Enough for me,should I accept that this team is tanking?

by **international** Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:22 pm

I get the feeling that this team is playing to loose in order to accommodate for the draft.And the worst thing is that some players are playing for better contracts and the coach is playing others to showcase them for a trade.Young players that are playing good are too many minutes on the bench and mediocre players are killing us under the boards.The lack of a true center is hurting the defense,because there are too many double teams ,I've seen a lack of basic and simple fundaments like box out,good picks.The majority of the shots are forced and there is no inside game.Danny Ainge need to make a decision if he is going to tank,so lets do it with the young guys not with veterans that are not going to be with the team next year.If the route is to tank,i think I am done watching the team this year,i have seen to many warriors on this team like Russell,Cowens,Havlicek,Bird and Garnett who hated to loose a game and now I don't want to see a bunch of loosers.

by **Matty** Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:52 pm

I don't think this team (from owners all the way down to Bogans) is made up with folks willing to lay down and lose a single game on purpose.

that said, there are numerous objectives to this season- one in which everyone knows the team is not going to be playing for a championship.

I don't think Danny needs to make a decision on whether or not to tank, He's already chosen out a course of action that, despite earlier seeming to give some good returns (winning games) most likely will have as a side effect, the opprutinutiy to draft very early in the draft.

I don't believe that was the purpose in his design this season, but it was a realized consequence all along.

our job is just to root for our team, Danny has done this before and with good results, a few injuries less and we wooda been looking for title 19 or 20 mebbe..

by **international** Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:19 pm

Matty,that is your opinion and I have mine,but can you tell me when was the last time this team had a quality center?And when I say a quality center I am talking about a rim protector and a rebounder of more than 10 rebounds per game.I think the last one was Robert Parish.You don't rebuilt a team with veterans or players trying to put good numbers in order to get a good contract.When you start this process of rebuilding you do it with your young players,that's why I say Danny need a decision about weather he wants to continue this way or if he wants to develop young players that are hungry to play and are going to play with passion.Take the example of Phoenix that with the exception of Chaning Frye is winning with young guys who are giving 100% of effort.And they traded Luis Scola for Plummlie,Gerard Green and a first round selection on this coming draft.

by **Sam** Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:20 pm

No way, International. The players are trying as hard as they can. They just lack the proper talent and chemistry to offset the outstanding strengths of other teams because the Celtics don't have any outstanding strengths of their own.

Sam

by **international** Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:38 pm

Sam,Orlando had a 10 games loosing streak and was without Nikola Vucevic and Jason Maxiell and scored 38 points in the paint to 28 by the Celtics,Aron Affalo took 13 rebound and Big Baby and Kyle O'Quinn killed us under the boards.A player like Sullinger only took 8 shots because the guards were looking for their shots and forgot to pass the ball to him.And you tell me that the players are trying as hard as they can?No way Sam,i cant accept this team is doing their best effort.Olynyk need to play more than 16 minutes.

by **international** Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:58 pm

When you have a player like Avery Bradley who plays 32 minutes per game and take 14 shots per game with 1.5 assists per game and 0.9 assists/turnovers you know something is wrong ,when your small forward who is 6-9 only has 5 rebounds per game,and you pay Gerard Wallace 10 millions to score 4.3 points per game and 3.3 rebounds,when yor power forward Bass only have 6 rebounds per game,when your team is 26 in points per game scored and is 20 in rebounds per game and is 28 in assists per game and is 15 in blocks ,you know something is wrong.And your responsibility is to fix it ,if you don't do it you are not doing a good job.

by **k_j_88** Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:10 am

international,

i don't think they want to intentionally lose games. they just lack the pieces to win every night.

KJ

by **Sam** Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:48 am

International,

Listen to KJ. He's right. The thing I hate most (of many candidates) about the "tank" word is that, every time a team's not good enough, people say it's because they're tanking. If you've read all of the extremely negative things Celtics players have said about tanking this season, you know what I mean.

Why would players want to tank? Do you think they're getting paid a few bucks under the table to ease off? What do a few bucks mean to them? Something to light cigars with? Anyone who thinks they want to lose for the team's ultimate good while looking bad in their individual play doesn't understand how important money is to them.

They're simply not good enough, International. And, since they have no cap space and not a lot of trading chips, it will take time for them to retool. I do think they might luck out and trade for Asik, but that would be as a building block for the future, not for some miracle cure for their ineffectiveness this season.

Enjoy the sun down there.

Sam

by **Berlin-T** Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:33 am

International, you might have a point but I think you're aiming at the wrong target. The players are not tanking. Perhaps Danny Ainge is tanking by not providing the center that we need. But even there I think one has to consider the possibility that it just hasn't been possible under the present circumstances for Ainge to get a center. With the gutting of last year's team we all knew this year couldn't possibly end in a championship. Substituting "retooling" for "tanking" is for me a more accurate assessment of what's going on. I share your frustration and remember all the great teams we've had but they all had great players. We just don't have them yet.

by **international** Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:49 am

My friends,I wish I could explain it better,because seems to me that you don't understand what Im trying to say.I understand whatever you say in English .each and every word,but sometimes I have problems with the use of some words in my writing.What I am triying to say is not that players want to loose games,but that winning is second to them...stats,new contracts and other things are first.The front office is not making the right moves to improve the team,so I can accept their doing their best job that's all.As a former player who hated to loose games,and sometimes playing injured,thats not good to me.

by **international** Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:52 am

I understand that in rebuilding process winning is not a priority,but to a player who wear the Celtics uniform should be.

by **dboss** Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:17 am

If I thought that this team was tanking, I would not watch them anymore.

Tanking repugnant.

The team does not have a legit center. The team has a new coach. The team has a lot of new players. Chemistry takes time.

I can live with the losses because da has done a splendid job setting things up for the future.

Dboss

by **tjmakz** Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:25 am

International,

I can't agree with what you are saying.
I feel strongly that no Celtics player is tanking.
Do you think that Humpheries who is on the last year of his contract cares about Boston's 2014 draft picks? He needs to play hard to make the most money he can next summer.
As for some of the guys under contract, Bradley and Sullinger, they are having very good years.
Bass and Green are basically the same players they have always have been.
Oly, Faverani and Pressey are rookies, you can't judge them.
Crawford when he was in Boston, was having a very good year.
The only person you could look at maybe tanking is Wallace but that is not true of him either. He has torn his teammates apart this year multiple times after losses. You can see that father time is catching up with Wallace but his effort is there.

Which players in particular would you say that winning is second to them or they are more worried about their contract or other things?

by **112288** Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:41 am

International,

I guess you can look at the team and their play like a half of glass of water. Is it half full (playing hard) or half empty (tanking). I choose to look at the team as half full.

What the Celtics are going through is an evaluation of talent to perform certain duties on the court as to the style of play and the basketball strategy of Coach Stevens. Throw a little or a lot of Danny Ainge in there as well. Ainge vetted out Stevens and the type of basketball play he wants to instill in building the "NEXT TEAM" to compete and the type of players they need to execute Stevens strategy.

This is what's going on right now. It is a team in the sense of the traditional definition in the dictionary.........but at the same time .....IT IS NOT A TEAM in the sense that they do not have all the players they feel can execute Stevens strategy and style of basketball.

So what what they are going through is painful to the fan........but to a basketball insider, it is one of the more astute moves an organization and coach can be making to get a quality team in a few years. They are vetting players out to see who performs and who does not within Coach Stevens system , and Danny is making quiet moves to bring in the pieces necessary to execute. Not all the pieces are in place, many are missing like a true center who can protect the rim and a small forward who can shoot.

Be patient.....when you think that winter is still around............a beautiful spring day will suddenly appear.

112288

by **bobheckler** Mon Jan 20, 2014 11:42 am

We're between a rock and a hard place.

We want to win, we want to win, we want to win. Always. And yet, we are missing the pieces to win.

1. Our only real center is a rookie who hasn't adapted to the more physical style of the NBA. He still doesn't set and hold picks. Hell, he doesn't even really set picks, he gets in their way for a second but gets out of their way before they actually come in contact with him. I've said that Vitor should get more time, but I don't know what's going on in practice and I'm not thrilled with his picks either and that's a shame. Il Hombre Indestructible needs to do more than just take 3s.

2. Our toothpick rookie lottery pick is also struggling to adapt with the more physical style of the NBA. He's 7'0", 235#. Paul Pierce, by comparison, is 6'7", 235#. This ain't Gonzaga. He's not in the back of some zone. He's having players that outweigh him by 30# beating on him like a drum OR he's guarding someone who is a lot quicker. Sometimes he looks lost out there, sometimes he doesn't. Is that because he's demoralized and doesn't play as hard as he could every second? Possibly, but he's a rookie and that's part of it all.

3. Bayless has probably just been walked through the entire playbook this past week.

4. Our starting point guard just came back last week and his minutes are being heavily monitored. He doesn't have his old explosiveness back yet (I hope it's just 'yet'). Our previous starting point guard, whose play could perhaps provide some stability, continuity and chemistry, is gone.

5. Our previous starting power forward, Bass, is now coming off the bench and is struggling with that a bit too. Just last year he was starting alongside the great Kevin Garnett and playing starter minutes. He's only 28, still in his prime, and he's behind Hump and Sully on the depth chart.

6. Sully's a bit up and down. He has some monster games, games where he is definitely the one left with the chair when the Dinosaur Dance music stops, but then has mediocre games for a while. I definitely don't think that's because he's loafing. One of Sully's great strengths is his work ethic and his competitive nature. He wants it and will do what it takes to win, he has ganas. He just completed his rookie year, playing in 82 games, just earlier this year. He's also playing out of position because of how thin we are at 5.

7. Bradley has definitely stepped up his game. No accusation of 'tanking' makes any sense with him. He has ganas by the bucket load.

8. Wallace has lost a lot of his physical skills and has forgotten about scoring. Is he tanking, or just past his shelf life? He still hustles out there, still dives for balls and continues to earn his nickname 'Crash'. Id say he still has ganas. He's just not an all-star anymore or even close to it. He's having trouble dealing with that too.

9. Jeff Green is an enigma to me. I honestly and truly am having trouble understanding what is going on inside of him. I'm holding my fire for another couple of weeks to see how he does with the return of Rondo.

10. Pressey is doing quite well for an undrafted rookie whose playing time is both limited and inconsistent. No tanking.

11. Brad Stevens is a rookie. He is coaching like a rookie. He is also coaching like he wants to win by not playing rookies who need floor time to develop (e.g. Kelly, Pressey, Vitor) more. If he gives them more time, we lose even more since our best player, at this time I'd say that's Kris Humphries, wouldn't be playing as much. Whatever you think of the job Stevens is doing, he sure as hell isn't tanking because of lack of effort or desire.

I like Hump. I liked him when I heard about the trade (although I did choke on his salary a bit) but what does it say about your team when your best player is Kris Humphries? It says you have all kinds of issues that will hold you back from winning, like, not having an all-star on the team (Rondo just came back and isn't playing at his all-star level again...yet).

It has been a while since we've had a bona fide center. Some of that was a deliberate effort on the part of Danny to morph the Celtics into a team that could compete in the almost center-free NBA, to model us more like the Miami Heat. He tried to change us by getting Green to match up with LBJ. The league has changed into a league of jumpshooters taking 3s, there isn't even an all-star vote for the center position anymore, that's how rare a true center is in the NBA today. Everybody, even bigs, are taking threes now. Personally, I'm not all that pleased with this but that is where the league has gone and Danny adapted. If Jeff Green became the monster, night in and night out, that Danny and the rest of us were drooling over the experiment's results would look much better now. Let's just say it looked better on paper than it has on the court.

I don't think we're tanking by your definition, International, I just think we stink. We stink because our roster is still very unbalanced and we're still too young. Unless we ship out the youth for a bunch of veterans sometime over the next 30 days before the trade deadline, we're going to be young for the rest of this season. We have 3 starting power forwards and no starting center. We have one 7'er and he's an under-muscled toothpick. We have only 2 players over 250# (Vitor and Sully). and only one of them is playing any minutes.

There will be trades this month. I have no doubt Trader Danny is wheeling and dealing at this very moment. What I try to remember is that even if he pulls off a blockbuster today, it will still take time for the newbies to develop chemistry with the team and for that to translate into Ws. It's never pretty watching sausage being made and that's what this year is and has been about since July. It's Danny making sausage.

Hang in there, buddy, hang in there. We knew this year was going to be tough going back to July, so this should come as no surprise, it's just harder actually going through it than it is when you're talking about what it will be like going through it. As Winston Churchill said "when you're going through Hell, keep going".

Go Celtics!

bob

.

by **international** Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:16 pm

Maybe I'm wrong and your right,but only time will tell.

by **Sam** Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:25 pm

Stick with it, International. In our heads, we all knew this would probably be a very frustrating season. But, speaking only for myself, I'm pretty sure I could never have guessed how frustrating.

I keep telling myself to ignore the won/lost record and focus on the development of the team. But, in some ways, this team is like a baby. Day by day, it's difficult to see the development. But, if you're away from it for a month, there are definitely glimmers of hope. That's undoubtedly how Danny is thinking about it, and I'm trying hard to do the same myself—watching and absorbing day-by-day but taking stock of how they're developing month-by-month.

So far, this has been my Pressey/Humphries (although he's obviously not a kid) month.

Sam

by **beat** Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:30 pm

International

I cannot think of any true athlete that goes out and as a fore plan "tries" to loose any contest. Just is not in the nature. Now there have been very isolated issues with point shaving ect. but those are very rare.

Certainly an end result of not being good makes our pick in the upcoming draft look better and better but are we really doing this to rely on the bounce of a few ping pong balls?

To put it simply right now we sort of suck. We all knew this would be a difficult season and as Sam just mentioned we may not have realized just how difficult this would be. We have been competitive in the vast majority of those losses...........perhaps if a 5-6 minute stretch could be erased from many of those losses we might even be nudging the .500 mark. But woe that is not the case. Even the return of our "star" Rondo did not change the current pattern if anything inserting Rondo near the end of the games has hurt perhaps more than it has helped those outcomes but he has to play to see how things mesh. This is not about this season as hard as that may be to swallow, it may not be so much about next season other than getting better (and it would be hard to believe we could get worse) It's about getting back to being a contender.

Quick tell me how many current players were on it 2 years ago? I'll save you the time, it's 3, Bass Bradley and Rondo. Bradley missed most of the season 2 years ago and Rondo missed 1/2 of last year and much of this.

Mix in a new coach with a new approach and well we have what we have.

But the future can be bright, with picks up the wazoo and a GM with a good horse-trader knowledge we will have a chance very soon to be back to where a title can happen.

We all detest losing............. do you really feel the athletes on this team accept this any more than we do?

Again we are a bad team right now. Pick any middle of the road team right now and how many of our players would even start on one of those teams.......... and how many would even make the roster of the really good teams, contracts and money aside?

Patience is perhaps in short supply when we see double digit leads fade like a setting sun. Moves will be made for sure picks and some players will be packing their bags heading elsewhere.

Hang in there, enjoy the good moments and hope they occur more often.

beat

by **k_j_88** Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:45 pm

this team is competitive night in and night out, but the roster has been in flux all year. Now that Rondo's back, the team will have to adjust to his being there.

KJ

by **international** Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:45 pm

Have you heard Gerald Wallace at least 3 times saying that the players don't want to compete and win games,and that the effort was not good?He should know better than us what is really happening,because he is there,he is in the practices,he is in the locker room.Maybe he is right after all.

by **beat** Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:48 pm

international wrote:Have you heard Gerald Wallace at least 3 times saying that the players don't want to compete and win games,and that the effort was not good?He should know better than us what is really happening,because he is there,he is in the practices,he is in the locker room.Maybe he is right after all.

Then why have we won ANY games?

And why do we make some shots?

Coming from a frustrated player don;t put a lot of stock in it.

beat

by **k_j_88** Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:18 pm

Wallace is much older than most of the roster, so he is speaking from a different place.

KJ

by **Sam** Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:46 pm

International,

Older players who have gone through the wars of professional basketball have familiarized themselves with the toll the game and travel take on pro athletes. With some exceptions (think Russell, William), younger players have to go through an indoctrination period to equip themselves to withstand and overcome the rigors of pro basketball. At some point, each player who is really going to be successful finds he has reached a new level of hardness and determination that equip him to be more than ordinary. I believe guys like Olynyk, Sullinger, Pressey, and even Green are going through that process. They would be worse than stupid not to try their best at all times when their futures could be at stake.

Sam

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