Post Game - Celtics at Charlotte Hornets - Friday, November 01 (W)

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401704698

The Celtics bounced back from their 3 point OT loss to the pacers with a business like 124-109 win over the Hornets in Charlotte.  

Charles Lee is doing a good job with that team and at times they mirrored what the Celtics like to do.  There will not be a lot of games where an opponent takes more 3 point shots than we do but that is exactly what happened last night.  The Hornets shot 19-48 from deep while the Celtics went 13-42.  Normally this would be a metric for disaster but as we remind ourselves from time to time, that there are a lot of key elements that go into winning a basketball game.

The Celtics made 29 free throws to only 6 for them.  The PITP battle was won by Boston 56-44 and we also scored 21 FB points to just 6 for them.

This game was marred by an inexplicable flagrant 2 foul by Grant Williams on his dear friend Jayson Tatum.

The Hornets somehow managed to put the Celtics at the bonus line at around the 7 minutes mark  in the game so that was a big advantage for Boston.

With 2:02 remaining in the game and Boston sitting on a comfortable 9 point lead 114-105, Grant William, former Celtics and friend of the victim, came across the court like (as JB put it) Ray Lewis  using his shoulder, slammed into Tatum knocking him to the floor.  That was a football play that we expect to see but not on the basketball court.

Grant was suppose to be entertaining the Celtics with dinner after the game.

Rumor has it that Grant's special Souffle desert did not rise as he got the egg whites mixed up with the yokes.  So he had to cancel the dinner and the best way to do that was to piss the Celtics off with his unimaginable stupidity.

We get to show them how to do it one more time in the second game of a B2B.

Want to mention one other thing and that would be the contributions off the bench from Queta and Walsh.  They combined for 18 points while shooting 8-8 from the field.

The game competed with Friday Happy Hour so I wasn't able to watch it.

Observations from the boxscore and watching highlights:

Sam seems to be getting his stroke back.

Pritchard's 0-5 from 3 has brought his 3pt fg% "down" to 42.6%.  That's still great.

Jaylen's 0-0-6 from 3 has brought his 3pt fg% down to 26.7%.

Queta can beast, but they have no center to challenge him.  Having said that we should appreciate that our 4th string center would start on the Charlotte Hornets.  In fact, he'd probably be the no worse than the #2 center, first true big off the bench, on close to 1/3 of the teams in the NBA.  Our depth is the envy of the league.  

We shot 13-42, 31%, from 3.  If we subtract out Brown and Pritchard's combined 0-11 we're 13-31, 41.9%, and that's pretty good.  I'm trying to wrap my mind around HOW we did that, though.  Tatum was 3-9 from 3 and Derrick was 3-10.  That's another duo that shot 6-19.  Where'd the goodness come from?  Jrue 3-6, Sam 2-3, Walsh 2-3 for a combined 7-12.  7 out of 13 3pt fgm were from a starter and two bench players.  Our starters were a combined 9-31, 29%, and that is not good.

Tatum with 13 ftas and Brown with 10, shooting a combined 20-23.  Excellent.

Bobby Manning @RealBobManning
about 2 hours ago
Jaylen: 1 of his last 21 from 3, but he's still managed 25+ in each of those last 3 games.


That was a ridiculous flagrant on Tatum by Grant.  He didn't even pretend to make a play on the ball.  Brown said in his post-game presser that he "thought JT and Grant were friends.  I guess not..."  

It was only a 2 point game with 10 1/2 left.  Against this team.  


Steve Bulpett
@SteveBHoop
The Sultan of Stat plays history teacher, with Jaylen Brown achieving a Celtic first and Jayson Tatum becoming just the second NBA player ever to accomplish his feat.
@DickLipe
reveals...

(The Sultan once led his math team in penalty minutes, so he goes easy on Grant Williams.)







Game 2 tonight.  Let's do it again.


Bob


.

Hi,
I didn't like this game. Of course, a win is a win. But something's not "clicking" in our team: previous game, this game.
They're capable of much better. I can't put my finger on it.
I hope they're just settling in the rhythm of the new season.

AK

I was impressed with the 19 year old kid Tidjane Salaun and also Tre Mann.  Mann was with OKC for 3 years before getting traded to Charlotte last season.  This is his 5th year in the NBA and he is only 23.

Without having a floor stretching big our offensive efficiency from deep is hurt.  AH should suit up tonight.  

With AH on B2B restrictions and KP still convalescing our 3-headed rotation centers are front and Center.

Kornet usually gets the start.  Tillman is not a true center.  They are trying to turn him into a stretch guy but  there is limited evidence that he can consistently make open shots.  He is only shooting 27.8% from the field and 30% for deep.  He is only making 25% of his 2-point attempts.  Queta is shooting 75% from the field and is our top rotation center, with no KP.  He is averaging 5.2 PPG and 4.4 rebounds in only 11.6 minutes of playing time.  Those numbers are better than both Luke and X.

Here are the statistics

https://www.espn.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/bos/boston-celtics

If rebounding the basketball is important and scoring at the rim is important than just maybe Queta should be starting when AH is out and should be our top rotation center when he is not.

Queta had an opportunity to go down the stretch in the Pacer's game and split center minutes with Luke last night (24 Minutes each)

I am very interested in seeing how he does game to game when he is part of the rotation that includes our top 4-6 guys.    It may be easy to overlook the fact that Neemias has a 7' 4" wingspan while Luke is only 7' 1"  and X is at 7' 2".

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
I didn't like this game. Of course, a win is a win. But something's not "clicking" in our team: previous game, this game.
They're capable of much better. I can't put my finger on it.
I hope they're just settling in the rhythm of the new season.

AK

sinus007

The Celtics defense does not look great yet. Their offense is averaging 125.5 PPG which is #1 in the NBA. Right now they are turning their defensive pressure up and down as needed. They have the proverbial target on their backs. The Pacers beat them 2 times last season. They are a good team and they beat us in OT and then lost last night to NOLA.

I can see a noticeable league wide increase in 3 point shooting so on any given game the gap has closed especially when teams face the Celtics.

Through 6 games last season, the Celtics were 5-1. They still look like the team that everyone wants to be. Probably too soon to be concerned.