Post Game Thread - vs Washington Wizards, Away

[bobheckler]

Yuck.  No defense at all.  Nobody, really, consistently.  Bradley had some steals but he also gave up at least 3 give-and-gos to different players, including our old friend Marcus Thornton.  A lot of players got past him.

We scored 8 points in the 1st quarter, with only 19% fg%.  8.  We also gave up 34.  So, there is absolutely nothing good that can be said about that.  Brad started throwing darts.  He even put Mickey in against Gortat.  Why not?  Nothing else was working.

Porter had a career night.  20 points in the 1st half alone. It was as if he was deliberately unguarded (I'm sure he wasn't, he just played as if it was 1-on-0).  He made Jaylen Brown look AWFUL.  Brown played 3 minutes in the entire first half, as Brad sat him down.  He played a grand total 13.  He was completely ineffective on both ends of the court.

IT had 23 points but was 6-18 from the field.

Bradley had 21 on 9-14 but wasn't his usual self on defense.

Zeller looked like a child playing against a man named Marcin Gortat.  

Otto Porter outrebounded the Celtics front court (Amir, Zeller, Brown) 14-7.  We are so bad at rebounding Bradley Beal got a rebound while sitting on his ass under the basket.  Really.  He went in for a shot, which missed, he fell down and the ball came off the glass with Amir and Avery Bradley right there and it came to him and he kicked it out to a Wizard from the floor.  That's embarrassing.

There is a reason why Gerald Green hasn't been playing.  His offense is non-aggressive and he is still, after all these years, still inattentive on defense.  Since we got him for his offense, that's not good.

Rosalie and I were on the Game On thread and we were both remarking in the first half about just how horrible Marcus Smart's shooting is.  No touch at all.  It looked like he was shooting off the heel of his palm rather than off his fingertips, they looked SO awful.  If he shotput them they would look no worse.  He was 0-3 after 1 and with 2 points on 1-7 at halftime.  Then, in the 3rd quarter, it was like he was a completely different player.  He's draining 3s, looking like DWade.  It was the strangest thing.  You cannot help but wonder why he isn't more consistent?  He ended up the 3rd quarter with 20 points on 7-17.  That means he scored 18 points on 6-10, 4-8 from 3, in the 3rd quarter.  John Wall committed a frustration flagrant foul on Smart and it didn't go down well with Smart.  I've been as down as anybody on Smart, but if he can just even his shooting out so he isn't so much trick-or-treat, then he has this going for him:

Jay King ‏@ByJayKing  11h11 hours ago
Marcus Smart after flagrant from John Wall: "I ain’t backing down from nobody and that’s going to be understood"




Kelly's first game back.  One of the first things he did was to take a charge, which was more defense than anybody else was playing.  Yeah, that's right, Kelly Olynyk of all people was playing better defense than anybody else on the Celtics.  That's how bad we were.  He moved his feet on defense, he was in the right place most of the time.  Offensively he wasn't good, 1-6 for 2 points, but I don't worry about his offense, that's a rhythm thing and will come with more game time reps.  Think I'm just being a Kelly Olynyk groupie?  Here's Brad:  

Marc D'Amico
@celtics yesterday
Stevens on Olynyk: "I thought he was excellent defensively. We were better with him on the court." Says his shot will come around.

Maybe, for all those months that Kelly couldn't practice because he was rehabbing, he spent it watching defensive films?  Just one game, but hopeful.  Lord knows we need SOMEONE who is paying attention on defense.


I know we're down 2 starters, but we aren't playing hard.  Marcus Smart is saying we have no heart, and he's right.  This was the first game I've had the opportunity to watch this year but, with only a few exceptions, we did not play with Pride. It was great to be able to spend a few hours with Rosalie. The girl knows her hoop and her blood is greener than most. Considering I brag to my friends about how green mine is, so much so their eyes roll now when I start talking about basketball and the Celtics because they know what is coming next, that's saying something.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400899557


bob


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[bobheckler]

http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2016/11/isaiah_thomas_boston_celtics_n_1.html#incart_river_index



Isaiah Thomas after Boston Celtics get crushed on offensive glass: 'We're not the hardest playing team' anymore



Jay King | mjking@masslive.com By Jay King | mjking@masslive.com


on November 10, 2016 at 6:30 AM, updated November 10, 2016 at 6:32 AM




WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After days of focus on their rebounding, defense and mindset, the Boston Celtics let Washington Wizards big man Marcus Gortat meander into the paint, set up a beach chair, and wait for an offensive rebound to fall into his hands -- on the very first possession. Not even two minutes later, Wizards guard Bradley Beal missed a shot in transition but, almost miraculously, grabbed his own rebound while laying on his back amid five Boston defenders.

So began one of the worst quarters in Celtics franchise history, a spell of basketball so depressing it actually forced head coach Brad Stevens to utter the words, "The eight-point first quarter was not helpful." The most incredible takeaway from the mess? Even while registering as many turnovers (four) as made baskets in the opening stanza, and missing all of their 3-pointers and free throw attempts, the Celtics actually had more trouble rebounding the basketball than anything else.

During the first half of Boston's 118-93 loss, the Wizards rebounded 12 of their 27 misses for an absurd 44.4 percent offensive rebound rate. That helped them rack up 21 second-chance points -- 18 more than the Celtics. By the end of the game, the following tweet was accurate:


Follow
Chris Forsberg ✔ @ESPNForsberg
Celtics now dead last in NBA in defensive rating (112.3), defensive rebound percentage (70.8%), and total rebound percentage (45.5%).
6:56 PM - 9 Nov 2016
 101 101 Retweets   92 92 likes


These are the same Celtics who finished tied for fourth in defense last season and prided themselves on showing more, well, pride than anyone else.

"We're in a bad funk right now but we can't hold our head," said Isaiah Thomas. "One thing I think is we're not the hardest playing team no more. I think that's what made us special. That's what made us good is us playing hard than the other team, being more scrappy, getting all the loose balls. Rebounds don't come to us no more because we're not playing hard. And I've got watch the film. I've got to see what I've got to do better. But that's just the feeling I have right now, that we're not the hardest playing team. And that's what made us special, made us win 48 games last year and made teams not really want to play against us. We don't have that swagger no more."

Watching tape of Washington's 19 offensive rebounds was not the most entertaining study ever, but it illustrated what Stevens said after the game: "It was blocking out from the perimeter most of the night tonight. Their bigs kept a couple of balls alive and got them back, but for the most part it was obviously led by Otto Porter, but it was their perimeter guys flying in. And you can go back and watch clips – and I've only watched a handful of them but we're doing the old watch-them-fly-by-us-and-rebound. We've got to get better at that."

Amir Johnson, Tyler Zeller and Kelly Olynyk have never been the greatest rebounders, but don't have a chance if their guards regularly do some version of this (watch Thomas):



Feel free to scroll down to more writing, or you can watch a number of examples -- not even the only ones! -- in which the Celtics perimeter players screwed up on the glass Wednesday night. Check out this (Thomas again):




This (Avery Bradley):




This (Jaylen Brown):




This (Marcus Smart and Thomas):




And this (Bradley again):




As you can see in the last play, Zeller had a chance to grab the rebound. Really, he should have secured it. But the Celtics don't have a big, hulking center who can leap up and touch the top of the backboard. They need to gang rebound because plays like this, with Zeller tipping the ball instead of corralling it, will happen pretty frequently. Instead, Bradley showed carelessness on the weak side, allowing Marcus Thornton to chase down the basketball.

Rebounding certainly wasn't the only issue against the Wizards, and it hasn't been the only consistent issue all year. Still, the Celtics are making high school mistakes: ball-chasing, staring at the hoop instead of blocking out, showing a damning lack of attentiveness after Stevens has stressed rebounding since the first day of training camp.

"That's a huge area of emphasis because, like I've said before, we have to be a team that's even on the glass to have a chance to win," he said. "And we have to work really hard to be even on the glass. It's just who we are. So we've got to do it. We've got to be better. And this is something that you can control. And we just have to get better at it."

"We've just got to get some heart," Smart said. "That's it. That's just a matter of will. Guards, they're pushing us under the basket. The guards. Not even the bigs. The guards. So we've got to find some heart. I don't know where it is but we've got to find it."

As a reminder, the Celtics are still missing two vital pieces of their defense, Jae Crowder (ankle) and Al Horford (concussion). According to NBA.com, those two are the only duo among Boston's top 30 most played pairings whose lineups average more than a 50 percent rebound rate. Over just 39 minutes together, the healthy starting lineup does, too. In other words, Crowder and Horford will help ease the team's biggest concern right now.

Still, said Thomas, "Nah. I mean Al is a big part, Jae's a big part, but the playing hard thing, even if we didn't have nobody, that's who we were. And we're not that right now, so Al and Jae, those are big part of this team and we know we'll play better when we have them back, but the playing hard aspect is not there and we're not a scrappy team right now. The loose balls don't go our way, fouls don't go our way, rebounds don't go our way, because we're not playing that hard. We've got to fix that as soon as possible."

"It's playing hard, leaving it all out there on the floor," Thomas said. "That's who we were. That's what made us one of the best defensive teams in the league. That's what made us win 48 games last year. We have to find that swag. We have to get that back, because if we don't it seems like we're going off talent, which we really don't have that much talent, including myself. I think if we get that hard-hat back where we're the hardest playing team, we're going to be in every game. Last year we didn't get blown out like this. Even though it's early it's been two really bad games for us, but we didn't have these types of games last year. Just half the battle was us playing that hard."


bob
MY NOTE:  On that last .gif, the one Jay King says "and this (Bradley again)", is one of the Bradley defensive breakdowns I was referring to in my post-game opinion.  After giving up the baseline rebound to a hustling Marcus Thornton, and Thornton then passed it to Gortat, Thornton cut back baseline and got the ball back from Gortat on a give-and-go while Bradley stood there staring at Gortat (the .gif was cut after the pass to Gortat, but that's the play I was talking about if play was continued).  NOT good, attentive defense by Bradley.


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[dboss]

The game was lost in the first QTR where the Wizards jumped out to a 34-8 lead.

Lately this seems to be the trend.

Our guard rotation of IT, Bradley and smart scored 65 out of 93 total points.  Their defense could have been better but they carried the team offensively.

Our front court really stinks.  Brown is not ready to start and Green is not much better so Porter lights us up for career points.  But the lack of rebounding and pick and roll defense from our bigs is really disturbing.  Amir, Zeller, Jerebko, and Mickey all with 2 rebounds each.

Our guards are  going to get picked off but our bigs are a day late and a dollar short in rotating out.

The rebounding issue is not going away.  

dboss

[bobheckler]

Scott Souza
@Scott_Souza about 25 minutes ago
#Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas was 10-for-10 from the line Wednesday night. Rest of C's were a combined 3-for-12.

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Jay King
@ByJayKing about 1 hour ago
Stevens asked about Jaylen Brown's shorts: "I'm not a fashion guy. I'm more interested in rebounding."

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Jay King
Jay King
@ByJayKing about 1 hour ago
Isaiah Thomas blames effort most of all (by far) but: "We're not just missing Jae. We're missing Evan."

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bob



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[dboss]

For $15 mill per we are not missing him

dboss

[112288]

Listen,

This could be a speed bump we are hitting that perhaps should have been hit last year.

The rebounding issue is a product of 2 things:

1) Small front court with no ATTITUDE!
2) Guards and forwards not blocking out and not allowing guys to fly in - rebound and score. You can see this in one of the video's above - IT was the problem on this particular play.

112288

[bobheckler]

Scott Souza
Scott Souza
@Scott_Souza about 16 minutes ago
#Celtics coach Brad Stevens: I thought Marcus Smart & Kelly Olynyk were our two best defenders vs. Wizards.

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bob
MY NOTE:  I think Kelly is starting tonight vs Knicks.  The moral?  Play defense, get minutes.

Works for me.



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