POST GAME CHARLOTTE - AWAY - BOS 117, CHA 124 Final

Well at least we have Greg Monroe back on the roster!

There is a lot of blame to go around, though hard to know what is really going on in players heads vs what they say in public.  Perhaps the truth will come out at a future date.

The team is less than the sum of its parts.  Usually it is the other way, but not with this team.

Regardless of how we do in the playoffs, I’m hoping come July 1st Kyrie is gone. Kyrie is an exceptional offensive talent, but a leader he ain’t.  The thought of watching and listening to him for five more years is a fate worse than death. (Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit here) I don’t care if we get nothing for him, I’d rather watch a less talented Celtics team play with ganas and Celtics pride.

I for one have less enjoyment watching this team than any other Celtics team with the exception of the Wicks/Rowe abomination.

Before the game Brad told Scal that the coaches are in "evaluation" mode, where they are watching to see who they think can be relied upon to go out and execute without errors.  I've said many times that one of the most valued traits coaches want to see in a player is predictability.  "If I put them in, what will I get?".  Not "hope to get" or "if he plays up to his potential" but bankable performance, because in crunch time that's how coaches make substitution decisions and substitution decisions guide play calling.  Not going to call a play for a player if they're on the bench because the coach has shaky confidence that they'll do their job if they are on the floor, right?  So they call a play for a player on the floor.  Might not be the team's best play, but it's the best play the team has with players who will actually execute it well.  And winning in the playoffs is about execution.

We were up 18, 112-94, with 8 minutes left.  We were outscored 30-5 in the remaining 8.  Both numbers are bad, the 30 points given up in just 8 minutes (that's a 45 point quarter if you extrapolate it out to 12 minutes, and there was no evidence we were slowing them down at all) and the 5 points by us (a 7.5 quarter).  45 isn't a record in today's offense-oriented NBA but 7-8 points might be a record in the post-shot clock NBA.

Here's how we went about only scoring 5 points in 2/3 of a quarter:
Kyrie Irving - 1-5, 0-4 3pt, 1 rebound, 1 TO
Jayson Tatum - 0-4, 0-2 3pt, 1 offensive rebound, 1 defensive rebound
Marcus Morris - 0-2, 0-1 3pt, 1 offensive rebound, 2 defensive rebounds
Marcus Smart - 0-1, 0-1 3pt, 1 assist, 2 TO (both offensive fouls on consecutive possessions)
Jaylen Brown - 1-1, 1-1 3pt, TO, 1 block
Terry Rozier - 0-2, 0-2 3pt
Daniel Theis - nothing
Semi Ojelaye - 0-1
Guerschon Yabusele - 0-1, 1 offensive rebound, 1 steal
Team Turnovers - 1 24 second

2-17 (17%), 1-10 from 3, 5 turnovers.  Kyrie went 3-happy, Tatum just flat-out stunk the joint up, Morris was cold but rebounded (3 rebounds out of a team 7), Smart was a  momentum killing liability and stopped nobody.  Jaylen, and maybe Yabusele, were the only ones that played like they really deserved to be out there.  We are averaging almost 91fgas/game, so 1/4 = 22.75 (23) and 2/3 of that (8 minutes/12 minutes per quarter) = 15-16 fgas in 8 minutes.  So, we were getting up a good number of shots with 17, we just were missing almost all of them.  But 10 of 17 were from 3 and that's too many.  Understandably, towards the end with time running out, we were going to be jacking up more 3s to try to close the gap with minimal possessions but that's a lot.  Kyrie, obviously, was the key culprit.  

However, Kyrie was one of the hot hands that game.  He scored 31 points on 12-22, which is really efficient.  That's over 50% shooting.  By comparison Kemba Walker scored 36 on 11-25, which is 44%.  Kemba hit his in the final 8 minutes and Kyrie didn't, but points are points whenever they are scored and the reason why we were up 18 with 8 left in the first place was because Kyrie had already scored a ton and Kemba was shooting a very poor fg%, which he made up for in those final 8 but had put his team in a hole up to then.  Kyrie ended the game 4-11 from 3 (36.4%), which isn't too bad overall.  He was 4-7 from 3 until those final 8 minutes, so saying "Kyrie shouldn't have taken those 3s" is easy to say if you forget that he was smoking hot 4-7 from 3 up to then.  

The other hot hand was Jaylen Brown.  29 points on 10-13, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, only 1 TO (in the final 8 minutes, unfortunately) and 2 blocks.  He was having a GREAT game.  Talk about "feeding the hot hand", that's what we saw this game with Brown.  Why he didn't get fed more in those last 8, I don't know.

What I do know is that Jayson Tatum's judgment is starting to become increasingly questionable.  He's not only shooting like shit (5-17, 29%, in this game) but his shot selection is getting worse.  His 2-7 from 3, 28%, is an improvement over the 25.8% he has shot from 3 over the last 10 games.  To say he has been struggling since the All-Star game, where he won the Skills Challenge and basked in the media limelight, is like saying Sisyphus has an uphill job ahead of him.  Why is a player who is having an awful shooting night taking almost 1/4 of the team's 17 fgas?  And they were bad shots too, mostly.  He blew a bunny and an open corner 3, but I seem to remember the rest were wild, off-balance shots that were unnecessary.  Brad played him 37 minutes.  I know we were short-handed but I don't see where playing an ineffective player for that many minutes is good coaching.

If NOP wants one of the J's for Davis, and they most certainly will, I am at odds as to which I'd rather they get.  Now that Jaylen Brown is healthy he is starting to put together a nice string of games.  Granted some of it is him feasting on the other team's 2nd unit, but he plays against starters a lot too.  Tatum starts vs the harder starting 5 of the other team, but he has not been doing well this year.  He certainly has not had a big step up in this, his 2nd year.  Apples and oranges?  Brown shining against 6-10 while Tatum struggling against 1-5?  Maybe, but that's where we're at.

Morris, overall, was generally effective.  15 points on 6-13, 3-5 from 3 and 9 rebounds, 4 assists.  That's not too shabby.  He was cold in those last 8, but he only took 2fgas, as opposed to Tatum who took 4 with the same results to show for them.  In a game where we were without Baynes and Horford and, in just 10 minutes, without Williams we needed someone to step up and board and Morris did that at least.

The other Marcus, Smart, had an old Marcus Smart offensive night, and that was a problem.  2-10.  Just when you thought he was fixed.  Between him and Jayson Tatum they were a combined 7-27 (26%).  27 fgas = 29% of the Celtics' total fgas.  If you are responsible for close to 1/3 of the team's fgas you cannot shoot that poorly and expect to win.  ZERO shot conscience by BOTH of those players.  Just chucking up shots hoping that eventually they'll hit one and turn their slump around.  How about some layups, guys?  Smart tried to play some bully ball in the final 8 but 2 flops in a row foiled that effort.  Tatum?  He only took 5 shots in the paint all night.  1-3 at the rim (missed a tip shot on an offensive rebound in the final , hit a 13' floater and had a shot blocked from 9' away by 6'5" Jeremy Lamb in the 2nd.  With Nicolas Batum out who on that team has the defensive bona fides to have been able to guard Jayson?  He should have feasted.

The Time Lord with his first NBA start and he looked good, right up to the point where he fell flat on his coccyx.  Guaranteed that hurts today.  He didn't land on the cushion of his ass, however bony it may be, he fell straight down with his body almost horizontal.  In his 10 minutes he was 1-2 (the miss was his spectacularly athletic attempted putback which put him on his back), 3 rebounds and 2 blocks and, much more importantly, I didn't see too many blown defensive rotations.  I saw one, on a pnr, but otherwise he was pretty good.

Semi and Yabby with very good games off the bench by two players who never get off the bench.  That shows good work effort by them, they were ready for their minutes whenever they came.

Fritos were an issue, again.  We took 15 and they took 28.  It's hard to win when two of your starters take almost 30% of your fgas and shoot under 30%.  It is also hard to win when your opponents almost double you up in frito attempts.  We were 10-15 (Brown 4-7, so almost half the attempts but a poor ftm%, as we've sadly come to expect from him) while they were 22-28.  That's 12 more points for them from the line.  Some of that was their better percentage but, even if they shot the same ft% as us, there's their win for them (28 ftas X .6667 (our ft%) = 18.67 points vs our 10.  We lost by 7).  I realize we were ridiculously short on bigs with Horford and Baynes out, and Williams going down for the game after just 10 minutes, but still...I honestly don't know what to say about fritos.  We took too many 3s perhaps, we took 43 out of 93 fgas, but we shot a very healthy 44% on them.  Is 43 3pt fgas too many if you're shooting 44% on them?  Consider that, without depth at big, what choice did we have?  We outran them, 17 fast break points vs 11 for them, and we outshot them from 3.  Isn't that what a team that is forced to play small because of injuries have to do?  Monroe can't suit up fast enough.  He isn't much on defense but he can rebound and he is a load-and-a-half under the boards on offense.  A clever passing big too.  Double him and he'll pass out and we are still one of the elite teams in the NBA on catch-and-shoot plays.  Don't double him and he is a moose on the loose underneath.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071760


bob


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