Post-Game Thread, Heat - Away

by **bobheckler** Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:43 am

I love the way this team bounces back from adversity. They had a prolonged slump earlier in the year but otherwise they don't seem to lose more than two in a row, if that. They are 8-5 in the 2nd game of a back-to-back this year. That's either bounce back or, even better, back-to-back wins on back-to-back games. That's building a winning culture. You lose, you suffer short-term memory loss and then you go out and prove it was a mistake.

They were without Dragic and Celtic-killer Udonis Haslem. So what? We were without Wade-warrior Avery Bradley, and we needed one of those last night.

1. We saw a glimpse of the old DWade last night. The player who could get to his spot and had ice water in his veins. 34 points on 13-23, and a lot of them were not easy. He cross-body checked IT that was pure old-school. He went for the ball, technically, but he made damn sure he was going to get a ton of body too. Gotta hand it to him, he really stepped up when

2. Hassan Whiteside showed why he has been struggling to stay on an NBA team despite an abundance of talent. He cheapshotted Kelly on a blindside, two-hand shiver from behind and was rewarded with a Flagrant 2 ejection for it. Had to be one of the easiest calls made by the NBA review department all year. You see him get a little chippy at the free throw line as he slaps at the arm Kelly put on him. Another talented bone-head.

Here's what DWade had to say about it after the game:

Post-Game Thread, Heat - Away B_tHytNUsAAafC_

Post-Game Thread, Heat - Away B_tHytNUsAAafC_

Some people have oohed and ahhed about Whiteside and "how come we didn't grab him?" etc. Well, this is the 2nd time he has been ejected in a week. The first time was vs Alex Len of Phoenix on 3/2/15. Sure, Len threw him down, but it was after Whiteside's elbow came down into Len's face. And then Whiteside lost it.

Talent? Yep, but could you imagine a personality like that on the Celtics? He's a gun permit away from being Sebastian Telfair.

3. At this point I presume James Young has found his favorite restaurant in Portland, because that's where he should spend the rest of the season learning the fundamental principles of defense, improving his ballhandling and dribbling, how to play the pro PnR and how to shoot off the dribble. I think the Orlando game was his Wally Pipp moment. Despite Gigi playing the night before in the 2nd half of the Orlando game, Young was not even invited to pull off the warmups off his 19 year old legs in the 2nd game of a back-to-back. Not surprising, really, Gigi's game is just so much more advanced than Young's. I haven't seen Gigi dribble much but other than that he already has all the things I listed Young needs to work on in Maine. In his previous 10 games, Young averaged 3.4ppg on 28.6% shooting in 12.4mpg but you have to go back to 3/3, the blow out by Cleveland, to where he scored more than 3 points. He scored 9 points in garbage time against Cleveland. So what? Gigi, scored 7 in that same blow out. That's what happen in blow outs. Players who can't get on the floor run up their averages. On the other hand, in the past two games that Gigi has played non-garbage time minutes in, he has averaged 11.5ppg on 71.4% shooting, 2 rebounds and a block in 15.5mpg. He played 21 last night. 2 of his 6 buckets were at the rim. Does he have Young's upside? Probably not, but if the elevator doesn't go all the way to the top then what difference does it make and I have not seen any evidence that Young's elevator has ascended with all the minutes he has been given over the past few weeks. A one-trick pony, the face-up 3ptr, and that isn't enough. On defense, I'm reserving judgement on Gigi's man-to-man defense. It seems like he has at least one mental fart/game. It seems like it is because he still hasn't grasped the fact that he isn't the fastest thing on two legs. He has to learn to play defense like the way Bird and Chris Ford did. Back off enough so they can't blow past you but not so far that you can't take a step forward and still harrass the shot. As far as help defense goes, though, he looks pretty good. We saw evidence of that in Orlando and last night he earned two jump balls from helping out on defensive doubles. He drew a charge, so he's not allergic to contact or to moving his feet, he just isn't always ready to do so effectively. At the half he had 9 points in 11 minutes. He was the Celtic leading scorer until the 4th quarter and IT went off and Bass got a few. Gigi wants to play ball.

4. When Jerebko arrived I read reviews about how he was a tough, physical defender. I also read reviews where it was claimed he wasn't. At this point I think I can clearly come down on the side of the former opinion. He sticks his nose in. He drives to the lane when he see an opening. He ran the floor for a soft finger roll from 12-14' out you don't usually see coming from a big. He's just a solid, solid player. In some ways he reminds me a bit of Bass. I hope Danny doesn't see it, because then one of them would be gone. He does nothing amazing, but he gets his hands on a lot of 50/50 balls and caroms, defends well and is opportunistic on offense. He also probably sets more picks for IT than anybody else and was the first to learn that following IT to the rim after setting that pick and freeing IT up to rocket to the rim was good, good basketball.

Gigi AND Jerebko for 34 year old partial-year rental Tayshaun Prince? I like Prince, I always have, but are you kidding me!? Danny picked SVG's pocket. I don't know what is going to happen in the off-season but BOTH of those guys elevate our bench, as does IT. Do we need to upgrade our starters? Yep, Danny needs to swing for the fences and hope he can get a lot of bat on the ball, to use a cross-sports metaphor, but he has done an amazing job of upgrading our bench on the fly this year. When you think of the deal as Jeff Green-for-Prince, it doesn't look so good but when you think of it as Gigi and Jerebko for Green it looks a lot better, doesn't it? That's the thing about Trader Danny. He just keeps rolling the deal forward until he gets who/what he wants. That makes it hard for us to play armchair GM and judge any deal he makes on its initial face value when it happens because another one that involves the players he just got may already be in the works. Can anybody think of another GM like him?

5. Kelly looked a little tentative out there, still. He also looked a lot more effective and, if you'll notice, he was in there during crunch time and not Zeller. Kelly was 4-9 for 10 points, not bad not great, but only 1-4 from 3 (also known as 3-5 from 2. C'mon Brad! Do the math!). His biggest contribution to the game, of course, was his ability to get under the skin of Hassan Whiteside. Ok, he also sets a lot of picks for IT too. Working his way back into it.

6. Wallace has gotten a few minutes lately. His offense is just embarrassing, I cannot think of any other way of saying it, but his defense is still quite good. He had a great block last night on Tyler Johnson's layup. He's a glue guy now. I appreciate and respect how he has handled his demotion.

7. Bass is playing his B-ass off right now. On the 2nd night of a back-to-back and he scored 14 points on 7-14 and grabbed 9 rebounds, 6 of them offensive. 6!! Be still, my beating heart. I love this man, I truly do. Want to hear a shocker? This is the 2nd straight game he has had with 4 assists and last night he was tied with Isaiah for lead assister with 4 again. Thomas also had 3 TOs to go with his 4 assists. "No Pass Bass" only had 1 TO. No Pass No More. He's like fine wine, he's getting better with age.

8. We had 42 points in the paint vs 24 for them. How much of that do you think is Bass' 6 offensive rebounds. We also had 14 fast break points vs 6 for them. 87 fgas isn't a lot, but it we throttled them by only letting them have 69 fgas. After a seriously rocky start to the season we almost consistently have fewer TOs than our opponents and that included last night (9 vs 13).

9. Smart has been getting a lot of respect from the refs in this, his rookie year. Not last night. A couple of rookie fouls were blown on him. In fact, the reffing last night sucked. Numerous bad calls, numerous, and I'm saying this after a Celtic victory so it isn't just sour grapes.

10. Mario Chalmers is a little bitch. He likes to talk smack but is mediocre, at best. He woofed at Evan Turner, Turner spoke back and then HENRY Walker shoved Turner, who foolishly shoved back and they both got ejected. If Celtic draftee William (Bill) Henry Walker thought that changing his name to HENRY Walker would make people forget his reputation as a bone-head this play thwarted that effort. Once a bone-head, always a bone-head. That's the biggest problem Spoelstra and DWade have with Bosh out. They have too many stupid players on their team.

11. Crowder did a good job of containing Luol Deng last night. You take a 2x all-star out of his game and you've done your job. Deng hit a few tough shots but was otherwise silent last night.

12. Beasley with a good effort off the bench. A #2 pick that is becoming the poster boy for 10-day contracts that is having trouble sticking in the league. Could you imagine tanking a whole season for him? That'd make me a gun permit away from Sebastian Telfair.

A weakened, injury-plagued Miami Heat team lost. That's not the story here. The story is that we bounced back from a should-not-have-happened loss in Orlando. A side-story is that we are now 2 games out of the playoffs. Thanks to Washington, who obliterated Charlotte last night, there is a tie between Indy and Charlotte for the #7/8 spots. Tonight, Orlando visits Indy. Let's hope they play tonight like they did against us. Sacto visits Charlotte on Wednesday, Miami hosts Brooklyn while we host Memphis. Later in the week the favor gets returned with the surprisingly tough Bucks at Indy, Chicago at Charlotte, Miami at Toronto while we host Orlando. After Orlando, though, we do a back-to-back vs Indy away. We need to beat Orlando and then go 9-5 on the 2nd night of back-to-backers.

bob

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by **kdp59** Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:52 am

They were playing without Bosh (Haslem is like Wallace, OLD).

we were playing without Sully and Bradley.

I call that even as for injury depleted.

we beat their thug ass!

Period.

by **mrkleen09** Tue Mar 10, 2015 12:41 pm

Great game....loved it.

Gigi was solid as was, wait for it - Kelly. Jonas and Crowder continue to do all the small things, and Thomas is an absolute monster.

by **sinus007** Tue Mar 10, 2015 1:44 pm

Bobh,
Thanks for your summary, great as usual.
One thing I'd like to add in re: DWade - yes, he showed his older self. Including his D (as in dirty) side. I don't know if you noticed but he managed to shove Zeller into the stanchion. No one noticed just Scal was wondering how such a big guy ended up there.
As for the game, I was glad to see IT's got back to penetration instead of dribbling everybody, self including, into a coma.
Unfortunately, AB was out last night - I'd love to see him defending DWade.

AK

by **beat** Tue Mar 10, 2015 1:50 pm

Wade needs to become a hood ornament ...........or at least meet one

beat

by **Sam** Tue Mar 10, 2015 3:56 pm

There's always something fermenting with this team-in-flux. Lately, one of the developments has involved Isaiah's gradual modification of his game to provide a better fit with the Celtics' m.o. For a while, it seemed that the only motion while Isaiah was on the floor was Isaiah's incessant dribbling. It often seemed that his teammates found it natural to watch him do his stuff while they stood around and waited for opportunities created by the outfall from Isaiah's efforts.

At the same time, opponents began concentrating on slowing Isaiah down. They put taller defenders on him and converged on him when he drove. The result was that he was taken out of his usual game. He had outside shots blocked. His penetration game suffered.

I believe he's now realizing that (1) sharing the ball with opportunistic teammates keeps opponents from focusing so closely on him and (2) receiving teammates' passes from a variety of angles is much more effective than his own excessive dribbling when it comes to opening opportunities for him (both perimeter and in penetration). Notice how many times Isaiah passes off and receives an instantaneous return pass so that all his offensive options are available as often as possible.

I expect Isaiah's game will never lose an element of outlandishness. Some of his threes seem insane until they go through the hoop. His relentlessness in going to the hoop produces huge dividends for the Celtics. But I've been worrying for some time about the possibility of injury as Isaiah keeps flinging himself at the hoop. (I call it the "Rondo Syndrome.") I was beginning to believe that Isaiah had found the secret to falling without injury, but Dwayne Wade set me straight on that.

I've been saying for at least a week that I consider the hallmark of this team to be opportunism. Actually that's more true of the bench than the starters. However, I believe the bench's opportunism level is lower without Crowder, and there seems to be little-to-no commensurate gain in opportunism for the starters just because Crowder is a temporary starter. One reason is that Jae hardly touches the ball when with the starters. I'm talking as few as three touches over the 12 minutes of a quarter.

I don't want to beat a dead horse, and the return of Bradley will probably make this a non-issue. But, should the starters become short-handed again, I would hope the idea of starting GiGi rather than Crowder might start to gain some momentum in Brad's mind. The shooting that seems to come so naturally to Datome is really needed by the starters, and Crowder's shooting seems more forced (and less accurate) as a starter. And, for some reason, the second unit seems to provide Jae with more ways to utilize his talents at a high comfort level.

It seems that Brad has received BobH's and my telepathic messages to cut down on Young's time. His minutes can't get smaller than the zero last night. I'm satisfied that Datome's emergence has provided Brad with a better alternate than Young at Crowder's position of SF. Please, guys, give Young some run in the DL. As it is, James is simply resurrecting bad habits and learning some new ones. It could very well be that James will be a bigger part of the Celtics' long-term future than GiGi; but, at present, GiGi is very intriguing to say the least. While James has a nice stroke, GiGi has a nice stroke and a more complete offensive game. Datome's not a defensive expert, but I believe he has an edge on James in that department as well. Besides, when Datome's interviewed after the game, I feel like I'm in Venice.

They're still fun, and perhaps the best compliment I can give this team is that they're definitely worthy of being called "Celtics."

Go Celtics!

Sam