Bradley: Celtics Could 'Make A Lot Of Noise'

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Post by tjmakz Fri Aug 22, 2014 6:58 pm

sinus007 wrote:
tjmakz wrote:
k_j_88 wrote:As many games as the C's lost last season where there was a lead in the 3rd or 4th quarter, turn half of those into wins and the Celtics would be a 6-7th seed.


KJ
KJ,

Only 5 teams in the East had a .500 record in games decided by 10 points or less.
Boston was 9-23. Even if you gave them a .500 record, that would be 16-16.
That would give them 32 wins last year.
That's still well below being a playoff contender.
I don't know if Rondo, Bradley, Green and mostly young guys are going to all of a sudden play significantly better down the stretch of games.
Most young teams don't have good records in games decided by 10 points or less.

TJ,
I think you misread KJ. He, as well as Bobh, were alluding to quite a few games where Celtics lost by a few points and many of those games' losses could be attributed to inexperience of players and coach to keep the lead to the final buzzer.
Unfortunately, I don't have the list but it seems there were enough of those to squeeze into playoffs. Doubt thou about 6-7th seed.

AK

Sinus,

I am sure Boston didn't lost an extra 13 or 14 games in which they gave up the lead in the 4th quarter.
Unless we see statistics on this, it is speculation.
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Post by k_j_88 Fri Aug 22, 2014 7:19 pm

TJ,

How many Celtics games did you watch last year?

From my observations, the Celtics were in a lot of those games and even had the upper hand for stretches but couldn't hold it together.

Also, I am referring to more than just the 10 points or less losses. The C's were on the receiving end of some blowouts after having fairly nice leads. Your statistics don't even begin to explain the entire story.



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Post by tjmakz Fri Aug 22, 2014 8:47 pm

k_j_88 wrote:TJ,

How many Celtics games did you watch last year?

From my observations, the Celtics were in a lot of those games and even had the upper hand for stretches but couldn't hold it together.

Also, I am referring to more than just the 10 points or less losses. The C's were on the receiving end of some blowouts after having fairly nice leads. Your statistics don't even begin to explain the entire story.



KJ

KJ,

I probably watched the majority of 50 or more Celtics games last season.
I'm a single guy, so I have time to watch the NBA.
I haven't seen any other stats to counter my viewpoint.
If someone could find a stat about Boston's record when they had the lead in the 4th quarter, I would be interested in finding out what that was.
I am not one that thinks that a young Celtics will gain 13 games or more from last years team.
If everything goes right for the Celtics and they overachieve, can they sneak into the playoffs? Sure they can.
But you can say that for every team in the East, except for probably Orlando and Philadelphia.
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Post by cowens/oldschool Fri Aug 22, 2014 10:35 pm

I remember there were so many close games and they would lose in the last 2 minutes or 30 seconds or so, then Steve and I would call and be glad that they lost.....as we know the draft is a crapshoot, but overall I'm glad with our 2 picks.

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Post by Sloopjohnb Sat Aug 23, 2014 8:09 am

An inability to make the necessary plays when the game is on the line is the main characteristic of a weak team.

Even a weak team is in many games and seem to come tantalizingly close to winning but in crunch time you pretty much know that their chances are really slim.

Of course, the season being so long, the superior team often plays just hard enough to win. How many times have you seen strong Celtic teams play a mediocre game against a weak opponent but get it together when the time comes?

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Post by bobheckler Sat Aug 23, 2014 1:28 pm

tjmakz wrote:
sinus007 wrote:
tjmakz wrote:
k_j_88 wrote:As many games as the C's lost last season where there was a lead in the 3rd or 4th quarter, turn half of those into wins and the Celtics would be a 6-7th seed.


KJ
KJ,

Only 5 teams in the East had a .500 record in games decided by 10 points or less.
Boston was 9-23. Even if you gave them a .500 record, that would be 16-16.
That would give them 32 wins last year.
That's still well below being a playoff contender.
I don't know if Rondo, Bradley, Green and mostly young guys are going to all of a sudden play significantly better down the stretch of games.
Most young teams don't have good records in games decided by 10 points or less.

TJ,
I think you misread KJ. He, as well as Bobh, were alluding to quite a few games where Celtics lost by a few points and many of those games' losses could be attributed to inexperience of players and coach to keep the lead to the final buzzer.
Unfortunately, I don't have the list but it seems there were enough of those to squeeze into playoffs. Doubt thou about 6-7th seed.

AK

Sinus,

I am sure Boston didn't lost an extra 13 or 14 games in which they gave up the lead in the 4th quarter.
Unless we see statistics on this, it is speculation.



TJ, Sinus, KJ and whomever else might care,

Here are some of the games I've dredged up (I'm a single guy with time on my hands too, TJ).  It's not just games where you lose leads in the 4th, it's also games where you lose leads in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd that kill you.  Instead of putting your sneaker on their throats and sucking the energy out of them you give them hope and they get fired up and that's what happened to us a lot. We got blitzed (or allowed ourselves to get blitzed, depending upon how you want to look at it) a lot during the year.  We'd start off cold and then play catch-up all game, or we'd start off hot and then a nice lead would evaporate quickly.  Our youth and poor execution (as well as our unbalanced roster) were some of the reasons why we couldn't hold them and then, in tight games, we lost on execution, poor decision making and icy shooting (rookie-itis?).

For a lot of our year we saw our inability to close out quarters strong.  We'd have a nice lead and in the last few minutes of a quarter it would get sliced way down.  We also saw, many times, our offense go absolutely stone-cold at critical stretches.

Most of these losses are against really bad teams and were due to offensive meldowns, especially late in quarters.  With the addition of Thornton and Evans (eventually, presumably) as well as Bradley's offensive improvements Danny has taken steps to put some pop back into our offense.

13 winnable games, either because they were against horrible teams or because we had nice leads and lost them or our execution broke down. We won 25 total last year.


1. 12/31/13 vs Atlanta - 92-91 Hawks.  Boston with 18 point lead with 6 minutes left in 2nd, 5 point lead at the half.  5 point lead after 3.  11 point lead 6:31 left in the 4th.  5 point lead with 4:07 left.  Celtics scored 2 points in the last 2:10 and zero in the last 1:36 despite having 5 possessions and 5 fgas.  Crawford jacked up 3 3pt fgas even though we only needed 1 point.  Bad decision making, bad execution.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201312310BOS.html

It's not just the scoring drought in the last few minutes, it was the inability to hold an 18 point lead in the 2nd that killed us.  The last two minutes wouldn't have mattered if we had kept that lead above 10.


2.  12/18/13 vs Detroit - 107-106 Detroit.  42-23, a 19 point Boston lead, after 1.  A 20 point Boston lead at 6:41 in 2nd.  A 16 point Boston lead with 4 left in 2nd.  11 point lead at half.  Another loss of about half our lead in a short time.  We lost our lead early in the 3rd and played catch up for much of the 2nd half.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201312180BOS.html


3.  1/17/14 vs LAL - 107-104 Lakers.  12 point Boston lead with 3:15 left in 2nd.  6 point lead at the half, another lead cut in half in very few minutes.  6 point lead after 3.  8 point Boston lead with 3:12 left in 4th.  1 point LAKER lead with 1:04 left.  That's a 9 point swing in 2:08.  The Celtics did not score any points, not even a free throw, in the last 3:12.  A 4th quarter implosion against a team that was as bad as us.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201401170BOS.html


4.   1/29/14 vs Philly - 95-94 Philly.  After trailing for most of the game, Boston had an 8 point lead with 7:38 left in 4th.  Boston scored 4 points in the last 3:06, going 0-6 with 2 missed ftas by Bayless.  

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201401290BOS.html



5.  2/21/14 vs LAL - 101-92 LAL.  Boston with 14 point lead, and the ball, with 1:14 left in 3rd.  Boston went 0-6 last 1:14.  Boston 8 point lead starting the 4th.  Lost almost half the lead in 1:14.  Tied up with 9:14 left, losing an 8 point lead in 2:46.  

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201402210LAL.html


6.  3/28/14 vs Toronto - 105-103 Toronto.  Boston with a 4 point lead with 3:07 left in 4th.  Tied with :29 left.  Amir Johnson with an offensive rebound and putback for the lead.  Failure to box out.


http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201403280TOR.html


7.  3/30/14 vs Chicago.  107-102 Chicago.  Tied at 1:36 left in 4th.  I know, Chicago is a better, more veteran team but that's what we're talking about.  We're talking about executing in the clutch, which we did not do well last year.  Chicago won this, basically, at the line in the last minute with 8 ftm.  This game was winnable if we had any inside presence or legit center.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201403300BOS.html


8.  4/15/14 vs Detroit.  115-111 Detroit.  Boston with 13 point lead starting 3rd and a 19 point lead with 7:01 left in 3rd.  15 point Boston lead with 1:15 left in 3rd.  10 point Boston lead after 3.  The Celtics scored 5 points in the last 2 minutes of the quarter. Another late quarter offensive implosion.  Tied with 6:45 left in 4th.  That's a 10 point lead lost in less than half a quarter.  Boston with 4 point lead with 2:51 left.  Boston scored zero points, zero in last 2:51.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201404050DET.html



9.  4/14/14 vs Philly.  113-108 Philly.  Boston led by 10 halfway through the 1st, but gave up 20 points in the last half of that quarter.  At this point Philly was in full blown tank mode with Evan Turner gone and Danny Granger waived.  Nobody, except for Milwaukee, should have lost to them at that point.  I doubt that happens again this year.  They are no better and we are.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201404140PHI.html


10.  11/13/13 vs Charlotte.  89-83 Charlotte.  Boston down 2 with :33 left.  An offensive rebound by Al Jefferson and putback makes it a 4 point game.  Another execution breakdown.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201311130BOS.html


11.  11/1/13 vs Milwaukee.  105-98 Milwaukee.  Boston with a 16 point after 1 and a 15 point lead at the half.  Boston with a 21 point lead with 6:05 left in 3rd.  This is against the worst team in the league.  18 point lead with 3 minutes left in third and we end up with only an 11 point lead after 3.  Another late quarter offensive implosion.  Boston with a 12 point lead with 9:32 left in 4th.  Tied at 3:54.  That's a 12 point loss in about 5 1/2 minutes.  Boston scored 5 points in the last 3:54.  

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201311010BOS.html


12.  11/4/13 vs Memphis.  95-88 Memphis.  Boston with a 6 point lead with 7:16 left in 4th.  Boston scores 8 points in last 7:16.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201311040MEM.html



13.  11/30/13 vs Milwaukee.  92-85 Milwaukee.  Only 3 ties and 4 lead changes in this game.  Boston with 11 point lead with 1:49 left in 1st.  9 point lead after 1.  Boston down 6 at the half.  Outscored 28-14 in the 2nd against the worst team in the league all season long. At least, with Philly, they started off stronger than their roster would have suggested and then Sam Hinkie decided that winning was inconsistent with his strategy and gutted the team like a fish.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/pbp/201311300MIL.html




bob




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Post by Sam Sat Aug 23, 2014 7:44 pm

You put a lot of work into this, Bob.  Very well done.  There's absolutely no question that last season was liberally punctuated with lack of staying power by the Celtics, regardless of where, in a given game, the flameout occurred.  I'd hate to count the number of game-on threads on which we tried to find new ways to soften the disappointment of the mounting number of disappearing acts.  And perhaps most disappointing was the fact that they seemed to be trying their hardest and still couldn't go the distance.  I remember thinking that, as disheartening it was for us, it must have been gut-wrenching for the players and Brad.  The rewards were minuscule compared with the disappointments.

Here's hoping that, with at least the same amount of effort this season, the results will be significantly better.

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Post by tjmakz Sat Aug 23, 2014 8:33 pm

Bob,

11/9/13 at Miami.
Boston was down 108-104 with less than 1 minute left and Miami had the ball.
Green hits a miracle 3 in the corner at the buzzer. Boston wins 111-110.

11/23/13 at Atlanta.
Boston outscores Atlanta 30-13 in the 4th quarter. Boston wins 94-87.

12/13/13 against NY.
Boston outscores NY 9-2 in final 4 minutes. Boston wins 90-86.

12/16/13 against Minn.
Boston outscores Minn 11-5 in final 3 minutes. Boston wins 101-97.

2/26/13 against Atlanta.
Boston leads 92-91 with 6:30 left in the game.
Boston outscores Atlanta 23-13 over the final 6:30 to win by 11.

I stopped at 5 examples.
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Post by k_j_88 Sat Aug 23, 2014 9:12 pm

BobH,

Thank you very much for the effort you put in to find those anecdotes of the games.


TJ,

I think you're missing the overall point.

The point is, the Celtics had many, many games with a nice lead that still ended in loses due to the reasons that have been previously cited. This team could have another 15 or so games in the W column with a more balanced roster and more experience.

After picking up Zeller, Turner, and a very nice draft, I think the Celtics will be fielding a noticeably better team this year. Not quite yet a finished product, but perhaps more rounding into form with another year under Stevens' system.




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Post by tjmakz Sat Aug 23, 2014 10:14 pm

k_j_88 wrote:BobH,

Thank you very much for the effort you put in to find those anecdotes of the games.


TJ,

I think you're missing the overall point.

The point is, the Celtics had many, many games with a nice lead that still ended in loses due to the reasons that have been previously cited. This team could have another 15 or so games in the W column with a more balanced roster and more experience.

After picking up Zeller, Turner, and a very nice draft, I think the Celtics will be fielding a noticeably better team this year. Not quite yet a finished product, but perhaps more rounding into form with another year under Stevens' system.




KJ

KJ,

Yes, Boston could have won some more games last year with more experienced players but they just didn't have the talent to be a close to a playoff contender. Marcus Smart will be another young player getting quite a bit of playing time. I went through Boston's schedule, and I expect them to win approximately 32 games. How many games do you think Boston will win next year? ESPN is predicting 28 wins. Bleacher Report is predicting 30. I will stick to 32 wins.

Do you think Boston will be better than Atlanta, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Indiana, Miami, Toronto or Washington?
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Post by Sam Sat Aug 23, 2014 10:23 pm

TJ also deserves credit for doing his homework.

I think that, over the course of the season, in-game Celtics slides were far more numerous than in-game Celtics momentum.

• There were numerous times when I gleefully posted that they had gotten off to a great start which is one excellent formula to win by making the other team play catchup....only to have the Celtics well behind as early as halftime.

• There were many times (as chronicled by Bob) when the Celtics led near the end, but we on the game-on thread wound up lamenting that they couldn't close out the other team.

Yes, there were (thankfully) occasional victorious Celtics comebacks, but they were pretty rare.  It seemed the staying power of the team waned considerably as the season progressed.  I think it's significant that Bob's negative examples had more representation of the second half of the season than TJ's positive examples.  Maybe some of us were just left with a bad taste in our mouths because the losses became more regular in the later stages of the season despite our great hopes when Rondo returned.

I do believe I recall a five game Celtics winning streak when I strongly considered doing my version of the naked stud victory dance in the street.  But I think it was sandwiched between two major losing streaks.  Or perhaps I have that confused with the Red Sox this season.  What a crummy time span in Boston sports.

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Post by Sloopjohnb Sun Aug 24, 2014 7:58 am

That five game win streak was during the first 20 or so games of the season. Jordan Crawford was actually voted player of the week during that streak.

There was consternation among some that the team would make the playoffs in a weak conference.


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Post by bobheckler Sun Aug 24, 2014 12:26 pm

tjmakz wrote:Bob,

11/9/13 at Miami.
Boston was down 108-104 with less than 1 minute left and Miami had the ball.
Green hits a miracle 3 in the corner at the buzzer. Boston wins 111-110.

11/23/13 at Atlanta.
Boston outscores Atlanta 30-13 in the 4th quarter. Boston wins 94-87.

12/13/13 against NY.
Boston outscores NY 9-2 in final 4 minutes. Boston wins 90-86.

12/16/13 against Minn.
Boston outscores Minn 11-5 in final 3 minutes. Boston wins 101-97.

2/26/13 against Atlanta.
Boston leads 92-91 with 6:30 left in the game.
Boston outscores Atlanta 23-13 over the final 6:30 to win by 11.

I stopped at 5 examples.



TJ,


Nice job.  Respecting the effort you put into researching this, let me address them directly and firstly:

1.  The Miami victory was a great upset, no two ways about it.  What made it such a great game is that, other than a brief 10 point Miami lead in the 1st quarter (26-17), which lasted only :18, neither team was able to pull away.  It was a boxing match in a phone booth, with that 10 point lead being the high water mark for either team.  The game had 14 ties and 14 lead changes.  This was a great game highlighting the type of execution the Celtics were capable of, but rarely showed.  The reason why we won is not because Jeff Green hit that buzzer beater, we won because we kept it close and executed.  If we hadn't, Jeff Green's shot would have just been another bucket.  After 4 straight losses to start the season, this was win #3 in a 4 game winning streak.  After beating Orlando 2 days later we were 12 days into the new season and we were 4-4, .500, and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves.  Then we went on a 6 game losing streak.  The next game you list, the Atlanta one, was the win that ended that losing streak.  We ended up Hell Month 7-12, which was actually much better than we thought it would be, with 19 games, 11 of them on the road.

2.  This Atlanta game was another good one, also coming in "Hell Month" and which provided some St. Elmo's Fire to Celtic fans which made us, erroneously as it turned out, believe that maybe last year wouldn't be as bad as we thought.  In this game, we executed again.  The game was tied 11 times and had 8 lead changes.  Atlanta had a 10 point lead with 1:42 left in the 3rd.  Then, Boston won the 4th quarter 30-13.  Atlanta brought its starters back in when the lead was down to 6 and promptly missed 4 straight shots from 3' out.  Then Korver and Horford took turns missing shots from 3pt and from 2' respectively.  That's 0-6 from their starters; 5 from point blank and 1 from the best 3pt shooter in the league.  In the meanwhile, Bass got a dunk and 4 ftm.  Atlanta's 5:09 scoring drought killed them, just as they killed us all season.  If it were to happen again would Horford and Millsap miss 5 2'ers in a matter of minutes?  I doubt it.  Nevertheless, this game and the Miami one gave us hope.

3.  We had a 17 point lead with 7:53 left in the 2nd in the NY game.  It was a 14 point lead with 2:34 left in the 2nd and the half ended with a Boston 6 point lead.  Once again, we lost 8 points off a lead in a very short time.  NY had a 9 point lead with 9 left in the 4th and we battled back to win.  The fact that we lost a 17 point lead and had it turn into a 9 point deficit is precisely the type of example I was trying to provide in my 13 examples.  THIS time we were able to rally back for the win but I believe my point still stands which is "we kept surrendering big leads to not-very-good teams".  This time it didn't cost us.  This time, but all those other times I listed it did.

4.  The biggest lead in the Minny game was 7, and it didn't last long.  Another close game against a team that ended up 40-42.  Ricky Rubio shot 2-12.  In fact, their entire backcourt shot 10-35 (28.6%).  We led for 36 out of a total 48 minutes.  Sully had 24 points on 7-14 and 11 boards and Bradley had 19 on 9-17.  We shot 44%, they shot 41%.  A nice win against a better opponent.

5.  At this point, Atlanta had lost Horford for the year.  That evened things up quite a bit.  Not only were they not playing with a legit center, like us, they they were in a power dive.  They were 16-13 when they lost Horford and then went 10-17 after that, leading up to this game against Boston and went 22-31 for the rest of the post-Horford season.  In short, after Horford went down, they sucked as a team.  In fact, they had an 8 game losing streak from 2/4-2/21, they won a game to end the streak on 2/22 against the NYK and then proceeded to begin another 6 game losing streak, of which their loss to Boston (in Boston) was Loss #2 AND game #2 of a back-to-back against Chicago (which they lost at home).  They were in a death spiral.  They barely held onto the #8 playoff spot at the end and that's only because they started off so hot.  At this point, they were not a good team.  In the Boston game, they came out of the gate hot, ran up a 13 point lead on us,which we were able to cut to 2 after 1 based upon the strength of 1st quarter scoring leader Rajon Rondo with 11 points.  The game was very close, from then on, until the last 4 1/2 minutes or so.  Boston led for 28 minutes.  Bayless had 29 points on 12-21.  Millsap didn't play.  So, in this game, Atlanta was down Horford and Millsap.  We beat a team that lost their starting frontcourt at this point and was not a playoff quality team, not even in the awful east.


The point I was trying to highlight with my examples, TJ, is that there were a lot of games that we lost last year that we should have won.  We should have won them because we were playing generally poor teams AND because we had big leads and lost them.  If you have a 19 point lead, you shouldn't lose that game, not unless you're playing one of the top teams in the league and maybe not even then.  You shouldn't lose games because you forget a fundamental in an ATO situation, like not boxing out Toronto's top offensive rebounder Amir Johnson or Charlotte's Al Jefferson.  Basketball 101 says you have to find their best rebounders and put a body on them, and we didn't, and we lost those two games.  Beating a decrepit Atlanta team in free fall, in my opinion, is not evidence of a W that was a gift, other than that we caught them when they were short-handed.  The NY Knicks went 37-48 last year, just missing out to that same Hawk team that snuck into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth with 38 wins.  We went 2-2 against the Knicks last year.  We split the season series with a team that was within striking distance of a playoff slot.

Wasn't that the whole point behind this, to try and figure out if such is possible for the Celtics this year?  Could we improve enough, from returning players having more experience (both their own as well as within Stevens' system), a more balanced roster and an improving coach, as well as winning some games by just not swooning and giving up large leads, to move to within striking distance of a playoff slot?

If we were to win even half of those 13 games I provided, that's 6-7 more wins.  Even we give up the Miami win (fluke), that's still 5-6 more.  If we win the 32 games you predict based upon our upcoming schedule and can add 5-6 wins that we shouldn't lose because we built up a big lead, that's 37-38 wins.  Striking distance.



bob


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Post by Sam Sun Aug 24, 2014 1:57 pm

I've always been a person who tries to make the very best of Celtics' performances, win or lose, and I've frequently been accused of over-optimism as a result.  And I'm always vastly more elated at heroic Celtics victories than I'm dejected by potential victories that slip away.

Why is it, then, that my overall impression of last season's performance was one of great dejection?  Because it's obvious that the "slipaways" were far more prevalent than the "heroic wins."

NSAR.  No Statistics Are Required.

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Post by dboss Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:17 pm

tjmakz wrote:
k_j_88 wrote:As many games as the C's lost last season where there was a lead in the 3rd or 4th quarter, turn half of those into wins and the Celtics would be a 6-7th seed.


KJ
KJ,

Only 5 teams in the East had a .500 record in games decided by 10 points or less.
Boston was 9-23. Even if you gave them a .500 record, that would be 16-16.
That would give them 32 wins last year.
That's still well below being a playoff contender.
I don't know if Rondo, Bradley, Green and mostly young guys are going to all of a sudden play significantly better down the stretch of games.
Most young teams don't have good records in games decided by 10 points or less.

I am reading through these comments again. It is that time of year were everybody wants to know what this team will do. Perhaps a bigger picture is to look at the number of games that were decided by 5 points or fewer. I recall seeing a post about that recently and it appears there were around 50 games lost by the Celtics last year that fall into that category. Cutting those losses in half as suggested by KJ seems an average expectation.

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Post by dboss Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:23 pm

There is our collective chatter about could have won, should have one last year.

The comments by Sam provide context to this argument. Because it's focus is about the team in every aspect of the game and the style, substance and form that must take place for them to be better.

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Post by Sam Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:34 pm

dboss,

"Context."  One of my favorite words.

Are you married?

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Post by dboss Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:46 pm

One more comment to share at this time.

The thread  shares some of Bradley's thoughts and one of which was about the Defense that their guards can play.  Bradley is excited because both him and Rondo are going into the season healthy and the Celtics drafted a big physical PG for the rotation.

Since good defense really begins at the point of attack, we could see the Celtics develop into a dominant defensive team at the guard position.  That in and of itself will make them a better defensive team.  Less pressure at the rim where we still have our biggest weakness would be welcomed.

Rondo only played 30 games last year.  If he played the other 52 games I would bet that the Celtics would have won 5 more games at least.

If you consider the potential impact of adding Smart and Turner and Thornton to the mix, 5 more wins seems possible.

With Sully and KO ready to make that next step along with the addition of a legit center in Zeller, that has to be worth 5 more wins this year.

Collectively this team could add 15 more wins this year.

I'm optimistic.  The team has depth at the 1-4 positions and have some work to do at the 5.  Overall this team has enough talent to be a good team.

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Post by dboss Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:50 pm

sam wrote:dboss,

"Context."  One of my favorite words.

Are you married?

Sam

Looking at your top 10 list throughout the season could be a significant thread and very challenging.

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Post by tjmakz Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:51 am

Here's the thread about some of our Celtics predictions for this year.
I said Boston would win 32 games.
Cowens said Boston would make the playoffs.
Sam said Boston would go 82-0.
:-)
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Post by kdp59 Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:17 pm

Boy I was w....w...w.....wr......wr.....wro......wron.......wrong!

not only did the Celtics win 5-10 MORe games than i thought they would, the east was worst than I thought it would be also.

so much for that crystal ball thingy I guess.
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Post by beat Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:58 pm

beat wrote:
cowens/oldschool wrote:Sam were pretty deep at every position, there will be times we'll be exploited down low, but we should be able to run teams to death with our talented personnel and depth. Our backcourt is speedy, can't wait to see them create havoc and run, we have runners and athletes at the 1-2-3,  Green, Wallace, Turner and Young can all run. Sully should have a breakout year, throwing his weight around, he can move 4's easy. If Zeller can just hold his own and neutralize, not let opposing 5's run wild, give us 12-13 and 8 boards a game....with this dynamic backcourt, Rondo and AB blowing up and Smart attacking and manically adding his D, we can give teams trouble. This is a playoff team in the East.

Cow

A big if. We have a very tough first 20 games, very tough might even go 5-15 and if we do playoffs are a stretch. Even considering the weak east. That said if we can survive the first 20 games and be at 10-10, I like our chances to grab a 7th or 8th spot.

Bring on the camp

beat


Cow said we were a playoff team

And I called for the 7th or 8th seed albeit also saying we needed to go 10-10 early to do it.

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Post by Sam Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:15 pm

Funny how some people can make contrary predictions.  But usually the earlier prediction is less likely to be correct than the more recent prediction (when everything is taking shape).  How can a person be more wrong as the moment of truth arrives?

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Post by dboss Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:33 pm

Kj suggested that Boston could win 15 more games.

He was right on the money

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Post by cowens/oldschool Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:47 pm

I actually thought we would/could have been that swarming deep team running the floor, so initially was optimistic that we would be a stronger better team. Was thinking of the younger version of Rondo and with 2 young defensive predators, AB and Smart next to him. Thought Sully would have a breakout year, was hoping he would be a double-double machine and if Jeff Green could improve a little and with Rondo helping him get some easier looks, plus with Evan Turner spelling Green and adding depth to the backcourt, I liked this team on paper.

Then the season started and we had a gaping hole at center defensively, which we still obviously do. Rondo while piling up assists, couldn't really lead a running team, or were too many other weaknesses on team that his production with his warts obviously couldn't lead the team in a positive enough direction....that Danny felt it was better to part with him. Obviously Danny felt the same way about Green talented, but too many issues to be a legit piece going forward.

So now here we are in the playoffs with a flawed team and a bunch of castaways all hustling and finding their niche collectively at some level. I would have prefered a 4% chance at a top 3 pick and will be pissed if Heat or Pacers get that lucky opportunity and at #16 instead of even #10 or #11, we easily could miss out on a talent like Myles Turner, a possible 7 foot stretch 4 with a legit stroke and shot blocking ability that could be perfect for Stevens system. I would have prefered a chance/opportunity to get the best pieces possible, as to me a team this weak and this weak in the middle is not representative of what this franchise is about.

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