POST GAME NEW ORLEANS - AWAY

Celtics Wrap: Anthony Davis, Pelicans Dominate Shorthanded C’s In New Orleans

NESN by Joshua Schrock on Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 8:15PM

The Boston Celtics had no answer for Anthony Davis on Sunday night. Davis dominated the Celtics, scoring 34 points and pulling down 11 rebounds in the New Orleans Pelicans’ 108-89 win at Smoothie King Center. Boston held a slim lead at halftime, but Davis, Nikola Mirotic (18 points) and Cheick Diallo (17 points) owned the second half, as the Celtics were unable to find the offensive firepower to hang with the Pelicans. Jayson Tatum led the C’s with 23 points and Marcus Morris added 15. The Celtics fall to 47-23 with the loss, while the Pelicans improve to 40-30. Here’s how it all went down:

STARTING FIVE PG: Terry Rozier SG: Jayson Tatum SF: Marcus Morris PF: Al Horford C: Aron Baynes

FAST START Boston came out of the gate swinging, going on an 8-0 run over the first 3:25. The Pelicans responded with a 10-7 run of their own to cut the lead to five with 4:55 remaining in the first quarter. The C’s owned the final portion of the period, though, taking a 28-20 lead into the second quarter. Morris led all scorers with 11 points. Davis paced the Pelicans with 10 points.

KEEPING THE CELTICS IN CHEICK The two teams battled back and forth in the second quarter, as the C’s jumped out to a 10-point lead with 6:24 remaining in the period thanks to Tatum, who finished the half with 15 points. New Orleans wouldn’t go away, however. Diallo scored 10 points off the bench in the period, getting a couple kind bounces from the rims at the Smoothie King Center. The Kansas product’s final hoop of the stanza cut the deficit to six, and then Davis and E’Twaun Moore did the rest, cutting Boston’s lead to 49-47 at halftime. Davis led all scorers with 19 points at the break. Tatum was the high man for Boston with 15, while Morris chipped in with 14.

PELICANS TAKE THE LEAD New Orleans came out hot to start the third quarter, opening the frame on a 13-4 run to take a 60-53 lead. The Pelicans’ lead swelled to eight with 2:39 play in the frame, as Boston had difficulty getting anything going on offense. Shane Larkin and Horford combined for a 6-0 run to cut the deficit to four, but New Orleans was able to cling to an 82-76 lead after three.

GAME OVER The Pelicans put the game out of reach quickly in the fourth quarter, opening the frame on a 17-5 run to take an 18-point lead. Davis, Mirotic, Diallo, Jrue Holliday and Rajon Rondo did everything they wanted in the period. Boston continued to struggle to find an offensive answer without Kyrie Irving and Jaylen Brown. Head coach Brad Stevens called off the dogs after Davis gave New Orleans a 21-point lead with 3:25 remaining.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE GAME Big Al with the slam.

UP NEXT The Celtics will take the floor Tuesday when they host the Oklahoma City Thunder at TD Garden. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. ET.

112288

No answer for the best big in the game, who has been playing on a whole different plane since Boogie went down. Watching him was almost worth the pain.

Why did Brad start Morris over Monroe? If Brad was counting on Morris' shooting taking advantage of Okafor's reluctance to come out to the arc the plan was undermined by Morris' 5-14 shooting. If they put Davis on Morris then it's Horford on Okafor and that's tough too. Okafor isn't much on offense, generally, but he is a good defender. Moose would have defended Okafor well, not because he's such a good defender but because Okafor is offensively limited, and he shot well (6-13).

Tatum had a really good game, inside and out. As with most rookies his issue is with consistency. He'll be better with that next year and even better the year after that (assuming Danny doesn't package him, along with the Crown Jewels of England and Russia's Faberge Eggs, for Anthony Davis).

Not happy with the overall effort neither. Ball movement stopped. Our defensive rotations were slow.

E'Twaun Moore, NBA journeyman playing for his 4th team and drafted #55 by the Celtics and traded for Courtney Lee, is now in his 7th year and starting for a playoff-qualified team. Go figure.

12 games left for us and a 6 loss cushion over Cleveland. That says to me our magic # to secure the #2 playoff berth is 7 (12-6 = 6 + 1 to avoid a tie, which I don't know if we win). Right? Kyrie and Jaylen will be back this week. Maybe not for Tuesday's game, almost certainly not for Jaylen, but after that. The restoration of our starting 5 and Cleveland being 5-5 in their last 10 games should get the job done even though our remaining schedule is tough.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400975793


bob


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Always like E'Twaun Moore, thought he was a good shooter and played good defense.

Very disappointing loss.  I believe they won the season series against us.  Despite the players out for the Celtics, it shows again that no ball movement = ineffective offense!

Two thing about Stevens. He continues with something far too long during a game offensively which causes us to get buried and unable to dig ourselves out when we are cold. Get simple points on the board - draw fouls, get 2 points by working the ball in the paint for high % shots, but when you cannot hit 3 pointers and you continue to heave ..............well you know the rest.

He also really has no answers on defense when teams go on a run or a particular players gets too hot.  Good defensive teams know how to shut the tap water off after a 6 - 8 point runs, and not making it 12-14 point run.

Perhaps commit to a defensive strategist during the off season because I think he is weak in that area.

112288

112288 wrote:Always like E'Twaun Moore, thought he was a good shooter and played good defense.

Very disappointing loss.  I believe they won the season series against us.  Despite the players out for the Celtics, it shows again that no ball movement = ineffective offense!

Two thing about Stevens.  He continues with something far too long during a game offensively which causes us to get buried and unable to dig ourselves out when we are cold.  Get simple points on the board - draw fouls, get 2 points by working the ball in the paint for high % shots, but when you cannot hit 3 pointers and you continue to heave ..............well you know the rest.

He also really has no answers on defense when teams go on a run or a particular players gets too hot.  Good defensive teams know how to shut the tap water off after a 6 - 8 point runs, and not making it 12-14 point run.

Perhaps commit to a defensive strategist during the off season because I think he is weak in that area.

112288

112288,

I agree about ball movement.  100%.

As far as defense goes, we still have the #3 defense in the league as far as points/game allowed.   Only Pop's Spurs and the Jazz have better.  As far as fg% defense, we are #1.  We are tied for 2nd with Utah for opponents fgm.  3pt defense?  We're #1.  Our opponents shoot worse from beyond the arc against us than against any other team.  If assists/game are indications of ball and/or player movement then we're #4 in assists given up/game.  Our team defense appears to be quite sound.  Does Brad throw a lot of double-teams at hot players to get the ball out of their hands?  No, not really, but he does switch defenders at them to show them different looks.

Look, you cannot stop a player like Anthony Davis when he is feeling it, the same way Doc couldn't stop DWade when he was young and heated up.  Just as KC Jones couldn't do much to stop Andrew Toney of Philadelphia or Vinnie "the Microwave" Johnson of Detroit when they heated up sometimes you just have to try to slow them down as best as you can and shut out the other players.  And KC knew something about defense.

If you look at the other scorers for the Pelicans last night, besides Davis, you had Cheick Diallo scoring 17 points on 7-9.  He is averaging 4.6ppg on 3.3 fgas/game this season in 10mpg.  He took 9 fgas in 24 minutes last night.  This was a career night for him.  Mirotic had 16 points on 4-12, good defense there, but was 7-9 from the line.  9 ftas was the most for any Pel player.  That's poor individual defense, putting him on the line that much, not poor team defense.


bob


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This type of game is where the Cs really miss Marcus Smart. Smart rarely plays in a game where the Cs
lack so much intensity.

I cannot say that the team would have won last night if Smart had played, but would definitely bet that they would have played with much more effort and enthusiasm.

wideclyde wrote:This type of game is where the Cs really miss Marcus Smart.  Smart rarely plays in a game where the Cs
lack so much intensity.

I cannot say that the team would have won last night if Smart had played, but would definitely bet that they would have played with much more effort and enthusiasm.

Your post Widecycle is interesting.

If Smart is the guy with intensity, perhaps the majority of our players lack intensity which begs the question, should they be moved for a more focused - intense player(s)?

Regarding Bob's comment to my post, your post was fair and accurate to all the stats you pointed out, but somewhere in those stats, there is a disconnect. It would be interesting to do the stats on let's say the top 6-10 teams against us. It would be interesting to see if the % numbers line up.

To me there is an intangible that is missing....I cannot point out specifically but there is something missing despite the 3 players lost to injuries. The intangibles were there prior to the players going down.

112288

112288 wrote:

wideclyde wrote:This type of game is where the Cs really miss Marcus Smart.  Smart rarely plays in a game where the Cs
lack so much intensity.

I cannot say that the team would have won last night if Smart had played, but would definitely bet that they would have played with much more effort and enthusiasm.

Your post Widecycle is interesting.

If Smart is the guy with intensity, perhaps the majority of our players lack intensity which begs the question, should they be moved for a more focused - intense player(s)?

Regarding Bob's comment to my post, your post was fair and accurate to all the stats you pointed out, but somewhere in those stats, there is a disconnect.  It would be interesting to do the stats on let's say the top 6-10 teams against us.  It would be interesting to see if the % numbers line up.  

To me there is an intangible that is missing....I cannot point out specifically but there is something missing despite the 3 players lost to injuries.  The intangibles were there prior to the players going down.

112288

112288,

After 69-70 games every team has played top teams, bottom teams and everybody in between, usually more than once.  So "strength of schedule", which is what you are talking about, is pretty much baked into the stats at this point.  If we have a top defense it's because we have a top defense and not because we've only been playing bad teams and everybody else is playing good ones, or because we've only played a few games and so the stats are based upon a small universe of data points.  The WC has Memphis, Sacramento, Dallas and Phoenix just as we have Atlanta, Orlando, Brooklyn and Chicago.

We were without 2 of our top 3 defenders (Brown and Smart) last night and have been without them for a week or more.  That will make you look worse on both ends of the court.  Brad had to start Yabusele one game.  Nader, whom I like but is our 14th guy, is playing solid rotation minutes after playing a total of only a couple hundred minutes season-to-date before this stretch.  That's how far into the bench we are, we're playing our 14th man like he was our 10th or 11th.  We have to expect some fall off in efficiency, effectiveness and production until the missing players come back (Brown and Kyrie sooner than Smart) and/or until Brad can bring the players who have rarely played all season up to speed.


bob


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Scraping the bottom of your rotation results in a blow out loss for a game you were in until a rookie could not make a free throw.