POST GAME NEW ORLEANS PELICANS - AWAY

Celtics Wrap: Boston Back In Win Column After 107-97 Win Vs. Pelicans
Boston has won three of its last four games


NESN by Alexandra Francisco

The Boston Celtics are back in the win column after a 107-97 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans.

Having now won three of their last four games, the Celtics improve to 26-25 and gain a little momentum ahead of a game against the Miami Heat. The Pelicans, meanwhile, fall to 18-31.


ONE BIG TAKEAWAY
It may have been against lowly New Orleans, but this was one of those games that has made watching Boston play so frustrating this season.

They started and closed the game with good pace, played great defense and displayed some of their best moments of ball movement all year. It makes you wonder why they aren’t always playing like this, with Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum leading the offense dropping more than 30 points a piece while the team combine for 31 assists.


STARS OF THE GAME
— In a game where the Celtics displayed great movement, Marcus Smart was at the center of that. He finished with five points, three rebounds, a steal and a season-high 12 assists. You only wish there was a spot on the box score for secondary assists — for his sake.

— This was a great combined effort from the Jays who both shot well in New Orleans.

Tatum scored a game-high 38 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and three steals. Brown, meanwhile, added 31 points, two boards, three assists and a steal. You love to see it.

— It’s a joy to watch Robert Williams get better every game, especially in his home state. He had a modest eight points to balance out another insane night on the boards, finishing with 16 rebounds, four assists, a steal and four blocks.

WAGER WATCH
DraftKings Sportsbooks had Marcus Smart’s odds set at -140 to get at least 4.5 assists, but with how he has been playing of late, it turned out to be a decent value bet. A $140 wager would have paid out $240.


UP NEXT
The Celtics come back home to Boston for quite the test, hosting the Eastern Conference’s first-place Miami Heat on Monday at 7:30 p.m. ET.

112288

When Tatum takes 33% of the teams total game shots and then add Brown to the mix, the duo combined took 57% of the overall teams shots. Duplicate that stat against a leading team and the Celtics loose!

Where is the balanced scoring? You are rolling the dice hoping they will be hot on a particular game, and if not you roll snake eyes!

No, this is not team basketball, and Bob Heckler was right in pointing out in last nights Post Game thread that on the surface it looked like Tatum had a great game when in fact he did not, based on efficiency. He just took too many shots to score 20 points. His percent sucked!

Monday will reveal a lot about this against Miami!

Trade deadline just around the corner, but I am a betting man that nothing big will happen except perhaps shedding some salaries to improve their cap space and getting some draft picks and restocking their vault with some assets.

Waiting for July 1st for the fun to begin.

112288

I get what you're saying, but in this particular game the Celtics had 31 assists on 43 made baskets, and Marcus Smart had about 10 additional "hockey assists." If that's not team basketball, I don't know what is.Additionally, for most of the game they defended like they were on a string.

Maybe now with a relatively healthy squad, we are seeing the potential of this team. Hopefully, we get more games like this and less of the poor efforts like the one they provided the other night.

While going 12-0 in this stretch is now off the table, I'll take 3-1 at this point.  Next game, correctly pointed out by 112288, will tell us a lot.  Good it's at home.  That should give us some advantage as long as the bricklayers don't show up the first few minutes and we find ourselves down by 25 at the end of the 1st quarter against this stacked team.  We won't come from behind against the MIA crew.  

Yeah, I just don't see Brad going crazy before 2/10 in his first year as GM.  We'll see.  Clock is always ticking and the temperature in the hot seat is always on max.  

The Celtics held their own.  Every game has its runs made by the other team when you have the lead.  Celtics held their own.  Ball was moving and continues to move.  I don't count the passes per possession anymore.  Assists/FGM is +66% on average.  That still allows for 33% ISO.  I'd prefer 3 out of 4, but we're in a good range.  

We're stuck on 14 TO's/game.  Is what it is.  Going to have to figure a way to win with it that high.  I prefer 11 as an average.  

Bench is still a problem except for JR.  Lots of minuses in the +/- column below the starting five.  Just a stat for one game, but very telling in that game.  MS and RWIII are a lock if they can keep up the >+20 plus/minus.  MS now showing up with very early Rondo-esque numbers last night, guys and gal.

A "W" is a "W".  I'll take it.  3-1.  

On to Monday night.  I'm going to guess the spread tomorrow will be in the rout area, MIA-7.  Maybe more.  But don't we play these guys/match up with them pretty well?

While hoping for a win here is pie in the sky, high water covers a lot of stumps.  I think our water is rising lately mainly because of the shift by MS giving up the shots and now facilitating.  Beating MIA would go a long way in showing that.  It would be very wise to treat this game like the 1st round of the playoffs which it could very likely be.  And we're the underdog...HEAVY underdog.  Clearly, we have nothing to lose.  

Send a message.  If we get blown out, then nothing is lost because we're pretty much expecting that anyway.  Scare the crap out of MIA then you've got something to build on for the rest of this stretch and the rest of this season.  I'd even take a close loss as long as we show MIA and the NBA we're going somewhere.  

Do take the other side of the spread regardless, though.  MIA ain't that good and are subject to an off night just like everyone else.  Bet MIA will be MIA.    

db

Impressive, in the beginning.  Our passing was great, our shooting was lights out and our defense was as good as I have seen it.  Flying around the court, challenging shots while rotating to provide coverage of the Pelicans who were being left open.  Then, as usual, we let down a bit.  To be fair, the game was never in doubt, not after the first minute or two, but we should have blown these mofos outta da building.  No Brandon Ingram, no Zion, no Valanciunas.  This was their G-league team, we should have won by more than 10, we should have had a score more like the Kings' one, but we let them do what we all knew they would do.  They ran on everything.  Not just on fgm but made ftm too.  The #1 most important thing to do vs that team, especially without their half court guns, was to get back on transition defense because they love to run and we forgot about that towards the end.  Some slack to be cut because this was a b2b but you cannot use the "we're mediocre because we're young" excuse while trying to use the "our legs were tired because we played last night" excuse.  Young'uns might be deers, per Charles Barkley, but deer don't get tired legs.  It's our minds that got tired and we let them get out in the full court too much.  

They took 12 more ftas than us, good for 10 more points.  A lot of these fritos, as I remember them, were dumb reaching fouls because we were asleep.  To paraphrase Yoda, "foul them, or foul them not.  There is no try".  We can pretty much assume that, what with injuries and COVID, the refs will be giving every break to the depleted team.  Letting them get away with more contact, blowing the whistle on their behalf for ticky-tack fouls that would otherwise be play-ons.  If that's the case, fine, just make them earn the +1.  I'm not talking about hard, flagrant fouls, but fouls that prevents the finish.  Don't just wave at them as they go by like a bunch of green matadors.  

As was pointed out by 112288 the Js were the very tip of our spear.  69 of our 107 points, 64.5%, were from them.  Once again I take the position that you cannot have it both ways.  If we love having two such talented wings like them and are anxiously waiting with bated breath (not 'baited'.  That would mean you've been eating earthworms) to see if they can figure out how to play together then, when they actually do it, you cannot say "but it's just them!".  The question to be answered is "when they're not both going off who is stepping up and covering for the one who isn't?".  Our problem has been that when one or both of the Js are having bad nights nobody is seeing that as an opportunity for them.  Smart, sometimes, will go off for 17-20 but you don't want Marcus Smart to be that guy, and even then we'd need more than that.  We'd need a second player besides Marcus to make up for a really bad game by either of the Js.  Last night they shot a combined 28-46, 60.9%.  

Tatum was 17-26, but 4-13 from 3.  There's a difference between having  short-term memory, all good shooters have that when it comes to missing, but you need a bit of a conscience too.  He shot 13-13 from 2.  Someone needs to point that out to him.  Someone needs to point out to him that he was perfect from 2, took half his shots from 3 and had zero ftas.  You rarely get ftas from 3pt fgas.  On the bright side he had 7 assists and only 2 turnovers.  That's very nice.  A fluke?  Probably, says the cynic in me.  3 steals.  Very nice too.  He's "credited" with 2 turnovers.  Hmm.  So I guess the other lazy passes I saw were accounted for as NOP steals?




Brown 11-20.  He's shooting 45.6% this year, very healthy.  His 3pt fg% is down to 36.2%.  That's around league average, so he's not a liability there, but down from previous years.  He's taking about 10% more 3pt fgas/game than last year in the same number of minutes.  That's hurting him a bit, lower fg% in a category he's taking more of, but not too bad.  The last two games, Atlanta and NOP, have been very physical games for Jaylen.  He's absorbing a lot of contact (and not getting whistles) but still muscling shots in.  I think we sometimes forget how physically strong he is for his position.  Jayson's the NBA's show horse.  Jaylen's our work horse.




Smart with 12 assists and only 3 TOs.  I don't care about his 2-6, he impacts the game in so many other ways besides scoring.  We need a floor general.  12-and-3 is a floor general's boxscore although anybody who tries to rate Marcus Smart's game by looking at his boxscore knows little to nothing about basketball and certainly didn't see the game.

Mark Murphy @Murf56
yesterday
Smart on his sore hand: Gets like this ever since the picture frame incident. Still have some glass in here. They said it would cause more problems to take the glass out so they just left it in, so I still have glass in my hand. Sometimes I can’t feel my hand but it comes back.

The Time Lord put on a show for his family who came down from Shreveport to see him play.  Easier to look good when the other team's starting center is out but he did play well.  After the Atlanta game Abby interviewed Nique who sang the praises of the Js and Robert Williams.  I believe the word Mike Gorman was looking for last night from that interview was 'bouncy'.  Nique called RWill 'bouncy'.  Great development by RWill this year and that is due to more playing time, and his hard work, and his playing time has been powered by his general good health.  We've been saying he could become something if only he could stay healthy.  Well, here we are...

Jay King @ByJayKing
yesterday
Over his last 17 games, Robert Williams has averaged 10.6 points, 11.5 rebounds (4.5 of those offensive), 3.1 assists, 2.7 blocks and 1.1 steals per game while shooting 73.1 percent from the field.



Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
8 hours ago
Robert Williams Saturday night became the 9th Celtic in the last 50 years to have 16 rebounds and 4 blocks in a game. Robert Parish (11 times) Dave Cowens (4 times) Larry Bird, Kermit Washington, Dino Radja, Pervis Ellison, Al Jefferson, Vitor Faverani and Robert Williams.




Shout out to JRich.  He's a real pro.  Doesn't talk a lot, not flashy, just solid.  Works hard all the time.  He's not a big assist man, but neither is a turnover machine either.  Josh doesn't seem to make many unforced errors, he doesn't beat himself a lot.

Jay King @ByJayKing
yesterday
Ime Udoka said he doesn’t know fully about Romeo Langford’s status. He has a sore Achilles and the team will know more later.


This game helped me crystallize my thoughts going forward.  Who stays, who goes.  

Stays
the Js (both), unless we're getting perennial All-Stars in their prime
Smart, he just impacts the game in too many ways
RWill, our center of the present and future.

Available, but no rush to unload.  Make a good offer
Grant, versatile defender, much improved 3pt shooter (42.6%)
Nesmith, a shooter who is struggling with his shot
Pritchard, another shooter who is struggling.  Undersized defender
Richardson, I like him but he's not a core player and his contract, skills and age make him attractive.  
Langford, the booboo magnet has run out of lives

Buh Bye
Al Horford, sadly past his shelf life
Schroder, disappearing faster than a vampire at dawn
Fernando, Freedom and all other points south

So, I'm not quite at the point where I think we should just show our ace and ask for 4 new cards, but I'm willing to shop most of the team.  Too be clear I'm not saying we should trade the players in the category lead by Grant, I'm saying they are not untouchable.  In fact, if Brad does what I want him to do Schroder will be gone, which will open the door for Pritchard and keeps him here.  We just can't be starry-eyed about the potential of this player or that.  The future is always now, it's just the next eye-blink.  Tomorrow vs Miami, to be precise.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360564


Bob


.

For the record the Celtics never lose when both the Jays hit the 30 point mark in the same game.  

The team still launches too many 3 point shots (41/81)

Tatum went 4-13 from deep.  Not very good but he more than balanced that off by going 13-13 on two point attempts.

Jaylen was also solid 11-20 overall and 4-9 from deep and unlike the Hawks game the pair combined for only 3 turnovers.

Under the Hawks post game thread I mentioned the need to let Marcus run the offense and also get Rob up top as a facilitator.  Marcus played a great floor game and managed to dish out a season high 12 assists.  Rob handed out 4 assists, dominated the glass and as usual made the most of his scoring opportunities (4-6) with 8 points.

If Marcus Smart is going to stay with Boston then you he can be impactful at both ends with his defense and playmaking abilities.  It certainly appears to me that he is no longer looking to be a high volume shooter.  He is in fact looking more and more like a pass first PG.  That is exactly what we need from him.

Richardson has been pretty solid for us all year but the rest of the guys are pretty suspect.

I would not be opposed to adding a shooter before the trade deadline.   I think Dennis will be moved in a minor deal to make that happen.

The team still does not have everything that they need but I am still all in on the core group especially with Marcus playing like a PG.

The Celtics usually match up well with the Heat so tomorrow's game does not scare me.

112288 wrote:When Tatum takes 33% of the teams total game shots and then add Brown to the mix, the duo combined took 57% of the overall teams shots.  Duplicate that stat against a leading team and the Celtics loose!

Where is the balanced scoring?  You are rolling the dice hoping they will be hot on a particular game, and if not you roll snake eyes!

No, this is not team basketball, and Bob Heckler was right in pointing out in last nights Post Game thread that on the surface it looked like Tatum had a great game when in fact he did not, based on efficiency. He just took too many shots to score 20 points. His percent sucked!

Monday will reveal a lot about this against Miami!

Trade deadline just around the corner, but I am a betting man that nothing big will happen except perhaps shedding some salaries to improve their cap space and getting some draft picks and restocking their vault with some assets.

Waiting for July 1st for the fun to begin.

112288

Really? I don’t mind J’s getting more shots than the rest of the roster, have you ever seen the rest of the roster? Alot of limitations to say the least, we need them putting up more shots, I’m for them going for 30 each as much as possible.

I kind of feel sorry for Schroder. He's been totally lost when he's on the floor since Smart came back. I imagine he can't wait until the trade deadline so he knows if he's coming or going. If he's staying then he will need to let Brad know if he would consider taking that 7M contract for next year. He's hinted he might. But that doesn't mean we want him even at that price. He doesn't work as our starting PG and coming off the bench he doesn't look good lately either. Maybe if he had the stability of knowing better where he will be playing he could better settle in to a role. Otherwise we might just need to sit him.

cowens/oldschool wrote:

112288 wrote:When Tatum takes 33% of the teams total game shots and then add Brown to the mix, the duo combined took 57% of the overall teams shots.  Duplicate that stat against a leading team and the Celtics loose!

Where is the balanced scoring?  You are rolling the dice hoping they will be hot on a particular game, and if not you roll snake eyes!

No, this is not team basketball, and Bob Heckler was right in pointing out in last nights Post Game thread that on the surface it looked like Tatum had a great game when in fact he did not, based on efficiency. He just took too many shots to score 20 points. His percent sucked!

Monday will reveal a lot about this against Miami!

Trade deadline just around the corner, but I am a betting man that nothing big will happen except perhaps shedding some salaries to improve their cap space and getting some draft picks and restocking their vault with some assets.

Waiting for July 1st for the fun to begin.

112288

Really? I don’t mind J’s getting more shots than the rest of the roster, have you ever seen the rest of the roster? Alot of limitations to say the least, we need them putting up more shots, I’m for them going for 30 each as much as possible.

Cowens

You need to have a balanced team approach or you wind up ball hogging by a player or players while the rest of the team stands around watching. If a player is working his butt off running and moving on the offensive end, that player wants touches of the ball, but if you are not getting enough touches because no one is passing to you but rather taking too many shots, you tend to get lazy and your motion rhythm to your offensive game suffers.

There is a very fine line between taking as many shoots as possible because you are hot and taking too many shoots when you are not. I do not trust Tatum in several ways. He is too inconsistent shooting especially from beyond the arc and he camouflages bad shooting games by scoring 20 or points but when you see the box he is many times in excess of 30 shots for the game and a miserable shooting percentage from 3 point land.

There is also a fine line especially as a so called scorer, of being somewhat a ball hog by hosting up as many shots as possible so you can average 20+ points a game which in todays NBA equates out to a major long term contract financially. Every team has that type of player or player.

Mello (Former NYK) is a perfect example, great scorer but the teams sucked because he was too much involved shooting while the rest of his team sat around and did not get involved on the offensive side of the ball.

I for one, do not want to do down that rabbit hole!


112288

112288

All valid points, but we can’t rely on players like Al, GWill, Smart and RWill only scores off lobs, for scoring either, though I agree they need some touches. Now it’s been proven the less shots Smart puts up, the better we are. If J’s have it going, feed them the bone, we are only going as far as the J’s with some heady defense from RWill and Smart can take us. Ever see how inconsistent Schroder is? Hopefully J’s will get more efficient and stronger as season goes longer. Our advantage in match ups are at the wing positions.

Cow

Cowens

Your lips to God's ear!

112288

Well, this will show you I don't know what I'm talking about in the gambling and odds world. Tonight's line is BOS(-6)!! Is all of MIA's starting 5 out with COVID? that's about the only way we would stand a snowball's chance.

Probably should have looked at the injury report before opening my mouth. Tucker, Butler, Morris, Okpala, Lowry, Oladipo and Yurtseven all out. OK, that makes more sense but I'm still going with MIA(-2).

We better make it a blowout...

db