Post-Game Thread, Hornets - Away

[bobheckler]

So, we're better than the Hornets, not as good as the Clippers and definitely would have beaten Kentucky and sent them crying back to their dorm rooms.  Considering the turmoil of this year, the loss of Sullinger and that Charlotte was in the playoffs last year and the Clippers are a fully-built team that is in 5th place in the very competitive WC and only 1/2 game behind Portland for #4 I'm ok with that.  I'm ok with being in between a team that showed they had something last year and a team that was expected to compete deep into the WC playoffs this year in this, our 2nd year of a 5 year rebuild.

Our defense did pretty well in the 1st half but in the 2nd half Walker and Mo Williams went off.  Talk all you want about bigs, and we could use some help there, but their back court can croak a lot of teams.  Explosive scoring is an understatement.  Mo Williams had a 50 point game this year.  He never lit it up like that in Cleveland or in any of the 7 different teams he has played for (Utah 2x) but he does it now.

1.  This time we had our own JJ Redick.  Bradley is turning into a real leader on this club.  He has a great competitive nature.  After the LAC beat down he wanted to come out and make a statement, and he did.  30 points on 12-23, 3-7 from downtown and 8 rebounds.  He also played pretty good defense on Kemba Walker until the 4th quarter.  At that point, nobody was going to stop him.

2.  Smart finally (finally!) had a good offensive game.  14 points on 5-9 and, best of all, only took 2 3pt fgas.  He penetrated and had easier shots near the rim.  In fact, all but 5 of his 14 points were at the rim.  I hope this game was an eye-opener for him because he was quite effective last night.  There was one play in particular that really showed something.  We snuck in from the free throw line to get in front of the Charlotte rebounders on a missed Celtic fga to snare the board.  He then did a quick pass directly behind him to Bass, who went up and got fouled.  Excellent aggressiveness on the O-boards and excellent court awareness of where your teammates are.  Scal pointed out that you can't teach that, and I agree.  It's like trying to teach someone how to be a point guard.  You really can't, you either have the gift, which might need to be polished and honed more, or you don't.  Will Marcus Smart ever become a true NBA point guard?  I am doubting it, but that doesn't mean he can't be someone who helps to run a good offense because he has a high BBIQ, makes good decisions and has the skills to deliver on them.  Finally, a breakthrough game for Smart.  It has been a while and many of us, including me, were beginning to despair a bit.  Now he just has to show it wasn't a fluke.  He also had 6 rebounds and 3 steals.

3.  Not a great night by Zeller offensively, considering his opposite was the defensively-challenged (that's putting it very nicely) Big Al Jefferson, but he had his hands full trying to keep the offensively powerful Big Al Jefferson from killing him in the paint like he does to eveybody else.  Tyler has never beaten his brother Cody.  Just his tough luck his brother didn't play the one night we won.

4.  Old Man Wallace completely schooled Gerald Henderson last night.  It was so bad he made poor little Gerald's head explode.  It finally got so frustrating for Henderson he delivered an obvious flagrant foul by popping Wallace in the back for no reason.  It's always fun to watch things like that happen.  I used to love watching The Worm mess up opponents' heads.  The reason why Henderson was frustrated was that Crash was having a good game.  I can't wait to read the 'Comments from the other side" thread later.  What the Hornet fans must be saying about this!  Wallace with 5 rebounds, 2 offensive and 2 steals.  What is absolutely mind-blowing is that he went 0-4 from the line.  He is a career 71% free throw shooter and he is shooting about 55% this year from the line.  I understand losing something off your jumpshot as your legs get older and tired, but free throws?  Has anybody else noticed how Brad likes to give players who came from another team minutes against that team?  This is not the first game this season Brad inserted Wallace in to play against his old club.  He played Turner even heavier minutes than usual against Indy.  He played IT 27 minutes in the game against Phoenix, which was only his 2nd game with the Celtics.  Brad really likes to work the 'payback' angle.  Last night it worked.  Tough year for Wallace and he has handled it like a pro.  It's nice to see him get a shot at some redemption last night and have it work out for him.  And us.

5.  Scal said he was going to ask Celtics Assistant GM Mike Zarren how many rebounds and passes Jonas Jerebko gets his fingers on.  I don't know why he'd ask Zarren and not Brad's fair-haired analytics guy Drew Cannon but I am interested in the answer.  Jerebko is just so active, has such a live body.  He's always near the ball, contesting the ball or swiping at the ball.  Nothing breaks up an opponent's fast break like denying them quick, sure possession of their defensive rebound.  That extra second, that extra tempo beat, they have to jump twice to grab the ball because Jerebko tipped it a bit, is a second our defense has a chance to fall back and stay with any fast breakers releasing on the missed shot.  No big stats for him last night, not a big rebounding or scoring night, but if you were to do a "Johnny Most" and just call out the play so people not watching the game could know who was near the action and doing what, Jonas Jerebko's name would come up a lot.

6.  Evan Turner needs to stop taking 3s.  Not just because he isn't good at them but because he is just SO much more effective taking mid-range shots and penetrating.  He has that fall-away turnaround 12-14' jumpshot from the baseline down.  It's a hard shot, but he hits a high percentage of them.  He penetrates well, with my heart in my throat as I watch the ball come up to his collar bone with each dribble, and has very good court vision.  Do that, Evan.  Do your mid-range game.  Do your penetrations and layups or dishes.  Here's his shot chart for this year.  You can see that he is at his best from the left baseline, pretty good from straight away in the paint but really, really sucks from distance.  Do what you do well, Evan, and leave well enough alone.  You're the Master of the Mid-Range.  Be happy with that for now.




7.  Another solid night for Kelly.  Not as good as the night before, but solid.  Made some good plays, hit 50% of his shots.  This would be a good time for him to find his game again.

8.  Our two other energizer bunnies, Crowder and Thomas, had good nights but not great ones.  IT had 7 assists with only one TO, but was 3-9 from the floor.  He giveth and he taketh away.  Still, it's hard to fault him when we scored 116 points, shot 51% for the game and he had 25% of our 28 assists on 45fgm.  I'll take all that in exchange for 3-9.  It's when he goes 9-27 I'll go a little crazy.  Crowder's name usually comes up everywhere, like Jerebko's, but I don't remember him doing much last night.  He did hit a big 3, much to Sam's delight (a little sarcasm there) to break Charlotte's momentum a bit in the 4th.  He wasn't bad, it's rare for Jae to have a bad night (I can only remember one) but usually we're all just oohhing and ahhhing over his impact.  For the most part Crowder was invisible for the first 3 quarters.  In the 4th though he woke up a bit.  He hit that 3, he drove into the lane for 2.  When Jae Crowder goes north-south good things usually happen.  He's so strong, he creates and takes contact well.  Zeller got a rebound and was able to pass it to someone before he fell down.  Crowder, who was standing right next to him, yelled "C'MON!!" and reached down, grabbed Zeller by the arm and pulled him to his feet and then the two of them ran down court.  That was a great Jae Crowder moment.  Doesn't show up in the box score, won't make Sportcenter, but it is the type of glue that makes a team.  There was that event in the Clipper game the night before, where a Celtic got knocked down, the Clip who knocked him down offered a hand to help him up but Crowder got in the middle and pushed the Clip away.  The Clip announcers thought that was poor sportsmanship, since the Clip was being nice and Crowder was being aggressive, but I loved it.  You take care of your teammates, you help your teammates up and you don't help theirs up; make them do that.  I especially like it after DWade dropped IT and then stared down at him.  Don't ever let anybody do that again without a message being sent.  He's my teammate and you screw with him at your own risk.

9.  At no end-of-quarter milestone in this game were we shooting below 50% as a team.  How does Brad burn this into their memories, their DNA?  40 points in the paint vs 42 for them and 13 fast break points vs 9 for them.  On the 2nd night of a back-to-back.  Adam Silver is talking about improving the scheduling so there are fewer back-to-backs.  This team would do much better if they played two back-to-backs per week.  We are now 9-1 on the 2nd night of a back-to-back this year.  Some of that is "youth will be served" but a lot of that is grit and grind and ganas (for the newer board members who are not familiar with that term, it is a colloquial, slangy spanish term based upon the verb ganar, which means "to earn" or "to win" or "to gain".  Ganas means 'desire', 'fire in the belly', 'I gotta have it, tell me what I have to do to get it and I'll pay the price'.  Yo tengo ganas means "I want this badly, so get out of my way").  They have an underdog mentality and play like they have something to prove.  Will that overcome their relative lack of talent in the playoffs?  Probably not, but it will be a big growth step for them because it will reward them for their ganas and that is a lesson that will last them through their careers. One of our problems this year has been consistency of execution. We play with heart but not always with our heads. Getting into the playoffs, where EVERY game counts, is the rising tide that will lift all 15 of these boats. It will only make us better next year. This was a big, big game for Charlotte, even bigger for them than for us because they are on the outside looking in and we are the opposite, on their home court and we won convincingly. They never had a lead in this game. They stormed back in the 4th but they were never able to get it below a 9 point deficit we so thoroughly dominated them for 3 quarters.

10.  Only 7 TOs.  Back on track with that after a bad week that must have had Brad talking to himself.

We're back in 8th place today.  Seesaw.

Indy at Brooklyn and San Antonio at Miami tonight.  On Wednesday we host Indy on the 2nd night of a back-to-back for them.  Let's see if they can handle it as well as we do.  Does anybody?

If Indy wins tonight and loses to us, we'll put some distance between Brooklyn and them and make 8th place more secure.  If Miami loses to the Spurs then we'll be 1 game in the loss column back from them for 7th place.  They travel to Cleveland on Thursday.  With a little help from the Spurs and the Cavs this could be a fun week.



bob



.

[dboss]

"Everytime I get out, they pull me back in"

dboss

[gyso]

It was an extremely fun game to see in person.  Lots of green in the seats, lots of seats left empty.  When we got to the little half flight of stairs to exit the parking garage, we were met up by two other groups of people wearing Celtic-ware.  The three rows of seats immediately in front of us went mostly unused, with some people filtering in just before halftime.

The Gerald on Gerald flagrant happened right in front of us.  Our Gerald ran up the aisle next to the stanchion halfway up towards our seats after the play.  He had kind of a half-smirk, half smile on his face.  He knew he had gotten to Henderson and it would cost the Hornets.  I stood up, clapped and yelled out to him, "Good one Crash!!".  Janie said "Sit down, we still have to get out of here!"  (LOL)

Bradley was hitting from everywhere.  Many times, he curled around a pick and hit the quick jumper on the right side of the key.  I think that may become his signature shot.

Smart got an elbow in the face from Henderson and he fell back a couple of feet, allowing Henderson to hit the jumper.  No call, that's what happens if the refs see a trend of minor flopping.  He was holding his nose and staring at the refs on the way back down the court.

Janie's new favorites are Thomas and Crowder.  I let her know when they came into the game.  Her first observation was to quickly point out that Thomas was missing his first few shots badly.  He must have shot better later on after he got warmed up a bit.  Crowder was everywhere, he can switch out on almost anybody and not look lost doing it.

Her parents came to the game with us (the first time they attended a professional non-NASCAR sporting event).  They were both amazed at how much physical contact happened away from the ball.

The fans were booing the Hornets at half-time.  A group lf them were yelling at the Hornets, "Play D!! Remember, like last year?"  They were mostly yelling at Big Al.  Another group of fans (four younger guys) sitting in the 3rd row in front of us only stood up late in the fourth quarter when their team was making the run.  They soon were making an early exit, along with the rest of the non-green wearing people.

Bobh, one comment for you; Tyler has beaten Cody.  He did it the very last time we played Charlotte, on Feb. 27.  So he's off the schnide.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/charlotte-hornets-boston-celtics-2015022702/

gyso

[Sponsored content]