Post-Game Thread, Heat - Home

[bobheckler]

Well, wasn't that ugly?

There was just SO much to dislike about this game.

The officiating was horrible.  TONS of makeup calls, tons.  The reason why you have a makeup call is because you realize you blew a previous call.  So, that makes 2 bad calls in one.  They were ridiculously inconsistent.  They called a foul on Pressey underneath for hooking his arm UNDER Napier's but then didn't call the same one on Chalmers when he did it to Gigi.  They call a T on Bass for slapping at a ball after a whistle was blown, as if you're not allowed to prevent a continuation.  They'd drive and get calls with contact on penetration but we'd get hammered and no joy.  Chalmers was pushing off all night, no calls but Pressey couldn't go near anybody.  Haslem shoves Kelly away, in clear sight at the top of the key, and no call.  If I didn't know better, I might say the refs were aware of Heat's injury situation and called the game to give them a chance.

Having said all this, we still got 37ftas and only sank 25 for 68%.  Who is to blame for that?  Not the zebras.  We've seen this team-wide free throw swoon before.  It makes me wonder about the mental toughness of the players.

1.  This is one of the first games this year where I honestly thought Brad was clearly outcoached.  This is the first game that I've seen this year (admittedly I was gone for a lot of it but I haven't missed one game since I've been back) where he and his troops looked unprepared.  Not flat, not un-energetic but looking like they were playing against a different roster than the one in the building that night.  Spoelstra had his undermanned team ready to go, with a game plan to offset their injuries and lack of bigs and Brad didn't.  We were not focused in the 1st half.  We didn't take advantage of our size.  Before the game he was asked about how much he was planning to play Thomas.  He said "he'll get minutes but he has to produce or he'll sit".  Well, you didn't sit him, Brad, and it cost us.  Miami had no bigs with Bosh and Anderson out, their "center" was 6'8" Udonis Haslem, and Brad's defense was sagging into the paint giving up wide-open 3s to a team that had little choice but to bomb away from the outside.  In other words, he played the same defense against a team with no bigs that he would have played against a team with bigs, and it cost us.

2.  Thomas stunk the place up.  I mean, he really, really stunk it up.  He was 2-7 for 4 points and those points were all layups.  He couldn't throw the ball in the harbor from outside.  0-3 from 3 and none were even close.  0-3 from the line.  3 TOs and zero assists.  And Brad left him in.  I'll give him credit for guts, he took a charge and landed on his back and clearly showed pain by grabbing it and wincing, but he was not playing well.  He gave up at least 2 corner 3s because he was sagging instead of staying with his man when Miami was not a threat inside last night.  He was 0-3 from the line.  He was 0-2 on a foul call and then was sent to the line to shoot the free throw on Walker's T that was a make up call on the ridiculous Bass T and missed it badly.  So, it wasn't that his legs weren't there, you don't need your legs for free throws.  And yet, Brad left him in for 20 minutes.  

3.  Jae Crowder had a truly lousy first half, but redeemed himself in the 2nd.  In the first half his head, and everybody else's, was somewhere else.  He inbounded the balls practically into a Heat hands under our basket.  Mind completely disengaged.  He was guilty like everybody of sagging off his men and giving up corner 3s.  4 points on 1-4 and 2 TOs at the half.  In the 2nd half though he showed signs of life.  After 3 he had 13 points on 3-7 and 5 rebounds.  He was 5-7 from the line in the 3rd, putting great pressure on the Miami's defense by putting them in the penalty.  In the 4th quarter he was 1-2 from the line and ended up with Celtic high 16 points on 4-10.  Unfortunately, he missed 2 key buckets late.  With 2:44 left Brad called an excellent ATO which had Crowder coming past a double staggered screen on top and got the inbounds pass under the basket.  He just blew the bunny.  He got his own rebound and got it to Smart, who missed a floater in the paint, but Jae should have sunk it.  That would have cut it to 88-83.  At 1:15 left Crowder took, and missed, a 25' 3ptr that wasn't even remotely close.  For get about hitting the 25'er, you had to be HENRY Walker to make that shot last night, it wasn't even close and not a good shot, not by Crowder and not what we needed Brad to call.  Still, overall, Crowder's 2nd half made this game competitive.  His 8-11 from the line was a stark contrast to the rest of the team's free throw shooting and resulted from contact as he attacked.  His missing those shots are like Billy Buck getting remembered for letting the ball go between his legs.  You should be remembered for more than just one play, unless you rarely play at all.

4.  Good things started to happen when Brad finally figured out that Thomas was killing us and sat him in favor of Phil Pressey.  Mighty Mouse #2 did what he does.  He rocketed down the lane, he got up under people on defense, he ran the offense.  11 points on 4-6, NO 3pt attempts (good boy, Phil!), 6 assists and only 2 TOs.  3-4 from the line, his mind stayed focused at the line too.  He even had 5 rebounds, one of them offensive.  We were winning and Pressey had been playing well the previous week or two Brad, you said so yourself in post-game interviews, what was the rush to bring IT back so much so fast?

5.  When we were struggling, which was for most of the game, Gigi came in and played well.  He went 2-2 from 3 and grabbed 2 rebounds.  When we made our run to cut the lead down to a few possessions he was right there in the middle of it.  He worked with Pressey to play good PnR defense on Dragic, something we didn't see much of all night and made Dragic turn back instead of around the corner and Dragic picked up his dribble and then Phil was all over him like a bird on a June bug.  He was a spark last night and Brad rewarded him with significant minutes during a key stretch.  Of course, Gigi's play is part of the reason why it was a 'key stretch'.  Him and Crowder and Pressey picked it up.

6.  Dragic had 17 points at the half.  That's ridiculous.  Yeah, he's really really good, but 17?  They high PnR'd us to death, with his killer cross-over producing results again and again and again.  NOBODY helped out on his penetrations in that disasterous first half.  They'd set a pick for him out at 30' and that would leave the gut wide open.  Here's an idea, Brad, how about telling your players that they don't need to go out to 30' with their man just because he's out there?

7.  HENRY "don't call me Bill" Walker had 12 points on 4-8 shooting, 4-8 from WAY downtown.  The refs didn't have to stop the game to look at the video to see if his foot was on the line for any of his shots, there was NO doubt.  Could he do that again?  Well, he's shooting 33% from 3 for the season but almost 48% from 3 in his last 5 games.  Great scouting, Brad.

8.  I think Chalmer's brain is weak.  He thinks he is much better than he is.  He's one of those losers who think they're tough guys because they follow a tough guy.  DWade is a thug who needs to be dropped on his head but he doesn't shy away from contact or conflict.  Chalmers yaps like Pomeranian, running with a Rotty, barking from inside the safety of a car with rolled up windows because that's what the Rotty is doing and he thinks that makes him tough too.  A lapdog who thinks reflected glory is really his own.  Watch Chalmers.  Over the course of the season you'll see, when the pressure is on, his brain cracks and he makes bad decisions and unforced errors.

9.  Udonis Haslem is an unselfish warrior.  He's Miami's Kurt Rambis.  I got nothing bad to say about him.  12 rebounds, 3 steals and 12 points on 5-9 last night, playing a heavy 38 minutes on the 2nd night of a back-to-back.

10.  Bass tried to carry us on his back in the 3rd quarter.  His energy, his rebounding, his shooting gave us a chance.  Oddly, Steady Eddie was 3-6 from the line.  This is the first season since 2007-2008 that he has shot below 80% from the line and he's still shooting a respectable 78%, which is above our team 74.6% average.  Both he and Jerebko are valuable.  I hope Danny doesn't feel he needs to choose between them (unless it will get us an intimidating paint protector, then it's "Hasta la Vista, Baby!).

11.  Smart's defense was stellar, as usual.  4 steals and some of them gems.  Offensively, he's killing us.  1-8 last night.

12.  Kelly went from stud to dud.  Back to invisible.

13.  We shot 41% against a team with no bigs.  Brad played "match up" with their small-ball and they beat us.  Zeller only played 19 minutes.  I have no doubt Danny will try to improve our front court, adding length and beef.  I will be interesting if Brad will play them.

14.  Ten TOs in the first half for us.  We ended up with 16, so we got better in the 2nd half but that first half was just awful.  Most of them, as I remember them, were unforced.  Just sloppy, brain-dead play.

15.  Evan Turner was largely invisible, like Kelly.  He only played 20 minutes.  So, you sit Turner, who had 5 assists and 1 TO and 4 rebounds but was 1-5 but you play Thomas who looked like crap, Brad?  


Thanks to an Indy loss we are still in 8th place thanks to a tie-breaker.  With only 11 games left and Miami now with a 2 game lead on us 7th place looks far away.  If we play like this, it's a short 1/2 game drop to 11th.

No excuse for last night.


bob



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[bobheckler]

Correction to my earlier post: It was an ATO, but not from out of bounds. Excellent entry pass by Jerebko to Crowder.


Here's the late-game ATO:






bob


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[Sam]

I deliberately withheld this post until Bob's had appeared.  As I write this, I still haven't read his analysis.  So I hope we're not at complete odds.

In terms of the stats, there were few that really separated the two teams last night:

• The Heat had 8 more field goal attempts and shot 3% better than the Celtics, but the Celtic shot 14 more free throws than Miami and stank to about the same degree at the line (70% Miami, 68% Boston).

•  Turnovers?  Dead even at 16.

• The Celts grabbed 5 more rebounds than the Heat.

• For once, the Celtics didn't hoist a truly gruesome number of three point attempts (only 19, compared with Miami's 24).

• 8 steals for the Celtics, 6 for the Heat; 6 blocks for the Heat, 4 for the Celtics.

• 15 fast break points for the Heat and 14 for the Celtics.

• Neither team exactly dominated in the paint (Heat 36, Celts 32).

In terms of stats, there were two that I think best told the story of this game:

• The Heat shot 38% on their threes to 26% on the Celtics' part.

• The Heat assisted on 68% of their made field goals, compared with 57% for the Celtics.  (I consider 60% to be the minimally acceptable number in most games.)

In other words, the Heat were more accurate from distance and played better as a team.  Simple as that.

There's not a lot more that can be said about three point attempts that hasn't been said.  Brad obviously has his own reasons for allowing his team to rank 12th in field goal attempts and 26th in three point percentage.  I can only hope that his apparent love affair with the three isn't truly a passion but only a romantic interlude occasioned by the fact that he's willing to attempt fate in order to win a few games he might not have won otherwise.

At least, no one has Jae Crowder to blame for last night's missed threes.  He took (and missed) only one.  Marcus Smart won last night's 1-5 three-point failure award, although Isaiah Thomas (0-3) gave it the old college try.

The assist stat is far less indicative than many people think in terms of diagnosing the outcome of a basketball game,  For example, when the Celtics made their fourth quarter comeback and were really clicking, they assisted on only 50% of their made field goals.  However, the stat comes as close as anything we've got to suggesting how well or poorly they played as a team.  Assisting on only 57% of their buckets is only mediocre.  And that's the perfect description of the Celtics' play last night—mediocre.

I don't agree with those who feel it was the worst game of the season—not even considering what was at stake and how many players the Heat were missing.  What's at stake can influence effort level, and I feel the effort wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either—and I'm not talking about only the final quarter.  They actually tried hard, but things repeatedly just didn't work out.  I could go along with a description of this game as the most frustrating of the season for Brad and the players.

The fact that Miami was short (literally) handed wasn't as much a problem as one might think.  It forced the Heat to go small, and going small is often the best recipe for success against the Celtics.  It forced Miami to employ different strategies than they ordinarily might have used—new looks, as far as the Celtics were concerned.  Throw in some Dragic Magic, add in some Celtics indifference, and it was the perfect upset setup.  

I feel that what most subverted the effort level from translating to a win was a severe lack of chemistry.  More specifically, I thought the Celtics displayed very little rhythm.  Some guys zigged while others zagged.  Passes were thrown behind teammates.  Far too many contested shots were attempted.  From the middle of the first quarter throughout the third quarter, I saw far too little evidence of trust among teammates.  To many attempted heroes out there.

I thought Isaiah Thomas showed a lot of courage by, while still in pain, by playing in this one.  Unfortunately, I also believe his presence was the single factor that most disrupted what had become a fairly good rhythm without him.  He was extremely tentative in his ball-handling, his penetration, and his shooting.  He had 3 turnovers (mostly by dribbling into traffic) in his 20 minutes; and 10 minutes were more than enough to convince me that this was not going to be a triumphal return.

I'm not attempting to single out Isaiah's lack of execution as the reason the Celtics lost.  But I do believe that the rest of the team may have stunned at the gap between what they had expected and what they got from Isaiah.  If you're stunned, your rhythm goes out the window.  They weren't thinking as a team or executing as a team.

Okay, that's over.  Next game.

Sam

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