Re: Celtics Pre-Season Thread

[dboss]

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if flat world and rabbit ears will be playing.

[dboss]

Wonder why some teams play 3 games but only 2 for Boston.

[bobheckler]

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
4 minutes ago
The Celtics’ 12/15 preseason game sv. Philly will be on TNT at 7:30 pm ET and the 12/18 preseason game against the Nets has been moved to ESPN2 at 8 pm ET, the league announced.


Bob


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[bobheckler]

Bob


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[dboss]

Thanks for the info.

[Ktron]

Thanks for sharing.  I wonder if flat world and rabbit ears will be playing.

The nets signed Will Smith?

[dboss]

Thanks for sharing.  I wonder if flat world and rabbit ears will be playing.

The nets signed Will Smith?

[bobheckler]

https://nesn.com/2020/12/20-random-celtics-thoughts-takes-ahead-of-2020-21-nba-season/



20 Random Celtics Thoughts, Takes Ahead Of 2020-21 NBA Season


We're putting all our random C's musings in one spot


by Logan Mullen

4 hours ago



In just over two weeks, the Boston Celtics will be playing regular season games.

Wild stuff — exciting, but wild.

There are plenty of storylines and whatnot to monitor, so we tossed 20 musings — some takes, others thoughts and even a few pieces of analysis — below.

Here we go:

— It’s hard not to worry about the long-term health of Kemba Walker’s knee.

He’s insistent that, despite taking things slow, his knee feels fine and the stem cell injection he got has him in a good spot. But knee issues tend to become chronic for NBA players, and Walker’s entering that stage in his career when knee troubles are something he might have to live with.

Even when he returns to game action, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not until the postseason that he plays without some sort of restriction.

— Somewhat related: One area where the loss of Gordon Hayward will be felt is ball-handling. In Brad Stevens’ mostly position-less system, Hayward on occasion would run point with Walker and Smart sitting.

Now, the Celtics really don’t really have a wing player that does that. Not the most detrimental thing, but one less skill Stevens has to work with.

— Jeff Teague should be an upgrade over Brad Wanamaker, but we should go easy on the revisionist history about what Wanamaker was in Boston: a suitable reserve point guard. His play was reliable if a little clunky at times, but he provided some stability and did a fine job in Orlando.

— It seems unlikely the Celtics will use the trade exception from the Gordon Hayward deal this season unless it’s in small pieces. They’re hard-capped at $19 million thanks to the Tristan Thompson contract, meaning they would have to move money to use the full $28 million-plus they have from the TPE in a single move.

— Translation: If the Celtics were to make a move for an impact player that would cost nearly the full trade exception value, either Thompson and a cheaper player, or Smart alone likely will have to go in the deal to make the money work.

— Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year. The truth of the matter is the Celtics didn’t upgrade their shooting off the bench in free agency, leaving Nesmith and Carsen Edwards as the likely candidates for a perimeter sparkplug role.

Make no mistake, Nesmith is a great shooter, but finding a rhythm in the NBA is a hurdle for some guys, and he’s basically being asked to fix woes that have plagued Boston for literal years. If he doesn’t fare well, he’s going to hear it.

— We’re curious to see if the Celtics, following the addition of Thompson, occasionally try to be the antithesis of the smallball Houston Rockets from last season.

Here us out: What if they ran a rotation that played Theis, Thompson and maybe even Grant Williams at the same time. Stevens historically has not been afraid to go small, maybe he’ll get nuts and try to go big.

Probably not though.

— With regards to Thompson, here’s to hoping Stevens uses him better than he did Enes Kanter. Sure, Kanter is far more of a defensive liability than Thompson, but it did get perplexing that Stevens basically relegated Kanter to a depth bench role.

We’re sure Thompson’s defensive ability will keep him in the game more often, but we suppose this is more of a point that Stevens didn’t use Kanter enough.

— The Celtics largely ducked a murderers row of matchups at any point in the portion of the schedule that has been released, but their West Coast trip will be brutal.

Five games, all in different cities, between Feb. 2 and Feb. 9. Woof. And, of course, all tip off at 10 p.m. ET.

— Thompson does already have the makings of a fan favorite. For one, the Celtics haven’t had many reliable big men since Kevin Garnett was traded, and the edge with which Thompson plays all but certainly will endear himself to fans.

If nothing else, he struck the right chord with his first press conference.

— A little bit has been made about the Kardashian connection to Thompson, but if memory serves correctly, that wasn’t a massive distraction when Kris Humphries was in Boston.

Maybe that was because Humphries already was divorced from Kim Kardashian by the time he arrived in Boston, and that was at a pretty low point for the Celtics and interest in them. But we don’t think we’ll be dealing with a flood of Kardashian-Celtics news.

— Which youngster will have the biggest impact: Nesmith, Peyton Pritchard, Carsen Edwards or Romeo Langford?

Has to be Langford or Nesmith, right? We’ll go with the latter since the former’s health status is uncertain.

— It’s challenging to even venture a guess as to what the in-season trade market will look like. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus, it seems like teams might be wary of swinging big deals if there’s looming potential of the season getting shut down at any point.

That might be far-fetched, but the Major League Baseball and NFL deadlines, though somewhat active, weren’t wild. Maybe — maybe — the NBA will follow suit.

— Amid talk of NHL teams kicking around the idea of playing outside, we can’t help but wonder if NBA teams would do the same so that fans can attend games. Obviously, basketball outdoors in the winter is not feasible for a chunk of NBA cities, Boston included.

Nevertheless, it’s a fun idea to think about. And lest we forget the Celtics and Red Sox did entertain having a C’s game at Fenway Park back in 2016.

— Purely for the purposes of reigniting/creating rivalries, it’s nice to see so many two-game series on the schedule for the Celtics (and everyone else).

Since things fizzled out between the Celtics and Washington Wizards, it’s felt like there hasn’t been much bad blood between the Celtics and anyone. The 76ers probably would be the closest, but the Celtics just have been so much better than them the last couple years. It would be nice if that changed.

— We’ll be honest, we couldn’t believe that the league just rolled out the schedule as normal with respect to travel. Not that you’re any safer from COVID-19 by flying from Boston to New York as opposed to Boston to Salt Lake City, but it feels like the significant amount of travel and city-hopping is walking under ladders for a league trying to prevent outbreaks.

— By all accounts, Tacko Fall has shown improvement, and because of the change in rules for two-way players (more on that here), we could see a lot more of him.

It would be a real asset for the Celtics if Fall proves he can actually hold up as a depth center in the NBA. The possibilities with which Stevens could use him situationally, which he sometimes did last season, are tantalizing.

— Who knows if he even makes the roster out of camp, but Javonte Green should get more minutes. Maybe injuries and offseason departures give him opportunities early on, but he is an incredibly fun player to watch, and rarely has he botched an opportunity to make an impact when he does get into games.

— Some predictions. Jayson Tatum makes second team All-NBA, but the void left behind by Hayward doesn’t result in a vastly improved Jaylen Brown. He’s a fine player, sure, but we just don’t see him hitting the All-Star level.

Another guess is Smart finally wins Defensive Player of the Year. The East has gotten so much better, and he’s going to have tough matchups pretty much every night. If he continues to play sound defense there’s no reason he shouldn’t be firmly in the running for that honor.

Our East standings predictions: Bucks, Nets, Heat, 76ers Celtics, Raptors, Pacers, Bulls, Wizards, Hawks, Hornets, Magic, Pistons, Knicks, Cavs. Third straight year of predicting Chicago will make the postseason. Now under competent leadership, maybe that’ll finally happen.

— Breaking the rule about writing in first person here, but earlier this week I wrote, and was roundly criticized for, saying that the Celtics aren’t legitimate title contenders and that they got worse. I do genuinely believe that, and some of it is because teams, like the Nets, just got better in the offseason — even if it was because they are getting injured players back.

The loss of Hayward is going to hurt. And Teague is a nice player but at this point in his career he isn’t boat-racing Wanamaker in talent. Thompson is an upgrade over Kanter for sure, but the Celtics did little to upgrade their bench and they lost a genuinely good player in Hayward — even if he didn’t live up to his contract.

Boston definitely didn’t get better, and I do believe on paper they are worse now.

That said, the “fire Danny Ainge” takes are absurd. Notions that he bungled the Hayward sign-and-trade talks with the Pacers seem overstated, and he did what he could with limited salary cap flexibility.

Was it his finest work? No. Should more trades have been swung? Maybe. But we should all stop way short of saying he should be fired. That would set the Celtics back a ways.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Regarding his take on the pressure of being Aaron Nesmith ("Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year.") I would have to say the same about Payton Pritchard.  With Kemba out and Gordon gone, if we're thin on ballhandlers, then Teague and Smart will need someone else.  That can be Pritchard.  It can also be Waters, and he has a year of experience in Brad's system that Pritchard doesn't, but that's a lot of pressure on either of them.  Nesmith has pressure, sure, but telling a shooter he needs to shoot isn't that hard.  Shooting is not only a learnable skill, which he has already learned, but it's also eminently translatable to the NBA.  In fact it's one of the most easily transferrable skills from college.  Putting the ball in Pritchard's hands and telling him to distribute it, with no summer league and an abbreviated preseason, is a gargantuan request.

Is it really that perplexing that Kanter got buried on the bench?  Did this guy not watch his pnr defense?  I've forced my way through turnstiles that put up more resistance.

I think Javonte Green has been the forgotten, and underappreciated, Celtic.  He's a veteran, both internationally and NBA.  He has always looked good when he has been on the court, I wondered myself last year why Brad didn't play him more, but maybe that's just "The Brad Way".  He didn't play Theis a lot his first year but started him the next, he barely let Wanny off the bench in his first year and then gave him solid rotation minutes in the next, maybe Javonte has earned his minutes in Brad's view now.  That would take pressure off of Nesmith.

Throwing kiddies to the wolves, where they get their brains beat in by veteran benches night-after-night, is not a good teaching environment. This puts pressure on the 2nd year Celtic players like Grant and Javonte and even Edwards, more than on the rooks, I think. Every day that goes by that Carsen Edwards doesn't prove he belongs is another day closer to when Payton Pritchard's learning curve begins to flatten out, and that's the end of the road for Carsen if he isn't already established as someone Brad feels comfortable inserting.


.

[cowens/oldschool]

This guy is an idiot

[bobheckler]

https://www.nba.com/celtics/news/sidebar/misc-120520-crash-course-is-on-for-cs-as-they-manage-unusual-camp-circumstances







Crash Course Is On For C's As They Manage Unusual Camp Circumstances


By Marc D'Amico |  @Marc_DAmico
Celtics.com
December 5, 2020



BOSTON – The Boston Celtics are two days into the most unique training camp in the history of their franchise.

Full-team workouts began Friday, just 19 days before the team’s first regular-season game is scheduled to be played. The brief period between those two dates, coupled with a condensed draft and free-agency period, has in essence eliminated preparation for training camp. These players are learning the system and each other in real time.

“This is really the first few days together,” Brad Stevens said following Saturday’s practice, Boston’s second of the season. “We’ll proceed at the right pace. We’re balancing that newness with the need to get prepped quickly.”

Attempting to balance, that is. Doing so is an inexact science, as Stevens has quickly learned over the past two days.

“I’ve seen Jeff Teague look over at me a couple of times like, ‘What’s that?’” Stevens said of the veteran point guard, who joined Boston this week as a free agent. “Because you’re calling things that you’ve done before, really on the fly, right?”

Right. And that’s just fine for Boston’s 13 returning players, but for the four who just joined the team within the last two-plus weeks, this training camp is nothing short of a crash course for the season.

Teague and Thompson, Boston’s two free-agent acquisitions, just signed their contracts Monday afternoon – one day before practice facilities around the league opened for the official ‘start’ of the NBA season. For perspective, free-agent signings typically occur at the start of July, giving players about three months to learn their new team’s playbook and schemes before camp begins.

A similar timeline is normally afforded to rookies, along with the ability to participate in Summer League following a late-June Draft. However, Boston’s rookies, Aaron Nesmith and Payton Pritchard, were drafted Nov. 17 – only two weeks before the practice facility opened – and they had no Summer League experience to help them along.

That lack of preparation time and experience has put the newcomers behind the proverbial eight-ball for the start of their first camp with their new team.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” Grant Williams, who is entering his second season, acknowledged. “I think it’s something every team is going to face – establishing a whole new playbook for guys who were on different teams.”

Two of Boston’s newcomers, Teague and Tristan Thompson, are learning the playbook in very different ways.

Teague has been thrown into the fire at the start of camp. He is stepping in as the starting point guard while Kemba Walker recovers from an offseason procedure on his left knee. As such, Teague is almost certainly getting most, if not all, of the first-team reps at point guard.

Thompson, meanwhile, is sidelined with a minor hamstring strain, so he is learning through his eyes and ears on the sideline.

Williams did comment that both Teague and Thompson are “very intelligent guys,” so that is helping their cause as they learn Boston’s system on the fly.

Nesmith and Pritchard have also received positive feedback on how they’ve handled the start of camp. Stevens said that they are “sharp guys” who he thinks will “adjust as quickly as possible.”

Pritchard said Saturday that while this process has been challenging for him, he’s relying on his experience and work ethic to push him through the adversity.

“It’s definitely difficult, because you’ve got to come in, you’ve got to learn the playbook right away, you’ve got to learn the defensive schemes,” he said. “But for me, experiencing what I went through in college and picking up things like that (helped me).”

He continued, “I just try to pick up things right away. Tried to get the playbook down before practice started, defensive schemes and all that. So I kinda had my mind wrapped around it before I even started.”

Pritchard might think his mind is wrapped around the playbook, but that might change once games arrive. As Stevens pointed out, playing in a live NBA game is another animal compared to working out during Day 2 of training camp.

“I’ve been impressed in the first couple of days of work with our guys,” Stevens said of the rookies, “but it’s a whole different thing once you get to the regular season.”

Which, we’ll remind you, is coming at the Celtics faster than it ever has before.

This schedule isn’t going to slow down for anyone. Training camp opened Friday. A preseason game looms 10 days from now. A regular-season game looms 18 days from now.

The crash course is officially on.


Bob
MY NOTE:  "13 returning players"?  Kemba, Tatum, Brown, Smart, Theis, GWill, RWill, Green, Semi, Romeo, Edwards, Waters, Tacko.  Of those 13 players two aren't going to be playing for a month and another two are two-way players who won't be playing much either.  That takes us down to 9.  Three of those 9 are 2nd year players (Grant, Green and Edwards), and only one of those three got regular minutes last year and is almost certain to get regular minutes this year.  The 2nd most played player of those four is Green, but he only got 468 minutes last season total.  That only leaves 6 little indians (Tatum, Brown, Smart, Theis, RWill and Semi).  Semi got fewer minutes last year than GWill and Robert Williams got fewer minutes than Javonte Green (468 vs 388).  

My purpose here is to highlight just how young we are.  This is ridiculous and, to be honest, I do blame Danny some for this.  We were too young last year and we're even younger now.  We are where we are because of Danny's obsession with hoarding draft picks, draft picks which didn't end up as valuable as he thought.  That's why he couldn't package them for a veteran player or for moving up in the draft.


.

[Ktron]

https://nesn.com/2020/12/20-random-celtics-thoughts-takes-ahead-of-2020-21-nba-season/



20 Random Celtics Thoughts, Takes Ahead Of 2020-21 NBA Season


We're putting all our random C's musings in one spot


by Logan Mullen

4 hours ago



In just over two weeks, the Boston Celtics will be playing regular season games.

Wild stuff — exciting, but wild.

There are plenty of storylines and whatnot to monitor, so we tossed 20 musings — some takes, others thoughts and even a few pieces of analysis — below.

Here we go:

— It’s hard not to worry about the long-term health of Kemba Walker’s knee.

He’s insistent that, despite taking things slow, his knee feels fine and the stem cell injection he got has him in a good spot. But knee issues tend to become chronic for NBA players, and Walker’s entering that stage in his career when knee troubles are something he might have to live with.

Even when he returns to game action, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not until the postseason that he plays without some sort of restriction.

— Somewhat related: One area where the loss of Gordon Hayward will be felt is ball-handling. In Brad Stevens’ mostly position-less system, Hayward on occasion would run point with Walker and Smart sitting.

Now, the Celtics really don’t really have a wing player that does that. Not the most detrimental thing, but one less skill Stevens has to work with.

— Jeff Teague should be an upgrade over Brad Wanamaker, but we should go easy on the revisionist history about what Wanamaker was in Boston: a suitable reserve point guard. His play was reliable if a little clunky at times, but he provided some stability and did a fine job in Orlando.

— It seems unlikely the Celtics will use the trade exception from the Gordon Hayward deal this season unless it’s in small pieces. They’re hard-capped at $19 million thanks to the Tristan Thompson contract, meaning they would have to move money to use the full $28 million-plus they have from the TPE in a single move.

— Translation: If the Celtics were to make a move for an impact player that would cost nearly the full trade exception value, either Thompson and a cheaper player, or Smart alone likely will have to go in the deal to make the money work.

— Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year. The truth of the matter is the Celtics didn’t upgrade their shooting off the bench in free agency, leaving Nesmith and Carsen Edwards as the likely candidates for a perimeter sparkplug role.

Make no mistake, Nesmith is a great shooter, but finding a rhythm in the NBA is a hurdle for some guys, and he’s basically being asked to fix woes that have plagued Boston for literal years. If he doesn’t fare well, he’s going to hear it.

— We’re curious to see if the Celtics, following the addition of Thompson, occasionally try to be the antithesis of the smallball Houston Rockets from last season.

Here us out: What if they ran a rotation that played Theis, Thompson and maybe even Grant Williams at the same time. Stevens historically has not been afraid to go small, maybe he’ll get nuts and try to go big.

Probably not though.

— With regards to Thompson, here’s to hoping Stevens uses him better than he did Enes Kanter. Sure, Kanter is far more of a defensive liability than Thompson, but it did get perplexing that Stevens basically relegated Kanter to a depth bench role.

We’re sure Thompson’s defensive ability will keep him in the game more often, but we suppose this is more of a point that Stevens didn’t use Kanter enough.

— The Celtics largely ducked a murderers row of matchups at any point in the portion of the schedule that has been released, but their West Coast trip will be brutal.

Five games, all in different cities, between Feb. 2 and Feb. 9. Woof. And, of course, all tip off at 10 p.m. ET.

— Thompson does already have the makings of a fan favorite. For one, the Celtics haven’t had many reliable big men since Kevin Garnett was traded, and the edge with which Thompson plays all but certainly will endear himself to fans.

If nothing else, he struck the right chord with his first press conference.

— A little bit has been made about the Kardashian connection to Thompson, but if memory serves correctly, that wasn’t a massive distraction when Kris Humphries was in Boston.

Maybe that was because Humphries already was divorced from Kim Kardashian by the time he arrived in Boston, and that was at a pretty low point for the Celtics and interest in them. But we don’t think we’ll be dealing with a flood of Kardashian-Celtics news.

— Which youngster will have the biggest impact: Nesmith, Peyton Pritchard, Carsen Edwards or Romeo Langford?

Has to be Langford or Nesmith, right? We’ll go with the latter since the former’s health status is uncertain.

— It’s challenging to even venture a guess as to what the in-season trade market will look like. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus, it seems like teams might be wary of swinging big deals if there’s looming potential of the season getting shut down at any point.

That might be far-fetched, but the Major League Baseball and NFL deadlines, though somewhat active, weren’t wild. Maybe — maybe — the NBA will follow suit.

— Amid talk of NHL teams kicking around the idea of playing outside, we can’t help but wonder if NBA teams would do the same so that fans can attend games. Obviously, basketball outdoors in the winter is not feasible for a chunk of NBA cities, Boston included.

Nevertheless, it’s a fun idea to think about. And lest we forget the Celtics and Red Sox did entertain having a C’s game at Fenway Park back in 2016.

— Purely for the purposes of reigniting/creating rivalries, it’s nice to see so many two-game series on the schedule for the Celtics (and everyone else).

Since things fizzled out between the Celtics and Washington Wizards, it’s felt like there hasn’t been much bad blood between the Celtics and anyone. The 76ers probably would be the closest, but the Celtics just have been so much better than them the last couple years. It would be nice if that changed.

— We’ll be honest, we couldn’t believe that the league just rolled out the schedule as normal with respect to travel. Not that you’re any safer from COVID-19 by flying from Boston to New York as opposed to Boston to Salt Lake City, but it feels like the significant amount of travel and city-hopping is walking under ladders for a league trying to prevent outbreaks.

— By all accounts, Tacko Fall has shown improvement, and because of the change in rules for two-way players (more on that here), we could see a lot more of him.

It would be a real asset for the Celtics if Fall proves he can actually hold up as a depth center in the NBA. The possibilities with which Stevens could use him situationally, which he sometimes did last season, are tantalizing.

— Who knows if he even makes the roster out of camp, but Javonte Green should get more minutes. Maybe injuries and offseason departures give him opportunities early on, but he is an incredibly fun player to watch, and rarely has he botched an opportunity to make an impact when he does get into games.

— Some predictions. Jayson Tatum makes second team All-NBA, but the void left behind by Hayward doesn’t result in a vastly improved Jaylen Brown. He’s a fine player, sure, but we just don’t see him hitting the All-Star level.

Another guess is Smart finally wins Defensive Player of the Year. The East has gotten so much better, and he’s going to have tough matchups pretty much every night. If he continues to play sound defense there’s no reason he shouldn’t be firmly in the running for that honor.

Our East standings predictions: Bucks, Nets, Heat, 76ers Celtics, Raptors, Pacers, Bulls, Wizards, Hawks, Hornets, Magic, Pistons, Knicks, Cavs. Third straight year of predicting Chicago will make the postseason. Now under competent leadership, maybe that’ll finally happen.

— Breaking the rule about writing in first person here, but earlier this week I wrote, and was roundly criticized for, saying that the Celtics aren’t legitimate title contenders and that they got worse. I do genuinely believe that, and some of it is because teams, like the Nets, just got better in the offseason — even if it was because they are getting injured players back.

The loss of Hayward is going to hurt. And Teague is a nice player but at this point in his career he isn’t boat-racing Wanamaker in talent. Thompson is an upgrade over Kanter for sure, but the Celtics did little to upgrade their bench and they lost a genuinely good player in Hayward — even if he didn’t live up to his contract.

Boston definitely didn’t get better, and I do believe on paper they are worse now.

That said, the “fire Danny Ainge” takes are absurd. Notions that he bungled the Hayward sign-and-trade talks with the Pacers seem overstated, and he did what he could with limited salary cap flexibility.

Was it his finest work? No. Should more trades have been swung? Maybe. But we should all stop way short of saying he should be fired. That would set the Celtics back a ways.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Regarding his take on the pressure of being Aaron Nesmith ("Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year.") I would have to say the same about Payton Pritchard.  With Kemba out and Gordon gone, if we're thin on ballhandlers, then Teague and Smart will need someone else.  That can be Pritchard.  It can also be Waters, and he has a year of experience in Brad's system that Pritchard doesn't, but that's a lot of pressure on either of them.  Nesmith has pressure, sure, but telling a shooter he needs to shoot isn't that hard.  Shooting is not only a learnable skill, which he has already learned, but it's also eminently translatable to the NBA.  In fact it's one of the most easily transferrable skills from college.  Putting the ball in Pritchard's hands and telling him to distribute it, with no summer league and an abbreviated preseason, is a gargantuan request.

Is it really that perplexing that Kanter got buried on the bench?  Did this guy not watch his pnr defense?  I've forced my way through turnstiles that put up more resistance.

I think Javonte Green has been the forgotten, and underappreciated, Celtic.  He's a veteran, both internationally and NBA.  He has always looked good when he has been on the court, I wondered myself last year why Brad didn't play him more, but maybe that's just "The Brad Way".  He didn't play Theis a lot his first year but started him the next, he barely let Wanny off the bench in his first year and then gave him solid rotation minutes in the next, maybe Javonte has earned his minutes in Brad's view now.  That would take pressure off of Nesmith.

Throwing kiddies to the wolves, where they get their brains beat in by veteran benches night-after-night, is not a good teaching environment.  This puts pressure on the 2nd year Celtic players like Grant and Javonte and even Edwards, more than on the rooks, I think.  Every day that goes by that Carsen Edwards doesn't prove he belongs is another day closer to when Payton Pritchard's learning curve begins to flatten out, and that's the end of the road for Carsen if he isn't already established as someone Brad feels comfortable inserting.


.

Sign I.T.. Find a way to get it Done Danny. Just like your dumb ass did when you gave Carson that ridiculous contract after a great pre-season game against Cleveland.

[worcester]

This guy is an idiot

He ranks the Celtics fifth in the East. He doesn't think Jaylen can be an All Star. He thinks Nesmith won't enjoy thge opportunity to play. Yes, Cow, he is an idiot.

[dboss]

A lot to unpack.

Could the Heat have beaten us if Butler was running on a bum ankle like Gh and  Dragic had a sore knee like Kemba?

Hell no.  If you follow that conclusion and bring it forward you should feel pretty damn good about the Celtics.  

They had 3 obvious needs going into the off season at center, PG and scoring off the bench.  Two of those needs were addressed.  We are stronger at center and we have more quality depth at PG.   Last year we added 7 rookies to the team including 4 draftees, plus 2 guys played overseas and an undrafted undeveloped center.   We also added a center that we knew was a very poor defender in Kanter.  With that team, we made it to the ECF, warts and all.

We may not like to depend on young guys stepping up but it has been the young guys stepping up that has had an impact on us getting to 3 EFC in 4 years.

Danny threw darts at the wall last year and in the process ignored too much relevant profile dynamics of the players he brought in.  This was especially the case with his draft selections.

I ripped into Danny about his draft last year because college stats told us this::

Grant Williams 56% FG  32.6% 3PFG

Romeo Langford  44.8% FG, 27..2% 3PFG

Tremont Waters 42% FG, 32.7% 3PFG

Carsen Edwards  39% FG, 35.5% 3PFG

This year you have:

Aaron Nesmith 50% FG, 52.2% 3PFG
Peyton Pritchard 46.5% FG, 41.5% 3PFG

There is nothing wrong with too many young players on your team but there is something wrong when you draft too many young players that cannot shoot a lick.

I have a feeling Boston will not be finishing in the middle of the pack.   Our defense alone puts us in the top 3 and if our two rookies are as advertised we will get solid production from the bench to go alone with solid play at center and PG we can battle for the top spot with the Bucks.

The Jays are probably going to be even better.

[Ktron]

https://nesn.com/2020/12/20-random-celtics-thoughts-takes-ahead-of-2020-21-nba-season/



20 Random Celtics Thoughts, Takes Ahead Of 2020-21 NBA Season


We're putting all our random C's musings in one spot


by Logan Mullen

4 hours ago



In just over two weeks, the Boston Celtics will be playing regular season games.

Wild stuff — exciting, but wild.

There are plenty of storylines and whatnot to monitor, so we tossed 20 musings — some takes, others thoughts and even a few pieces of analysis — below.

Here we go:

— It’s hard not to worry about the long-term health of Kemba Walker’s knee.

He’s insistent that, despite taking things slow, his knee feels fine and the stem cell injection he got has him in a good spot. But knee issues tend to become chronic for NBA players, and Walker’s entering that stage in his career when knee troubles are something he might have to live with.

Even when he returns to game action, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not until the postseason that he plays without some sort of restriction.

— Somewhat related: One area where the loss of Gordon Hayward will be felt is ball-handling. In Brad Stevens’ mostly position-less system, Hayward on occasion would run point with Walker and Smart sitting.

Now, the Celtics really don’t really have a wing player that does that. Not the most detrimental thing, but one less skill Stevens has to work with.

— Jeff Teague should be an upgrade over Brad Wanamaker, but we should go easy on the revisionist history about what Wanamaker was in Boston: a suitable reserve point guard. His play was reliable if a little clunky at times, but he provided some stability and did a fine job in Orlando.

— It seems unlikely the Celtics will use the trade exception from the Gordon Hayward deal this season unless it’s in small pieces. They’re hard-capped at $19 million thanks to the Tristan Thompson contract, meaning they would have to move money to use the full $28 million-plus they have from the TPE in a single move.

— Translation: If the Celtics were to make a move for an impact player that would cost nearly the full trade exception value, either Thompson and a cheaper player, or Smart alone likely will have to go in the deal to make the money work.

— Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year. The truth of the matter is the Celtics didn’t upgrade their shooting off the bench in free agency, leaving Nesmith and Carsen Edwards as the likely candidates for a perimeter sparkplug role.

Make no mistake, Nesmith is a great shooter, but finding a rhythm in the NBA is a hurdle for some guys, and he’s basically being asked to fix woes that have plagued Boston for literal years. If he doesn’t fare well, he’s going to hear it.

— We’re curious to see if the Celtics, following the addition of Thompson, occasionally try to be the antithesis of the smallball Houston Rockets from last season.

Here us out: What if they ran a rotation that played Theis, Thompson and maybe even Grant Williams at the same time. Stevens historically has not been afraid to go small, maybe he’ll get nuts and try to go big.

Probably not though.

— With regards to Thompson, here’s to hoping Stevens uses him better than he did Enes Kanter. Sure, Kanter is far more of a defensive liability than Thompson, but it did get perplexing that Stevens basically relegated Kanter to a depth bench role.

We’re sure Thompson’s defensive ability will keep him in the game more often, but we suppose this is more of a point that Stevens didn’t use Kanter enough.

— The Celtics largely ducked a murderers row of matchups at any point in the portion of the schedule that has been released, but their West Coast trip will be brutal.

Five games, all in different cities, between Feb. 2 and Feb. 9. Woof. And, of course, all tip off at 10 p.m. ET.

— Thompson does already have the makings of a fan favorite. For one, the Celtics haven’t had many reliable big men since Kevin Garnett was traded, and the edge with which Thompson plays all but certainly will endear himself to fans.

If nothing else, he struck the right chord with his first press conference.

— A little bit has been made about the Kardashian connection to Thompson, but if memory serves correctly, that wasn’t a massive distraction when Kris Humphries was in Boston.

Maybe that was because Humphries already was divorced from Kim Kardashian by the time he arrived in Boston, and that was at a pretty low point for the Celtics and interest in them. But we don’t think we’ll be dealing with a flood of Kardashian-Celtics news.

— Which youngster will have the biggest impact: Nesmith, Peyton Pritchard, Carsen Edwards or Romeo Langford?

Has to be Langford or Nesmith, right? We’ll go with the latter since the former’s health status is uncertain.

— It’s challenging to even venture a guess as to what the in-season trade market will look like. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus, it seems like teams might be wary of swinging big deals if there’s looming potential of the season getting shut down at any point.

That might be far-fetched, but the Major League Baseball and NFL deadlines, though somewhat active, weren’t wild. Maybe — maybe — the NBA will follow suit.

— Amid talk of NHL teams kicking around the idea of playing outside, we can’t help but wonder if NBA teams would do the same so that fans can attend games. Obviously, basketball outdoors in the winter is not feasible for a chunk of NBA cities, Boston included.

Nevertheless, it’s a fun idea to think about. And lest we forget the Celtics and Red Sox did entertain having a C’s game at Fenway Park back in 2016.

— Purely for the purposes of reigniting/creating rivalries, it’s nice to see so many two-game series on the schedule for the Celtics (and everyone else).

Since things fizzled out between the Celtics and Washington Wizards, it’s felt like there hasn’t been much bad blood between the Celtics and anyone. The 76ers probably would be the closest, but the Celtics just have been so much better than them the last couple years. It would be nice if that changed.

— We’ll be honest, we couldn’t believe that the league just rolled out the schedule as normal with respect to travel. Not that you’re any safer from COVID-19 by flying from Boston to New York as opposed to Boston to Salt Lake City, but it feels like the significant amount of travel and city-hopping is walking under ladders for a league trying to prevent outbreaks.

— By all accounts, Tacko Fall has shown improvement, and because of the change in rules for two-way players (more on that here), we could see a lot more of him.

It would be a real asset for the Celtics if Fall proves he can actually hold up as a depth center in the NBA. The possibilities with which Stevens could use him situationally, which he sometimes did last season, are tantalizing.

— Who knows if he even makes the roster out of camp, but Javonte Green should get more minutes. Maybe injuries and offseason departures give him opportunities early on, but he is an incredibly fun player to watch, and rarely has he botched an opportunity to make an impact when he does get into games.

— Some predictions. Jayson Tatum makes second team All-NBA, but the void left behind by Hayward doesn’t result in a vastly improved Jaylen Brown. He’s a fine player, sure, but we just don’t see him hitting the All-Star level.

Another guess is Smart finally wins Defensive Player of the Year. The East has gotten so much better, and he’s going to have tough matchups pretty much every night. If he continues to play sound defense there’s no reason he shouldn’t be firmly in the running for that honor.

Our East standings predictions: Bucks, Nets, Heat, 76ers Celtics, Raptors, Pacers, Bulls, Wizards, Hawks, Hornets, Magic, Pistons, Knicks, Cavs. Third straight year of predicting Chicago will make the postseason. Now under competent leadership, maybe that’ll finally happen.

— Breaking the rule about writing in first person here, but earlier this week I wrote, and was roundly criticized for, saying that the Celtics aren’t legitimate title contenders and that they got worse. I do genuinely believe that, and some of it is because teams, like the Nets, just got better in the offseason — even if it was because they are getting injured players back.

The loss of Hayward is going to hurt. And Teague is a nice player but at this point in his career he isn’t boat-racing Wanamaker in talent. Thompson is an upgrade over Kanter for sure, but the Celtics did little to upgrade their bench and they lost a genuinely good player in Hayward — even if he didn’t live up to his contract.

Boston definitely didn’t get better, and I do believe on paper they are worse now.

That said, the “fire Danny Ainge” takes are absurd. Notions that he bungled the Hayward sign-and-trade talks with the Pacers seem overstated, and he did what he could with limited salary cap flexibility.

Was it his finest work? No. Should more trades have been swung? Maybe. But we should all stop way short of saying he should be fired. That would set the Celtics back a ways.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Regarding his take on the pressure of being Aaron Nesmith ("Can’t imagine it’ll be fun to be Aaron Nesmith this year.") I would have to say the same about Payton Pritchard.  With Kemba out and Gordon gone, if we're thin on ballhandlers, then Teague and Smart will need someone else.  That can be Pritchard.  It can also be Waters, and he has a year of experience in Brad's system that Pritchard doesn't, but that's a lot of pressure on either of them.  Nesmith has pressure, sure, but telling a shooter he needs to shoot isn't that hard.  Shooting is not only a learnable skill, which he has already learned, but it's also eminently translatable to the NBA.  In fact it's one of the most easily transferrable skills from college.  Putting the ball in Pritchard's hands and telling him to distribute it, with no summer league and an abbreviated preseason, is a gargantuan request.

Is it really that perplexing that Kanter got buried on the bench?  Did this guy not watch his pnr defense?  I've forced my way through turnstiles that put up more resistance.

I think Javonte Green has been the forgotten, and underappreciated, Celtic.  He's a veteran, both internationally and NBA.  He has always looked good when he has been on the court, I wondered myself last year why Brad didn't play him more, but maybe that's just "The Brad Way".  He didn't play Theis a lot his first year but started him the next, he barely let Wanny off the bench in his first year and then gave him solid rotation minutes in the next, maybe Javonte has earned his minutes in Brad's view now.  That would take pressure off of Nesmith.

Throwing kiddies to the wolves, where they get their brains beat in by veteran benches night-after-night, is not a good teaching environment.  This puts pressure on the 2nd year Celtic players like Grant and Javonte and even Edwards, more than on the rooks, I think.  Every day that goes by that Carsen Edwards doesn't prove he belongs is another day closer to when Payton Pritchard's learning curve begins to flatten out, and that's the end of the road for Carsen if he isn't already established as someone Brad feels comfortable inserting.


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. Bob, in no business that I know of could an Executive survive the bumbling that Ainge has done. On draft night you yourself was his biggest critic. You never suggested that he should be fired but since then you appear to be one of his supporters and thats okay. I just happen to disagree and don’t happen to feel that its absurd to think that firing him should be in consideration. It comes with the territory and He’s earned it.

[worcester]

I still think Danny jas been a brilliant GM.

[dboss]

Danny has made good decisions and bad ones.

Last year he missed in the draft overall.  This year he comes back strong but moves pick 30.  There was talent at 30 better than several end of bench guys.    I think he did well in FA as compared to last year.  He lost several FA but they are not really missed.  KI was a head case.  AH was not worth his paycheck and GH was unable to play in many games.  

He built the 08 team and won and managed to use key assets from that team to collect several Golden Eggs.  Two of which are Allstars quality  players.

I do not think he should have signed KW to a max deal. I also think he needs to stay away from players that have injury histories.

Are we heading in the right direction now?  I think that we are even though we hit a few pot holes along  the way.

I really cannot think of another GM that is much better.

[dboss]

With all the youth and no big time baller coming in via the TPE, we are maybe a year away from getting to the Finals.

[bobheckler]

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
about 13 minutes ago
Fun fact: Marcus Smart and Myles Turner both open with 33/1 odds to win DPOY this year per @betonline_ag. Other Celtic they have on there is Jaylen Brown at 100/1 odds.


Bob


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[bobheckler]

Payton's post-workout recovery smoothie




Bob


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[bobheckler]

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
about 1 hour ago
Brad Stevens says we may see lineups of Grant Williams at the 4 or even Theis at the 4, "But smaller is more the norm, would be my guess." In scrimmages, Rob Williams has been at center on one side, with Tacko Fall subbing in for him.




Jay King @ByJayKing
about 1 hour ago
Brad Stevens said Daniel Theis could play a bit of 4 this season, but certainly sounds like he does not anticipate using that option much. Theis played only at center last season.



Marc D'Amico
Marc D'Amico @celtics
about 1 hour ago
Brad Stevens on rookie Aaron Nesmith: “He’s a good shooter and he’s a smart kid. I think he’ll pick things up quickly.”


Bob


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[bobheckler]

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2020/12/marcus-smarts-offense-now-as-important-as-defense-for-shorthanded-boston-celtics.html



Marcus Smart’s offense now as important as defense for shorthanded Boston Celtics



Updated 4:59 PM; Today 4:59 PM



By John Karalis | JKaralis@masslive.com



The goal of a basketball game is pretty simple: get more balls into the basket than the other team. The complicated stuff lies in the “how” part of that equation, but whether a team is trying to make shots from 35 feet away or depending on stopping opponents from getting buckets, it’s all part of the same goal.

You have to make more baskets than them.

The Boston Celtics are staring the season without two of their best basket-getters. The loss of Gordon Hayward and the delayed return of Kemba Walker leaves 28 unaccounted-for points from the league’s fourth-best offense last season. With a week before the first preseason game and two before the season starts, the Celtics don’t have much time to find them.




“We’ll try to be ready as quickly as we can,” Brad Stevens told the media over the weekend. “It won’t be a full team for that early part of the season, which is why it’s important that we find a few guys that can impact winning against the best of the best. It’s going to be quite a challenge.”

Marcus Smart is going to have to accept part of that challenge. The past two seasons have been his two best offensively, but he’s still going to have to expand his offensive role in order to help make up for a lack of scoring punch. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown will be the undoubted top two options, but Smart will have to spend a fair amount of time as option number three, a significantly increased offensive role than he’s had in the past.

While he’ll be called on to score more, Stevens says you might not notice much different stylistically.

“I don’t think we’re going to play any differently, with regard to him,” Stevens said in his Monday media session. “I think the biggest thing is you play to the strength of each individual. Marcus has obviously improved his shooting, especially in the catch-and-shoots, off actions he has always been a guy that read the game well so we’ll play him in pick-and-rolls, we’ll post him some against matchup advantages. Nothing too dissimilar from what you’ve seen before.”

Smart’s biggest offensive strength is his passing. Eventually he and Tristan Thompson could combine to become a fun pick-and-roll combination, which may open up additional assist opportunities when collapsing defenses leave shooters a little too open on the wings. Smart’s 4.9 assists per game was a career-best and his 21.1% assist percentage was his third best. In this role, the Celtics will hope he bumps up those numbers while continuing to be an average 3-point shooter. Anything more can take away from what Smart does well.


“I think one of the things you don’t want to do is get away from guys’ strengths,” Stevens said. “What we have to do, as we are down scorers is, obviously play through our best players, but then the strengths of the others have to complement them. Other guys have some strengths that we can use to help put the ball in the basket as well.”

Smart’s defense is still his bread and butter, and it will be his biggest contribution to the baskets equation. His forte is preventing buckets, but he’s going to have to make a few more to help the Celtics win games. As long as he stays within himself and doesn’t get away from the things he does best, he could provide the Celtics with just enough on the offensive end to help make up for what they lost.



Bob
MY NOTE:  I love Marcus Smart as much or more than anybody but if we're depending upon his offense we're screwed.  How about giving scorers like the Js more fgas?  I realize that might not be enough in the short-term with us missing Kemba and Gordon's points but Teague will take more fgas than Wanny and that will help.  Bottom line, and you all know I hate to say this, but one or more of the young'uns are going to have to be thrown into the crucible sooner than they should.  Which one?

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[dboss]

The 4-5 rotations are shapping up to be a major change in how Stevens wants to use his roster.

[bobheckler]

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2020/12/carsen-edwards-staying-ready-to-help-boston-celtics-any-way-they-ask-me-to-help.html



Carsen Edwards staying ready to help Boston Celtics ‘any way they ask me to help’



Updated 5:55 PM; Today 5:54 PM



By John Karalis | JKaralis@masslive.com



Brad Stevens is going to be throwing a lot at the wall this season as he searches for effective lineups for the Boston Celtics

Carsen Edwards hopes he’s part of what sticks.

The second-year guard had a mostly-forgettable rookie campaign, especially for someone who came into the league with a reputation as a shooter. He played in 37 games and only hit multiple 3-pointers five times. His overall 3-point shooting percentage was just 31.6%, mostly because Edwards didn’t have the same opportunities he had in college to shoot himself into rhythm.




With a full season of understanding expectations and limitations, Edwards went into the condensed offseason with a better sense of direction.

“I thought my offseason went well, in a sense, being able to get away from the game but at the same time, I worked out the whole offseason,” Edwards said on Monday afternoon. “It was good to focus on improvement and looking over my year and regrouping at the same time. I mean, it was a short offseason but at the same time, people here, they try to help us and get us ready the best they can. At the end of the day, we’ll just see when we get on the floor but I feel good.”

Edwards falls into a long line of former college stars with big roles who now have to carve out niches at the next level. Edwards has to find a way to give the Celtics something they can use.

“I feel like I can help out any way they ask me to help when they put me on the floor,” he said. “Whether that’s being solid on defense and picking up and guarding my man well, being able to spread the floor and knock down shots. Just anything they ask me to do, try my best to do.”

For now, Edwards has to find any way he can to provide value to the Celtics so he can stay in the mix for the next opportunity.


“I just continue to be ready. I mean, I didn’t really play very much but at the same time, I wanted to help my team prepare,” Edwards said. “Whether that’s at practice or whether that’s through walkthroughs, when I’m in the game just try my best to be the best I can and to help my team and make a positive impact, however it may be. At the end of the day, I just continue to work to be ready, so whenever my number is called, just try my best to do what I can.”


Bob
MY NOTE:  I don't know why he shot so poorly last year but if it was just 'rookie nerves' then he should be ok now, right?  A golden opportunity for a scorer off the bench over the next 4-5 weeks.  There may never be a more perfect opening for a marginal bench player to separate himself from the crowd.

My gut says Javonte Green will be seeing more minutes.
I think Brad is scared to death of giving anything more than cameo appearances to Nesmith and Pritchard in December and January.  Coaches like knowing what they are going to get when they call a player's number and Javonte has that over all three of these guys.


.

[dboss]

Bob I think JB could use more FGA. Last season he took 15.6 per game. He is a very efficient scorer. I think 18 per game at least seems reasonable. JT can also take a few more. Teague can also shoot the ball well. I would not favor seeing Smart take more shots unless they are highquality midrange variety and/or attempts at the rim.

Other guys like our rookies should be able to give us some offense.

[bobheckler]

Mark D'Amico interviewing Tristan Thompson.

I think his impact in the locker room will be disproportionately large.  I made a bit of a deal last year about how we only had Theis and Wanny with championship experience, and not even NBA championship experience at that.  Thompson brings that to our locker room and that is what we need.  How to close out series deep in the playoffs.




Bob


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