Post Game Thread - vs Charlotte Hornets, Home

[bobheckler]

I often start these threads, just to get them going, and it makes me feel good to get my thoughts down on paper (such as this medium is "paper") but I don't want to suck all the air out of this topic.  Please contribute your thoughts.  I don't see everything and even the stuff I do see are affected by my opinions, and that's what this thread, this board is:  it's our opinions.


We won, unconvincingly, against a team without their best player, Kemba Walker.  A W is a W is a W, but I'm not feeling real good about this, to be honest.  Look at it this way:  if we were still without IT, our best scorer, would we have won?  No.  So losing without their best scorer isn't demoralizing for them neither, and this should have been.

Batum took up the shooting slack in Walker's absence.  He shot 6-19, luckily for us.  Even a halfway decent fg% and we might have lost this game.  As it is they shot 32.7% for the game.  That's what it took to beat this depleted team, at home, without their best scorer.  They needed to hit less than 1 out of 3 shots.  What made is close is that they took 98 fgas.  That's uptempo basketball, that's what we should be playing but haven't since the first half dozen games, or so, of the season.  We've turned into a half court team and we aren't that good enough shooters for that.  I'm starting to wonder what/who Brad thinks we are.  I'm not even talking about our pedestrian 14-12 record, some of that can be attributed to our injuries, but the style of play, the style of offense we run.

Luckily, IT came back with one of his good games and not Batum-like numbers.





Horford had a good game too.  5 blocks, one of which was a fantastic chase down block on a fast break.

Bradley didn't have a good shooting game at all, but he rebounded and he had to guard Batum a lot of the time and he gives up at least 5".

Kelly was credited with 2 blocks.  I didn't see them.  

Jerebko with his usual non-stat hustle game.  He might have the best motor on the team.  Not the most enthusiastic, that would be Smart, but the most non-stop motion.  He wins the "John Havlicek Award" for this team (I just made that award up now).

Rozier with a non-stat night, other than 5 rebounds in 16 minutes, but he is becoming more and more comfortable out there.

Amir is only averaging 15.8mpg over the last 10 games.  Is the decline in his production the reason for the declining minutes, or are the declining minutes causing his weak production?  He isn't the same player as last year.  The Hornets might have one of the weakest front courts in the league; Cody Zeller, Marvin Williams, Spencer Hawes and Kaminsky.  We should have croaked them with Horford, Amir, Kelly, our Zeller and Jerebko.  We did ok, but we didn't kill them.  Roy Hibbert is such a dinosaur he didn't even pull off his warmups.

26 assists on 34fgas, 76%.  That is a great number, Brad should be very happy.  Only 78 fgas.  That should piss Brad off, assuming he is capable of that emotion.  



http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400899833













bob


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[Berlin-T]

Okay, I admit it, I was wrong - we do need IT.

The thing that pops out at me watching this team is that we only have good offensive play when we play great ball-hawking defense, when we can run a fast break or at least pass the ball quickly up the court so that our opponents defense has no time to set up. Then we're dynamite. But once our opponent has time to set up we are only mediocre. Our half court game has too many guys standing around at the 3-point line waiting for a pass from someone. Usually the pass is too slow or is too low so that a defender arrives almost simultaneously with the ball. Watching the SAS passing the ball and continually moving around the half court leads one to wonder why we can't run sets like that. Our sets are just too unimaginative. I think that it is not only the players who need to step up, Brad Stevens needs to do like-wise.

Berlin-T

[bobheckler]

Jay King
@ByJayKing about 13 hours ago
Celtics defense up to 14th. Net rating up to ninth. After some of the NBA's worst injury luck, not a bad place at all.

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Jared Weiss
@JaredWeissNBA yesterday
Isaiah Thomas wanted nothing to do with Marco Belinelli after the flagrant. "If it's not one of my teammates, don't help me up." #Celtics

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Michael Pina
@MichaelVPina yesterday
Celtics stroll into the locker room with a much needed win. Danny Ainge with his arm around Terry Rozier's shoulder.

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bob
MY NOTE:  I forgot to mention in my first post something that happened in the game last night.  Ref Lauren Holtkamp made a call, and then changed it in our favor.  Tommy lauded her for it and said that it was unusual for a ref to have the humility it takes to change a call (Tommy being such a big fan of referrees and all).  Mike pointed out that Holtkamp has a Masters degree in Communications AND a Masters degree in Divinity.  Tommy then said "well, that's the only way a ref is going to get into heaven, isn't it?".  It took the normally unflappable Mike Gorman 10 seconds before he could stop laughing and get back to calling the game.

Love ya, Tommy.





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[worcester]

I take back whatever I said about trading IT. We need him,. and a couple of shooters/scorers like him. Interesting to see that our guards scored 36 points and had 22 rbs whereas our forwards had only 26 points and only 13 rbs.

[jrleftfoot]

I take back whatever I said about trading IT. We need him,. and a couple of shooters/scorers like him. Interesting to see that our guards scored 36 points and had 22 rbs whereas our forwards had only 26 points and only 13 rbs.

The guards outrebounding the bigs has been a regular occurence. Maybe the rest gave IT`s finger a chance to heal . I only saw highlights, but he was ballin

[dboss]

We won

dboss

[cowens/oldschool]

This is a very flawed team, we can't rebound, we have 2 all star types in Al Horford and IT, but they are not all NBA top ten talent, even alot of those type of players are on bad teams with not enough help, like an Anthony Davis or DeMarcus Cousins or a John Wall or James Harden.....theres alot of fllawed teams and we are one of them. Avery Bradley might be an all star if we were the 2nd best team in the East, but were a team that overachieved alot the last 2 years and the jump to get to a ECF is out of our capabilities right now. Right now I don't see this team getting out of the first round. Our bigs are soft, Jerebko gets the most out of his ability, but hes not the starting PF on a contending team, unless theres alot of top ten talent at other positions that he is playing with, and hes not playing with them on this team. Jerebko would be great as a 20 minute reserve, a poor mans Bobby Jones, playing behind an all star or at least a physical rebounding low post brute....oh wait I'm having a flashback to a different era.

The sooner we can get rid of Zeller, KO and Amir, the better. Amir has seen better days, I don't know if its age or injury, but hes not the same player, hes a pro, but Amir, Zeller and KO don't do enough good things, like why the fock is Avery Bradley our best rebounder? Last night Smart didn't take too many shots, maybe coaching ataff is limiting his 3's or bad shots, that could be a good thing, still think he should post up more and drive more, problem is hes so physical, when he drives and gets hit on the arms, he doesn't get the calls anyway.

I hope the intensity and up tempo game can increase as I agree with bob we are playing too much half court basketball and were not great at 3 point shooting and don't really have any post up players, oh right most teams barely post up anymore, but we need to run more, we need more easy buckets and we have depth with young legs in Rozier, Jaylen Brown, Jerebko and IT, Smart and Bradley can all run, so why aren't we running more? Theres only one Lebron, but wish we had a SF who could create for himself and create for others, like take over a game a la Paul Pierce or what Kawhi and Paul George do....Jaylen Browns probably about 3 years away. I would play him 25 minutes a game minimum.

[worcester]

Agree on all points Cow.

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