Post Game - Celtics vs. Denver Nuggets - Thursday, March 07 (L)

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401585534

Just a big disappointment, that GSW win was a bad omen for this team, i just do not know where they are really headed right now, i could not understand the entire game plan last night, ball movement was terrible, Tatum played like he was 19 again, no smarts, just a total disappointment, maybe it is a good thing, get it out of their system, but right now, no one believes this team is heading in the right direction, time to look in the mirror. Guys, no one is handing you anything, no coasting or you will be shocked, did we peak too soon, or, as I really feel, does this team have another level or two to reach and need to smarten up to do it?

Believe this or not, I'm not really concerned.  Not really at all.  Here's the proof.  Was this a regular season opportunity blown to smithereens to push all the critics and nitpickers back to and through the Great Wall of China?  Yes it was.  Did JT cower again when the spotlight was shining brightly upon him to lead us to victory?  Absolutely.  But if I'm seeing what I saw, this game was close throughout, no one running away with the lead, we charged hard in the 4th on the road in Mile-High atmosphere, JB had a helluva game.  And we came up just short of beating the reigning champs during the regular season.

If this is indeed the true Clash Of The Titans Finals (that shoulda/coulda/woulda happened last year) that everyone wants to see for the next 5-7 years, we're in a really good position.  If this comes to pass this year, we won't have to win in DEN to claim the Title, but DEN does have to win at least one in BOS if they want to repeat.  I'm 100% positive (ala dboss's paycheck) that if we were to lose one game at home against DEN, we can win one in DEN given last night's "sub-par" performance against the defending champs.  And the only game they have to hang their hats on was escaping with a 2-point victory in BOS?!  I say, "Come on, man!!

One last thing.  Sorry for the very small sample space of n=1 and its placement in the annuls of ancient NBA history, but let's go back to 1984.  There were two teams and two teams only the NBA World wanted to see in the Finals forever if it could be made possible.  Simply because they were the two best teams in the league, even for the decade. During the regular season, the Boston Celtics played @ home vs. the Los Angeles Lakers on February 8th.  We lost that game 111-109.  A couple of weeks later on February 24th, we trekked out to LA for the return game, Game 5 of a 6-game road trip to be exact.  We lost that game 116-108.

Do I need to tell the rest of the story?  We had home court as well.

Chillax faithful ones and all.  Let the media have their days.  (And they are going to take ALL of them, believe me.  I'd be surprised if there even will be a Celtics team remaining after what drivel is coming down the media chute through this weekend.)  As a matter of fact, go ahead and lose Saturday in PHX as well, just like JC did by waiting 4 days before going back to Bethany to pay his respects to his good buddy Lazarus, so that there was absolutely positively no doubt in and to the world Lazarus was dead beyond all comprehension to all those concerned.  Hopefully, you know the rest of that story.  That's the picture about to be painted from the media for the Boston Celtics that's coming.  Something like that. Oh, I can match and exceed the media drama any time, any place.  

I know.  n=1.  But I like my and love our odds.  Remember all this come June.    

Amen!  Hallelujah!

Love Always,

db

The rap on Jayson Tatum is that he disappears in the playoffs.  Last night was a possible preview of the NBA Finals and he disappeared.  NOT Mamba Mentality.

Jaylen came to play though.  He carried us for most of it.

Jokic showing why he's the best player in the world.  Porzingis couldn't match up despite having a few inches on him.  Joker with 11 assists and only 1 turnover.  Derrick with 6 and 1, but Tatum with 8 and 5 turnovers.

After the last two game there is even less doubt in my mind now regarding the importance of securing the #1 seed in the NBA playoffs and home court advantage all the way through it.  We've lost to reigning Champion Denver both times (could someone PLEASE knock them off for us!?), OKC in OKC and Minny in Minny.


Bob


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I understand you may play bad, but Tatum showed no fight pretty much. Should Tatum be MVP? No way based on this performance, he has the best no 2 player to help him in Jaylen. If you switched out Tatum for Giannis or Joker, how much better would this team be? I thought Tatum had out grown his wild inconsistency, this proves he has not. He looked like an MVP in the first half against Cavs, then couldn’t even hit a simple lay up in the 2nd half and went 1-8 in a terrible collapse. Maddening. Last night he missed the simplest wide open lay up, and I was like okay seen this before. Guess we have seen this before, was praying he had outgrown this; and wanted to see an angry Tatum, playing with a Mamba mentality, like he had something to prove.

Wyc said he broke up the team because they were too inconsistent, well Tatum still is as these last 6 quarters have proved. Brad has done a masterful job getting the best pieces around Tatum and he has the best supporting cast around him of any MVP candidate. Having said all that, what a heroic effort by Jaylen, didn’t have his normal explosive lift; but still gave it everything he had both ends, shutting down Murray and carrying us on his back the whole game. Jaylen came to play and fought as hard as he could with a compromised back and Tatum never got going, with stupid turnovers and no fire the whole game.

Hi,
Yes, it was a disappointment.
You can't win, especially against DEN, if you're shooting 64% from FT and 29% from 3pt. Also, your defense can't be sporadic.
I couldn't understand why they allowed KP to be eaten alive by Joker over and over again. No help. And Al and Tillman, who faired much better against him played only 19 and 13 minutes, respectively.
Obviously, JT's and DW's "quietness" didn't help either.
I hope the slump of the last 2 games will end soon.

AK

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
Yes, it was a disappointment.
You can't win, especially against DEN, if you're shooting 64% from FT and 29% from 3pt. Also, your defense can't be sporadic.
I couldn't understand why they allowed KP to be eaten alive by Joker over and over again. No help. And Al and Tillman, who faired much better against him played only 19 and 13 minutes, respectively.
Obviously, JT's and DW's "quietness" didn't help either.
I hope the slump of the last 2 games will end soon.

AK

He truly is a unique player, you double him he picks you apart with his passing. No one in the league has figured out how to stop him. We needed Zinger on the floor for his offense.

So they were analyzing all these different scenarios and Steven A just said if Jason Tatum shows up, Celtics are still his pick.

Just like we tried to not get too high after the win against the Warriors, can't get too down about this loss. JT had a wide open three to give us the lead with like 45 seconds left. We did not play well. Once again too many turnovers, too many missed open three and also too many missed assignments on defense.

I hate to get on Jaylen because he was fantastic for the most part, but 7 missed fts? That continues to be the one part of his game that is still lacking. If he makes 4 of those, it could very well be a celtics win.

The biggest problem I had with JT was his passes. He had 5 turnovers, and most were on soft lazy passes. He has to do better than that. I do not have a problem with him facilitating and rebounding, as long as he is making the right play.

Jokic is fantastic. He makes great decisions and is just an absolute beast to guard. If this is the finals matchup we have to figure out a better way to defend him. I think Tillman may have the best chance one on one. Tillman is strong and moves his feet well. However, having Tillman out there hurts us some on the other end.

Zinger played hard. He hit some key shots, but Jokic just over powers him. We need the Zinger on the floor. Maybe he guards Gordon or we double Jokic with someone when the Zinger guards him.

In addition to Jokic, Murray is an excellent player. He should have been an all star. Gordon and Porter give Denver alot of size at the 3 and 4 that is hard to match.

I think we can beat them in a 7 game series, but we have to be at the top of our game to do it, and last night we were not.

This was the first set of B2B losses since last Nov 6th and 8th. That is a 4 month stretch!

JT never was able to establish any rhythm.  At times he just seemed lackadaisical.  The Celtics came back and still had a great opportunity to nail this win down but even a wide open 3 from the right corner by JT did not find the mark.  He had enough time to look at the laces.  Even great players can lose confidence in their shot.

Overall, their bench outscored our bench 28-10.   That's a plus 18 points for them.  Our starters outscored their starters 99-87.

As I have mentioned before, the 2 big question marks for me centers around our rotation and the availability of KP.  

CJ did not play his rotation guys a lot of minutes.  The question is why?  Our 2 shooters off the bench average 20 MPG each but last night they only played.  Last night only 11 minutes for PP and Sam had 10 minutes.  Was their lack of playing time related to their defense?  PP was an exploitable option for Denver to attack but what about Sam? I thought he played well and shot 2-3 from deep.

Overall, this is not the end of the world.  This team has played excellent basketball all year.  

Extended road trips demand utilization of rotation guys.  I will leave it at that.

It's on to Phoenix.

Ball was not popping, very stagnant offense, JB, JT, KP, Holiday did not shoot well, but, was he in the spots where he likes the ball. White was 3-8, we need more output from our elite backcourt. I just wonder what was going through Tatum's head all night. It was the lousiest game I have seen from him in a while. Even Al was more active than JT. He has got to get it through his head that he is not going to get those fouls when he flail's his arms and complains. Grow up JT, this is the real world you ought to know by now that Tony Brothers will give you nothing, he dislikes Boston, period. So, do it in other ways. All those turnovers last night were the killers, they let Murray feel on top of the world, Got to give him credit, he thrives on this kind of a game. Can we put this behind us? I hope so, Suns are waiting to kick your rear

Look we all know no player is perfect, but I used to love seeing Bird or Pierce after an off game, especially in a big game. They would respond and take is personal. Jayson was such a dud and it is concerning when a player at the level we think he is at, just disappears and looks so below average in a game of such magnitude. Jaylen was attacking both ends with a slight injury that affected him and he still willed himself to respond and keep us in the game. It was a heroic effort and ofcourse I wish he could have hit his FT’s; but I can’t get down on him, because he was such a workhorse and if only Jayson played with half that intensity.

Did you read Barkley’s comments after the game. He suggests that KP might be the one to come off the bench. Problem with that theory is, here we go again, wearing Al out before the playoffs. Why do you think we saw Tillman so early the other night, KP was struggling being pushed around. He is a finesse player, not capable of being a bull out there. Jayson>?? I frankly think he just I looked tired, aka, last year. He is catching a lot of flak for these last two games, there has to be more to the story here. And, someone else needs to be taking late game shots, mix it up, keep them guessing so that they just do not double, triple team Tatum and it is a shot of failure. We can bring up Pierce, Allen, jones, Havlicek all we want, but this is who he is and if he is going to be the face of this team, we need someone else out there that no one would think would be taking the shot to take it. I am not down on this kid, he has been playing great for nine tenths of the year, rebounding, setting up other players, they say they do not mind sacrificing? Well, this might be the ultimate sacrifice. Change it up Joe, talk to your boss, he was a master at it

I just looked at the standings this morning.  Despite our twin losses to Cleveland and Denver, and despite OKC beating Portland and Miami, we are both 8-2 in our last 10 games and 8-2 is the best record in the league for the past 10 (Orlando has also gone 8-2 in the last 10, so they've moved up in the East).

This means that, despite my moanings, we haven't lost any ground to any team since we beat Miami in Miami on February 11th, 10 games ago.  We ballooned up a bit with our 11 game win streak, which gave us a false sense of invulnerability, but we have reverted to the same lead we had a month ago.  Up 5 in the loss column to OKC and just shy of an entire month closer to the clock running out on the regular season and the possibility of them catching us.


Bob


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[quote="bobheckler"]I just looked at the standings this morning.  Despite our twin losses to Cleveland and Denver, and despite OKC beating Portland and Miami, we are both 8-2 in our last 10 games and 8-2 is the best record in the league for the past 10 (Orlando has also gone 8-2 in the last 10, so they've moved up in the East).

This means that, despite my moanings, we haven't lost any ground to any team since we beat Miami in Miami on February 11th, 10 games ago.  We ballooned up a bit with our 11 game win streak, which gave us a false sense of invulnerability, but we have reverted to the same lead we had a month ago.  Up 5 in the loss column to OKC and just shy of an entire month closer to the clock running out on the regular season and the possibility of them catching us.


Bob


.[/quot


Thats all fine and dandy Bob, but this team and its best player is being exposed as a player who is not clutch. If we can win every game by a comfortable margin great, more power to us. In a close back and forth end game giving the ball to Tatum for his weak leaning back fade aways is not working.

cowens/oldschool wrote:

bobheckler wrote:I just looked at the standings this morning.  Despite our twin losses to Cleveland and Denver, and despite OKC beating Portland and Miami, we are both 8-2 in our last 10 games and 8-2 is the best record in the league for the past 10 (Orlando has also gone 8-2 in the last 10, so they've moved up in the East).

This means that, despite my moanings, we haven't lost any ground to any team since we beat Miami in Miami on February 11th, 10 games ago.  We ballooned up a bit with our 11 game win streak, which gave us a false sense of invulnerability, but we have reverted to the same lead we had a month ago.  Up 5 in the loss column to OKC and just shy of an entire month closer to the clock running out on the regular season and the possibility of them catching us.


Bob


.[/quot


Thats all fine and dandy Bob, but this team and its best player is being exposed as a player who is not clutch. If we can win every game by a comfortable margin great, more power to us. In a close back and forth end game giving the ball to Tatum for his weak leaning back fade aways is not working.

Cowens

I have to agree.

I don't have any problem going through JT in the clutch or on a final possession, but he has to take a better shot than those fade aways or make a pass to someone that has a good look.

I think right now this is our weakness. We must find a way to execute better in the clutch.

Perhaps part of the solution is changing the obvious and trusting others like Brown and Holiday more often in the clutch. Do that a couple of extra times and you keep defenses guessing. The entire starting 5 shoot at a high enough percentage to run away from what other teams have come to expect and prepare for. The result may be better looks for Tatum in close-game shots.

Then again, we all know the stories and statistics in these situations, such as...

Michael Jordan missed would-be game winners 26 times.

Tatum still has some room to run to catch up with those failure numbers. But consider what happens when he succeeds.