The Autopsy Report

NYCelt wrote:

worcester wrote:
Regardless of what new players and assistant coaches we may get, the Celts simply must do the following:

STOP WHINING! It is detrimental to our play. Too often Celtics are focused on the last play and not mobilized for the next. Too often they are haranguing/antagonizing the refs, when everyone knows you attract more bees with honey rather than vinegar.

That's my piece. Peace out.

I'm in total agreement with you here.

I would go as far as to say this is my second biggest wish for the Celtics, surpassed only by the hope of miraculously finding the next incarnation of Bill Russell.

+1

NYCelt wrote:

worcester wrote:
Regardless of what new players and assistant coaches we may get, the Celts simply must do the following:

STOP WHINING! It is detrimental to our play. Too often Celtics are focused on the last play and not mobilized for the next. Too often they are haranguing/antagonizing the refs, when everyone knows you attract more bees with honey rather than vinegar.

That's my piece. Peace out.

I'm in total agreement with you here.

I would go as far as to say this is my second biggest wish for the Celtics, surpassed only by the hope of miraculously finding the next incarnation of Bill Russell.

I'd settle for Robert Parrish.

gyso wrote:

NYCelt wrote:

worcester wrote:
Regardless of what new players and assistant coaches we may get, the Celts simply must do the following:

STOP WHINING! It is detrimental to our play. Too often Celtics are focused on the last play and not mobilized for the next. Too often they are haranguing/antagonizing the refs, when everyone knows you attract more bees with honey rather than vinegar.

That's my piece. Peace out.

I'm in total agreement with you here.

I would go as far as to say this is my second biggest wish for the Celtics, surpassed only by the hope of miraculously finding the next incarnation of Bill Russell.

I'd settle for Robert Parrish.  

Agree!

OMG. The Chief was and is so great. I heard him on a podcast recently. He knows so much. And what a sense of humor!

https://heavy.com/sports/boston-celtics/offseason-changes-jayson-tatum-jaylen-brown/



Execs, Coaches Offer Celtics Strong Warnings on Offseason Changes


By Steve Bulpett
Updated Jun 16, 2023 at 1:25pm



It is often said that each year’s NBA champion becomes the model — the ideal — for the other 29 contenders to the throne in the seasons to come.

In the case of the Denver Nuggets, the Celtics can only hope it’s a stylistic path they’re able to follow.

While Boston doesn’t have a Nikola Jokic at its disposal, a shortcoming shared by 28 of its peers, it does have the ability to play with the same grit and offensive joie de hoop that defined the Nuggets’ run.


And, according to one prominent rival coach, that may be all the Celtics need to complete their now 15-year search for an 18th banner.

“As soon as a team gets knocked out of the playoffs — or doesn’t even make the playoffs — you start hearing about all the changes they need to make,” the coach told Heavy Sports. “Right now, there’s a whole lot of GMs and people with my job that would LOVE to see Boston make a bunch of changes. I mean, are there fans up there actually saying they should break up Brown and Tatum? Are you s***ting me?


“Sure, you always hope you can tweak things here or there to try to get better, but right now just about every team in the league would trade its roster for Boston’s straight up.”


Celtics ‘Just Went South’

And that fact, acknowledged by another coach, two general managers and a scout who spoke to Heavy, is apparently what makes the Celtics’ Game 7 collapse against Miami in the conference finals so hard for the team’s followers so hard to accept.

The reviews have been piercing.

“When things got tough, they went south,” said a source close to the Heat. “They just went south and didn’t do all the other things that got them there. It’s one thing when you’re missing 3s, but that should get you to dig in harder defensively, and they didn’t.


“(The Heat) always felt confident. Even when it got to the point where it was 3-3, they always felt confident that they were going to win — that when it came down to it at nut-crunch time, that they were going to win. They knew they had a couple of games that got away from them, but they still felt they could go into Boston and that, despite everything, through their toughness and versatility and depth, that they could win. They WOULD win.

“Their will to win and their toughness and the DNA of the players they have on the court was the difference. They all knew it.”


And while this source and others believe it would be foolish to separate Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, there is the strong feeling that the two need to find more ways to support each other’s ability.


“Each of them attracts so much attention,” said a GM. “You’d think they’d be more comfortable by now with playing off each other and knowing how to get each other great shots.

“I can’t remember too many times when one created for the other — when one made a move, gave it up and the other guy finished. It was always somebody else creating for one of them, and that makes them easier to guard.

“Realistically if they didn’t have Derrick White in that last series, they would have lost 4-0.”


‘If You Don’t Bring it, You’re Going to Lose’

Another league exec said the Celtics too easily lost their edge. He spoke of how it had been an accepted fact of NBA postseason play that the better team — the more talented team — could pretty much be guaranteed to emerge from a best-of-seven series.

“But if you don’t bring it, you’re going to lose,” he said. “It was different before this era, because you could always assume every team would bring it. But it’s not that way anymore. That’s why the more talented team doesn’t always win in a seven-game series anymore — when it was always that way. Now the better team has a chance to lose.”

The encouraging part for the Celts is that those around the league believe they already possess the fix. The discouraging part is that they haven’t put it to use on a consistent basis.


“That’s what makes this so crazy,” said a coach in a Heavy.com story from the season. “It’s in their hands. Most teams just don’t have the talent or the approach on either end of the floor to correct their problems. Boston does. And when you look at that roster, you’re surprised they ever have any problems in the first place. Every team has bad nights over the course of a season, but a team like this should have like one or two a month at most.”

Because they managed to have a few of those in one series, the Celtics had an extra month of offseason. Maybe in their free time they watched Denver in the Finals.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Pretty much what we've all been saying, we have talent but we're mentally weak.  Some of the problem, in my biased opinion, is that Brad picked an offensive-oriented head coach to take over and that, as this article points out, when the shots weren't dropping they just kept hoisting them up instead of digging in on defense like we've done in past years.  What's the identity of this team?  Well, when the going got tough it wasn't 'DEFENSE!", it was Me-Ball offense.  I know that Joe was handed a tough job, he had to come in and figure things out almost on the fly because of the Ime issue, but I don't see where he ever really was a "Defense-First" coach like Ime was and like Brad was before him.  His love of the 3-ball made our offense very predictable, not just the plays but the kick out passes to the arc.  Miami ate us alive because they knew that pass was coming.  They knew we wanted our shots to come from the arc, and they played defense accordingly.  I'm not trying to rehash old beefs, but if your offense is struggling, for whatever reason, then you need to fight like Hell on defense and we didn't because it wasn't in our DNA like it was under Brad and Ime.  Defense wasn't our default mode and that's why Smart had his outburst earlier in the season when he called everybody out.  When our shots weren't dropping we looked around at each other and tried to "figure it out", which is what Joe pushed them to do all season, but what we should have "figured out" is that when the offense stalls you don't just take more of the same shots, you dig in on defense and disrupt their offense.  

I've said before we need a good passing big in the high post, or a beast in the low blocks who can draw a double and pass to a cutter.  Al doesn't run the offense enough for my liking, he needs the ball and everybody else has to cut without the ball and not just stand there and wait for Al to put the ball on the floor for them.  Put RWill in the high post, he's a very good passing big.  Put another way, take the ball out of the J's hands until it's time for them to shoot.  They are not "point forwards", especially not Jaylen.  If there's one good thing that would happen if we traded for CP3 (and I am NOT saying we should!) is that nobody is taking the ball out of his hands.  Nobody is going to a run Me-ball offense when Chris Paul is playing point.  Period.  Doc tells this story about when he was a young point guard in Atlanta.  Dominique was screaming at him to feed him the ball so he could go one-on-one and Doc was trying to run a balanced offense.  Finally, Doc got tired of Nique's histrionics and fired a pass that nobody could catch into the 3rd row.  Dominique came over to him and asked "WTF was THAT!?" and Doc said he told Nique "I'm the point guard.  I run the offense.  Now shut up and run my plays".  That's what we need for the Js, someone who lays down the law to them and has the court cred to pull it off.


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We have not all been saying the team is mentally weak. Some? Most? Not all.

IMO, if our team was even close to being healthy, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Jaylen posted earlier in the season that he thought fans suck for this line of reasoning. Dick Dorr used to say that the players are not like toy soldiers, you can't just wind them up and put them on the floor. They have lives and family and all the stress and angst that comes with being a human being.

I wish I could find that post.

Yeah, I’d agree. Good point, gyso. Injuries were the major culprit. Labeling the team as mentally weak is not a fair shot.

This team’s weakness is not between the temples, it’s mostly been between the femur and the tibia.

Here's an autopsy: The horse is dead. Beat it til tender.

I have to respectfully disagree.

There were games during the regular season and in the playoffs characterized by a lack of mental toughness by the Celtics.  Injuries not withstanding, great teams play through injuries, fatigue, bad calls and all sorts of circumstances that make it very hard to win.

Hopefully the addition of experienced coaches will help this team be  better from the neck up.

I'm with you dboss and Bob. The Celts need to be healthy in mind and body. Both came somewhat unraveled vs. the Hawks and Heat. Time to ravel.