.

C's head coach Joe Mazzulla opted to give his starters the night off after they played most of Sunday's preseason opener win over the Philadelphia 76ers. The Madison Square Garden lights weren't too bright for Boston's backups, who held their own against New York's starters in the 114-107 defeat.

Boston kept it close until the final minute with help from point guards Payton Pritchard (21 points) and Dalano Banton (20). Svi Mykhailiuk also made an impact with a 15-point effort.

The Knicks were led by a 21-point performance by Immanuel Quickley. Fouls proved to be the difference as New York was 25-for-33 from the free-throw line. Boston was 15-for-19.

Boston's preseason continues Wednesday night in Philadelphia. Before we turn the page to that matchup, here are our takeaways from Monday's game.

An encore from Payton Pritchard

Pritchard stole the show with a game-high 26 points in the win over Philly, and he gave fans an encore Monday night at MSG.

The Celtics guard, with the ink still drying on the four-year contract extension he signed Sunday, led all scorers again with 21 points.





He shot 7-for-15 from the floor (4-11 3-PT) with five assists, five rebounds, and three steals in 29 minutes.

Perhaps it's too early to tell, but Pritchard looks like he's taken a legitimate leap heading into Year 4 of his NBA career. He's still stuck behind talented guards (Derrick White, Jrue Holiday) on the depth chart, but he should play an even bigger role off the bench this time around. All signs point toward him being up for the challenge.

More newcomers showing potential

A day after all eyes were on prized offseason additions Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, the Celtics' lesser-known newcomers got a chance to show off their talents.

Six-foot-7 point guard Dalano Banton and journeyman wing Svi Mykhailiuk, both signed to partially-guaranteed contracts, put their stamps on this game early and often with 20 and 15 points, respectively. They dropped eight points apiece in the first quarter.





Banton went 8-of-19 from the floor while Mykhailiuk hit five of his nine shots, including three 3-pointers.

Former Cleveland Cavaliers forward Lamar Stevens (11 points) and ex-Indiana Pacers forward Oshae Brissett (10 points) were the other C's in double figures. Stevens also notched eight rebounds while shooting 5-for-12 from the floor.

Neemias Queta auditions for frontcourt role

With Robert Williams shipped off to Portland, the Celtics could use some frontcourt help behind Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford. Neemias Queta, a 7-footer signed to a two-way contract last month, showed flashes of promise in his C's debut.

The 2022-23 G-League MVP runner-up quickly provided a spark with a strong putback in the first quarter. He tallied seven points in total with four boards and a block in 14 minutes.



There's potential there, but Queta has to cut down on the fouls. He racked up five during his brief time on the court, continuing a troubling trend that dates back to his college days. Before the Celtics can consider giving him regular minutes, that's an issue that must be addressed.

Jordan Walsh showcases his skillset

Walsh picked up where he left off in Summer League with a promising showing on Monday night.

The rookie second-rounder out of Arkansas prides himself on his defense, and that was evident in the second quarter when he made his presence felt with a steal and a layup on the other end for his first NBA bucket.



Walsh finished with four points, six rebounds, and two steals in his 18 minutes. We know the offense is a work in progress, but the defense looked as advertised. It'll be fun to see how the 19-year-old develops over the course of the season.

Sam Hauser still searching for his shot

Hauser has yet to find his groove through the Celtics' first two preseason games. The 6-foot-8 forward, who shot 41.8 percent from beyond the arc last season, is just 2-for-15 from long range thus far.

It certainly isn't time to hit the panic button. Hauser has proven to be a streaky shooter whose hot stretches outweigh his cold spells. There's little doubt he'll snap out of his current funk to give Boston a much-needed scoring punch off the bench again this upcoming season.

He should get a chance to start one of those hot streaks this Wednesday night.

Danelo Danelo Danelo

This kid can finish extremely well, has good enough handle, finished right by Robinson no problem, can get his mid range shot off, can play either backcourt spot. 2 way player, can’t believe Raptors just gave him away. Looks like we sure found some further backcourt help. At 6’9” he is going to be a problem!!

Queta an obvious work in progress, very active on defense, can stop penetration somewhat and mobile enough to get on perimeter. I still wouldn’t mind another big. Pritch looking good again, some impressive finishes among the trees. Hauser not doing himself any favors by being so cold again.

I'm as reasonably impressed as I can be given this was a preseason game.  The final score is irrelevant, none of our top 6 players took off their warmups and Thibs played two of his regular starters > 20 minutes each and another two 13-16 minutes each.  It was a 5 point game until 1:37 left.  It was a 6 point game starting the 4th.  I sure hope our 1-6 players told our 7-20 squad they should feel proud of themselves.  On the other hand, if I was a Knick fan I'd be somewhat concerned.  When your opponent's starting front court is Luke Kornet and Oshae Brissett, and you're starting front court is Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle, there should be complete and utter domination.  Yes, we struggled on the boards to start but we rallied back.  There's no denying the first quarter was mostly their starting 5 vs our 7-12, and we closed out Q1 up 1.

Hauser is now 2-15 in the preseason.  If he went 4-15, which still sucks, we win.  That's how well we played, it took execreble 3pt shooting for them to win at home.  Sam was also the game high rebounder with 8, tied with Lamar.  Decent defense throughout.

Svi with 15 points on 5-9 and 3-7 in roughly the same number of minutes as Sam.  Sam and Svi have obvious overlap in their skillsets, notably shooting.  IF Svi ever improves his defense and Sam keeps shooting like this Sam is losing his place in the rotation.  IF.  Svi's defense is, to my eyes, underwhelming.  This might just be his newness to Joe's system.  Joe isn't exactly a "defense-first" coach, which might help Svi, but the Js are saying we need more defense this year and Charles Lee and Sam Cassell are saying the same thing.  This is a new year, so we'll see.

Pritchard showing up again, this time against Knick starters.  21 points on 7-15, 4-11 from 3.  The stat I'm paying the most attention to is his assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.  I'm hoping for at least 4 assists and a 2:1 ratio.  In game 1 vs Philly he had 4 and 2.  Last night he had 5 and 3.  9 and 5 isn't quite what I'd like, but I'm liking that he's averaging > 4 apg.  He also had 3 steals last night.  He'll never have the size to be a great defender but he could be a dangerous ball hawk and double-teamer to make up for whenever he gets tortured in man-to-man.  Bottom line, once again Payton Pritchard showing he's ready for solid rotation minutes.  We're going to need to come up with a nickname because his name is going to come up a lot this year.

Dalano Banton was late to Summer League and his first game there was underwhelming.  His 2nd one was pretty nice.  Seems to be a pattern.  He was underwhelming in his first game against Philly but looked really good last night vs the Knicks.  20 points on 8-19, but it's how he got his points that i thought was interesting.  He gets to the rim almost effortlessly and finishes effectively.  He also seems to have a nice mid-range pullup.  His numbers got watered down because he started shooting 3s instead of driving and he isn't a good 3pt shooter.  He was 1-5 from 3 last night.  The quick math tells us that he was 7-14 from 2 and that's not bad at all.  I'm not sure where Banton would fit into the rotation, he's not a good enough shooter to replace either Sam or Svi (I'm assuming Sam will find his stroke, there's no reason to assume he won't).  He's not a better shooter than Payton and he's not looking like a better floor general either.  4th guard is how it looks right now?

But here comes J(et) D Davison.  He goes north-south faster than anybody else on this team and he looks like a natural, pass-first point guard.  Unlike SL, where he was just trying to go too fast for his own good and got out of control, last night he played with more control.  4 assists and only one turnover in 14 minutes are the numbers I'm hoping for from Payton.  Davison has pretty good court vision, he's aware of where all his teammates are.  He was running a fast break and knew that Oshae was behind him on his left wing and made a perfect blind pass to him for the dunk.  A textbook executed fast break by JD.  His outside shooting is the obvious weak skillset for him.  If he's not taking 1000 shots every day then someone needs to grab him by the throat and shake him like a terrier with a rat and let him know that's where he needs to spend his time practicing.

Speaking of Oshae, he looks adequate.  Not really good at anything I've seen so far, but does everything ok.  This is a depth issue for us, the position formerly known as "power forward".  I'd love to have a player that can go in for 20 mpg and hold the fort for Jayson.  I need to see more of Oshae before I put the laurel wreath on his head for that job.  I can't really fault him for having trouble with Robinson and Randle, Robinson dwarfs him and Randle is ridiculously heavy and strong for his position, but I'd like to see how he fares against other rotation PFs.

Lamar Stevens is one physical dude.  2nd game in a row he's muscling with guys bigger than him.  I like it.  He's moving up on my depth chart, ahead of Oshae, for a position Oshae is actually more physical built for, but Lamar just has that dawg in him.  I've asked numerous times the past month "who is going to be our dawgs to replace Smart and Grant?".  Lamar is proving himself out there.  3 of his 8 rebounds were offensive, so you know I'm falling in love.

Despite their front court being bigger than ours we not only outrebounded them 50-39, which is a HUGE 11 rebound difference, we out offensively-rebounded them 17-9.  That is a combination of our poor shooting (42.9%) creating a lot of opportunities to offensively rebound, and our aggressiveness.  We took 94 fgas vs 84 for them.  9 more offensive rebounds, 10 more fgas.  Coincidence?  Only if you believe in them.  I say "Repetitive coincidences are just unrecognized Causes and Effects".  I see a correlation here.

Overall, our bigs didn't impress me.  Luke was 'meh', at best.  Queta had 7 points on 3-5, 4 rebounds and a block in only 14 minutes but looked stiff out there.  He had 5 fouls in those 14 minutes and none of them looked particularly good.  Wenyen Gabriel only played 10 minutes, so I'm giving him some slack.  He was 0-3, 4 boards in 10.  Without RWill we are relying heavily upon Al and KP.  When they're healthy, we're great, but we all know the concerns there.  If KP is out, and Joe doesn't play Al in b2bs, then the front court we saw last night is it and that doesn't make me feel all that good.

Finally, rookie Jordan Walsh.  Showing off his NBA skillset, defense.  7 rebounds and 2 steals in 19 minutes.  I don't even really care that he was 2-5, 0-2 from 3.  His defense was really good (although Fournier burned him at least once on a cut) and that's what i want from him at this point in his career.  Lamar is showing me he is ready and deserves to play that role ahead of Jordan, but that's ok this year.  Jordan Walsh will have a long career ahead of him, as there is for all players who have an irrefutable NBA-desired skillset, and he has one.  He just needs a little patience.  One of the bad things about Payton was that he got a lot of minutes as a rookie and that set his expectations high.  Jordan needs to set his sights more reasonably this year and, from listening to his interviews, he has that in hand.

We need to cut down on our live turnovers.  Not freaking out here, these were 7-20, but that hurt us last night.  We also let them have 33 ftas vs 19 for us.  We had the problem of fouling too much last year too.

We had 3 technical fouls called.  2 were defensive zone calls on Luke and one was some ridiculous "hanging on the rim" call on Queta.  Oh well, it's preseason for the refs too.

One thing I've noticed in both games so far is that the refs are consistently calling 'travel' whenever you made a ball fake and then put it on the floor.  It's like they're not even looking at the player's feet.  If you act like you're going up for the shot you have to shoot or pass.  If you fake and then drive past the defender coming at you they'll call you for traveling.  A stupid freaking call, to say the least, but we've seen is so consistently in the pre-season so far I have to believe it's coming straight from the league office.  I don't know why, like I said I think it's dumb.  I hope they're just trying to "set the tone" now, but will back off during the season.  If they're trying to speed up the game this is definitely not the way to do it.


https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401591878


Bob


.

A good game to see the candidates for some bench minutes. Only the Knicks, but they did lead off with their starting unit.

Pritchard is making a strong case that he could be the guy behind Holiday. I hope his strong showing continues. I like White in the 2-guard role best and if Pritchard's play can make that possible, I think we've got a nice plus.

Banton is my pleasant surprise candidate, he can score. How they decided to take a gamble on a guy with almost no meaningful NBA minutes, I don't know. It made me wonder if they were willing to sign anyone with a pulse, but Banton is making Brad look good so far. Stevens looks like he will maintain the strong defensive presence here that he displayed in Cleveland. Add Stevens to the defensive strength that we can rotate in with Holiday and White. We're still going to be desperately seeking front-court solutions. It may be that Stevens gets thrown in against some of the bigs we need a matchup solution for, to see if he can slow them down some. Walsh grabbed some rebounds and looks like he might have defensive potential. Most likely he gets the bulk of his minutes in garbage time this season, but I think he could earn that much and a chance to develop his skills on the game-time floor.

Pritchard, Banton and Stevens. There may be some regular minutes for those three. Pritchard for sure IMO.

I said last night and repeat it today, the center spot is the one that concerns me the most. For every halfway decent game Luke plays, there are five "eh" games. He is not the guy I want out there if KP or Al is out. We need some beef, someone to take the punishment from Embid and Giannis, and I see no one right now who is ready for that role

He doesn't appear to be especially quick, but he has a good crossover and is long for his finish. He's almost 6'8" in bare feet and has an almost 6'11" wingspan. A lot of his early drives were against 6'6" RJ Barrett. Then he rubbed DiVincenzo off on a screen and curled to the rim.





Bob


.

he was impressive, and I wondered early in the summer if he was even going to be around after preseason. I love that he drives to the basket, we need that.

Rosalie,

Yes we do.  We need a Playoff Rondo/Eddie House Combo guard! I believe Pritch is applying for the job.  

db

bobheckler wrote:I'm as reasonably impressed as I can be given this was a preseason game.  The final score is irrelevant, none of our top 6 players took off their warmups and Thibs played two of his regular starters > 20 minutes each and another two 13-16 minutes each.  It was a 5 point game until 1:37 left.  It was a 6 point game starting the 4th.  I sure hope our 1-6 players told our 7-20 squad they should feel proud of themselves.  On the other hand, if I was a Knick fan I'd be somewhat concerned.  When your opponent's starting front court is Luke Kornet and Oshae Brissett, and you're starting front court is Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle, there should be complete and utter domination.  Yes, we struggled on the boards to start but we rallied back.  There's no denying the first quarter was mostly their starting 5 vs our 7-12, and we closed out Q1 up 1.

Hauser is now 2-15 in the preseason.  If he went 4-15, which still sucks, we win.  That's how well we played, it took execreble 3pt shooting for them to win at home.  Sam was also the game high rebounder with 8, tied with Lamar.  Decent defense throughout.

Svi with 15 points on 5-9 and 3-7 in roughly the same number of minutes as Sam.  Sam and Svi have obvious overlap in their skillsets, notably shooting.  IF Svi ever improves his defense and Sam keeps shooting like this Sam is losing his place in the rotation.  IF.  Svi's defense is, to my eyes, underwhelming.  This might just be his newness to Joe's system.  Joe isn't exactly a "defense-first" coach, which might help Svi, but the Js are saying we need more defense this year and Charles Lee and Sam Cassell are saying the same thing.  This is a new year, so we'll see.

Pritchard showing up again, this time against Knick starters.  21 points on 7-15, 4-11 from 3.  The stat I'm paying the most attention to is his assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.  I'm hoping for at least 4 assists and a 2:1 ratio.  In game 1 vs Philly he had 4 and 2.  Last night he had 5 and 3.  9 and 5 isn't quite what I'd like, but I'm liking that he's averaging > 4 apg.  He also had 3 steals last night.  He'll never have the size to be a great defender but he could be a dangerous ball hawk and double-teamer to make up for whenever he gets tortured in man-to-man.  Bottom line, once again Payton Pritchard showing he's ready for solid rotation minutes.  We're going to need to come up with a nickname because his name is going to come up a lot this year.

Dalano Banton was late to Summer League and his first game there was underwhelming.  His 2nd one was pretty nice.  Seems to be a pattern.  He was underwhelming in his first game against Philly but looked really good last night vs the Knicks.  20 points on 8-19, but it's how he got his points that i thought was interesting.  He gets to the rim almost effortlessly and finishes effectively.  He also seems to have a nice mid-range pullup.  His numbers got watered down because he started shooting 3s instead of driving and he isn't a good 3pt shooter.  He was 1-5 from 3 last night.  The quick math tells us that he was 7-14 from 2 and that's not bad at all.  I'm not sure where Banton would fit into the rotation, he's not a good enough shooter to replace either Sam or Svi (I'm assuming Sam will find his stroke, there's no reason to assume he won't).  He's not a better shooter than Payton and he's not looking like a better floor general either.  4th guard is how it looks right now?

But here comes J(et) D Davison.  He goes north-south faster than anybody else on this team and he looks like a natural, pass-first point guard.  Unlike SL, where he was just trying to go too fast for his own good and got out of control, last night he played with more control.  4 assists and only one turnover in 14 minutes are the numbers I'm hoping for from Payton.  Davison has pretty good court vision, he's aware of where all his teammates are.  He was running a fast break and knew that Oshae was behind him on his left wing and made a perfect blind pass to him for the dunk.  A textbook executed fast break by JD.  His outside shooting is the obvious weak skillset for him.  If he's not taking 1000 shots every day then someone needs to grab him by the throat and shake him like a terrier with a rat and let him know that's where he needs to spend his time practicing.

Speaking of Oshae, he looks adequate.  Not really good at anything I've seen so far, but does everything ok.  This is a depth issue for us, the position formerly known as "power forward".  I'd love to have a player that can go in for 20 mpg and hold the fort for Jayson.  I need to see more of Oshae before I put the laurel wreath on his head for that job.  I can't really fault him for having trouble with Robinson and Randle, Robinson dwarfs him and Randle is ridiculously heavy and strong for his position, but I'd like to see how he fares against other rotation PFs.

Lamar Stevens is one physical dude.  2nd game in a row he's muscling with guys bigger than him.  I like it.  He's moving up on my depth chart, ahead of Oshae, for a position Oshae is actually more physical built for, but Lamar just has that dawg in him.  I've asked numerous times the past month "who is going to be our dawgs to replace Smart and Grant?".  Lamar is proving himself out there.  3 of his 8 rebounds were offensive, so you know I'm falling in love.

Despite their front court being bigger than ours we not only outrebounded them 50-39, which is a HUGE 11 rebound difference, we out offensively-rebounded them 17-9.  That is a combination of our poor shooting (42.9%) creating a lot of opportunities to offensively rebound, and our aggressiveness.  We took 94 fgas vs 84 for them.  9 more offensive rebounds, 10 more fgas.  Coincidence?  Only if you believe in them.  I say "Repetitive coincidences are just unrecognized Causes and Effects".  I see a correlation here.

Overall, our bigs didn't impress me.  Luke was 'meh', at best.  Queta had 7 points on 3-5, 4 rebounds and a block in only 14 minutes but looked stiff out there.  He had 5 fouls in those 14 minutes and none of them looked particularly good.  Wenyen Gabriel only played 10 minutes, so I'm giving him some slack.  He was 0-3, 4 boards in 10.  Without RWill we are relying heavily upon Al and KP.  When they're healthy, we're great, but we all know the concerns there.  If KP is out, and Joe doesn't play Al in b2bs, then the front court we saw last night is it and that doesn't make me feel all that good.

Finally, rookie Jordan Walsh.  Showing off his NBA skillset, defense.  7 rebounds and 2 steals in 19 minutes.  I don't even really care that he was 2-5, 0-2 from 3.  His defense was really good (although Fournier burned him at least once on a cut) and that's what i want from him at this point in his career.  Lamar is showing me he is ready and deserves to play that role ahead of Jordan, but that's ok this year.  Jordan Walsh will have a long career ahead of him, as there is for all players who have an irrefutable NBA-desired skillset, and he has one.  He just needs a little patience.  One of the bad things about Payton was that he got a lot of minutes as a rookie and that set his expectations high.  Jordan needs to set his sights more reasonably this year and, from listening to his interviews, he has that in hand.

We need to cut down on our live turnovers.  Not freaking out here, these were 7-20, but that hurt us last night.  We also let them have 33 ftas vs 19 for us.  We had the problem of fouling too much last year too.

We had 3 technical fouls called.  2 were defensive zone calls on Luke and one was some ridiculous "hanging on the rim" call on Queta.  Oh well, it's preseason for the refs too.

One thing I've noticed in both games so far is that the refs are consistently calling 'travel' whenever you made a ball fake and then put it on the floor.  It's like they're not even looking at the player's feet.  If you act like you're going up for the shot you have to shoot or pass.  If you fake and then drive past the defender coming at you they'll call you for traveling.  A stupid freaking call, to say the least, but we've seen is so consistently in the pre-season so far I have to believe it's coming straight from the league office.  I don't know why, like I said I think it's dumb.  I hope they're just trying to "set the tone" now, but will back off during the season.  If they're trying to speed up the game this is definitely not the way to do it.


https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401591878


Bob


.

He might not be as good a shooter as Sam, but he doesn’t need to be. Seen Sam’s touch/shot leave him for many stretches like last 2 games and if Banton can keep playing like this; finishing and burying the mid range and better defense and intangibles, it won’t matter so much the 3 point %, he’ll play plus he can play point.

He might not be as good a shooter as Sam, but he doesn’t need to be. Seen Sam’s touch/shot leave him for many stretches like last 2 games and if Banton can keep playing like this; finishing and burying the mid range and better defense and intangibles, it won’t matter so much the 3 point %, he’ll play plus he can play point.[/quote]


Cow,


It might not matter to you if Banton can shoot 3s, but we know it matters to Joe.  Sam's shot left him but he still ended the season north of 40% which means,  if you believe in the Law of Averages, putting Sam in and telling him to shoot will pay off over time regardless of his currentstruggles. Banton is a career 27.5% 3pt shooter. They are not the same.


Bob

.

bobheckler wrote:He might not be as good a shooter as Sam, but he doesn’t need to be. Seen Sam’s touch/shot leave him for many stretches like last 2 games and if Banton can keep playing like this; finishing and burying the mid range and better defense and intangibles, it won’t matter so much the 3 point %, he’ll play plus he can play point.

Cow,


It might not matter to you if Banton can shoot 3s, but we know it matters to Joe.  Sam's shot left him but he still ended the season north of 40% which means,  if you believe in the Law of Averages, putting Sam in and telling him to shoot will pay off over time regardless of his currentstruggles.  Banton is a career 27.5% 3pt shooter.  They are not the same.


Bob

.[/quote]

Guys that demand/earn alot of playing time can do a lot more than just shoot 3’s. The top 5 players shooting 3’s are not the best players. We have enough guys that can hit 3’s, last year Hauser couldn’t even get playoff minutes because the rest of his game is below average, so even with a thin bench and his numbers Joe didn’t use him.

I wouldn’t sleep on the Heat, every year I think they won’t be there, they’re playing over their head, they can’t keep this up. Then it’s a 7 game series and we’re fighting for our life, one play being the difference and we’re younger and better right or should be? Why are they Ken Norton to our being Ali?

I know I know the Heat didn’t get Lillard, but they still have Jimmy, Bam, Herro, Duncan Robinson, Caleb Martin who killed us, oh they didn’t even have Herro last year vs us. They added Josh Richardson and Thomas Bryant and I love their top pick, the wing with a stocky frame Jamie Jaquez Jr. If Jaquez can get up to speed fast, they may have 2 very good wings as Jaquez looks like he can run has a handle and score in traffic. Love their veteran pick ups in JRich and Bryant. That’s a deep team led by 2 legit all stars in Jimmy and Bam and a 20 ppg scorer in Herro. Now they can go big at times with Bam and Bryant, a big who has a decent strong all around game.

I’m sorry meant to put this under the NBA GM Survey Thread, mistake. If anyone can transfer this post to there….thanks

Well, there was quite a difference between the Heat vs. Celtics and the Heat vs. Denver, which implies to me the Heat were playing out of their brains in each of the prior rounds.  That's all Spoelstra.  Whatever it was, the secret is out and so are they.  

Just like everyone was amazed with the Lakers in the playoffs.  They basically made it through the 2nd round and then no-showed against DEN.  The play-in games and those teams will return to the norm this season and bow out like they almost always have and should because of the simple reason why they are 7-8 seed....They suck.  Think blind squirrel.  This past playoff season was an anomaly.  

Our current Celtic teams over the last 5-6 years have been interesting and championship worthy, but have all lacked that pit in the stomach, gut feeling knock out punch/blow when needed.  Hence all the empty trips to the ECF and Finals.  2008 had that knockout punch.  All the 80's, 50's and 60's teams had it.  With all the changes for this season and possibly going forward with ownership's declaration, we have to ask ourselves have we finally acquired that knockout punch or have put together a team with enough talent that does and will have that knockout punch?  Once we've put that question in our rear view mirror, then we can start to see  adding the championship banners to the rafters.  

Things are looking good toward answering that question!

db

dbrown4 wrote:Well, there was quite a difference between the Heat vs. Celtics and the Heat vs. Denver, which implies to me the Heat were playing out of their brains in each of the prior rounds.  That's all Spoelstra.  Whatever it was, the secret is out and so are they.  

Just like everyone was amazed with the Lakers in the playoffs.  They basically made it through the 2nd round and then no-showed against DEN.  The play-in games and those teams will return to the norm this season and bow out like they almost always have and should because of the simple reason why they are 7-8 seed....They suck.  Think blind squirrel.  This past playoff season was an anomaly.  

Our current Celtic teams over the last 5-6 years have been interesting and championship worthy, but have all lacked that pit in the stomach, gut feeling knock out punch/blow when needed.  Hence all the empty trips to the ECF and Finals.  2008 had that knockout punch.  All the 80's, 50's and 60's teams had it.  With all the changes for this season and possibly going forward with ownership's declaration, we have to ask ourselves have we finally acquired that knockout punch or have put together a team with enough talent that does and will have that knockout punch?  Once we've put that question in our rear view mirror, then we can start to see  adding the championship banners to the rafters.  

Things are looking good toward answering that question!

db

A big difference in that series was the coaching, one was learning on the fly, the other knew how to maximize his attacks and strategies on us. Knowing little things, like best time to use a zone defense and Joe was rigid/too slow on adjustments. You can’t give away a game or 2 or segments of games that lead to a loss in the playoffs.

cowens/oldschool,

To me it's more like the seesaw with coach on one end and players/team on the other.  If you were like the 60's Celtics, its was great coaches/great team/players and you get multiple championships.  But most of the league is an ever-shifting combo of the two covering the gamut on both sides.  We had great players/team and MIA had squat for the most part.  But as you pointed out the canyon between the two coaches was just enough to outweigh our significant talent overload to have MIA win out in 7 games.  

This year we have a little better experienced coach and probably more talent/better team on the floor, especially with P-Squared going apeshit out of the gate at a BAM.  Hence why we are the odds-on faves out of the gate.  But the edge is still wafer-thin.    

MIL's problem this year will be their coach even with the addition of Terry Stotts as assistant coach.  They will be in the same boat we were in last season.  Talent increase or decrease on the court can be argued either way with Lillard+/Holliday, Allen-, but the coach drop off is significant and will prove to be the reason why they don't get passed say the 2nd round.  When you have a more seasoned assistant coach coupled with a new head coach, there will always be a sphincter tightening episode when it matters most where assistant will try to take over and coach will overrule and blow it.  

Stay tuned!!

db