Post-Game Thread, Magic - Away

[bobheckler]

A thoroughly unacceptable loss (not that any loss is unacceptable).

Our first quarter was beautiful.  Marcus Smart and Brandon Bass were easily the best players on the court for either team.  Smart played all 12 minutes and was hitting from downtown, 3-5 and 3-7 overall and had 3 steals.  He was unbelievably destructive on the defensive end.  He was a one man wrecking crew on defense.  Not only did he hold Victor Oladipo to 2 points on 1-4 but he had his hands in every defensive stand.  He didn't get his 3 steals by having the ball just bounce into his hands.  Steady Eddy had 8 points on 4-6 and had 5 rebounds, 3 of them offensive.  His counterpart, stretch 4 Channing Frye (who is so thin the word "extruded" might be more accurate than "stretch") had only 2 on 1-6.  He is allergic to paint, another Rashard Lewis, but Bass went out to 3pt line and didn't let him have easy open shots.  We shot 48% with 27 fgas (108/48mins) with 6 fast break points and 12 points in the paint and was 5-12 from 3.  We had committed 1 turnover.  They shot 28% on 21fgas (84/48) and 7 turnovers.  We looked awesome.  They should have called the game then.

We started our decline in the 2nd quarter.  As much as there was to like about the 1st quarter, and there wasn't much to not like, that's how much there was to dislike about the 2nd.  After scoring 31 in the 1st we only scored 18 in that ugly 2nd quarter.  We gave up a 22-7 run which let them back in the game.  Smart stopped playing smart, with two bad decisions in a row, one of which involved a rushed 3pt hero ball shot that let the Magic have the last shot of the half instead of us.  The look on Brad's face as he turned and walked away was priceless.  With 10:56 left in the 2nd quarter we were up 20, 37-17.  The high points were Bass with 10 rebounds, 8 points and 4 assists.  IT, off the bench, had 10.

1.  Bass played in Orlando for 3 years.  I don't know if he put on this show because he likes it there and wants to go back or because he wants to pay them back for trading him for Big Baby.  19 points on 9-14 and a career high 17 boards.  What's amazing about his rebounding total is that 10 of those 17 were offensive rebounds!  10 offensive out of 17 total.  Wow.  I think I'm in love.  He hit a 3, and it wasn't even from the short-porch corner.  Danny was absolutely right when he said that Brandon Bass has not hit his ceiling yet, even at his age (he'll be 30 in April).  When most 30 year old players are busy honing their existing skills he's adding new ones.  He also shut down Frye, who ended up with 6 points on 2-10 and 5 boards.  Bass has played center, power forward and has defended small forwards.  I have friends out here who like to bad mouth him because they say he's only 6'8" and usually plays PF.  I just smile.  The more people judge him by that, the less likely they'll try to bid him away from us this off-season and that is just fine with me.

2.  A thoroughly crappy game by Zeller.  He looked like he was sleep-walking the whole night.  Elfrid Payton repeatedly faked him out of his jock on penetrations.  His counterpart Dewayne Dedmon, who was filling in for Vucevic, was scoring and rebounding at will.  I was listening to the Orlando feed last night.  At halftime they interviewed Dedmon before he headed to the locker room.  He was SO wired he was shifting left-right on his feet and talking like a meth tweaker.  No wonder he owned Zeller all game.  Dedmon was pumped, Zeller was pooped.  Is it really necessary for 7'0" Tyler Zeller to do little flip shots when he's 3' from the rim?  Kelly, I understand.  He has alligator arms, but Zeller?  DUNK THE FREAKING BALL!!  Ugh.  7'ers who don't dunk.  Zeller shot 3-9 and only played 23 listless, lackluster minutes.  Sully was the only player to not meet his off-season conditioning goals?  So why can't Zeller play hard for more than a few games straight?  Excellent game by Dedmon, though.  Not a lot of points, only 11, but 16 rebounds (8 offensive) and a lot of inside intimidation.  He's only in his 2nd year, but is 25 years old.  He is listed by draftexpress.com as 6'11 1/2" with shoes and a 7'4" wingspan.  He didn't start playing basketball until he was 18 years old, and got his start at the Antelope Valley junior college and from there transferred to an extremely shitty USC team.  In short, he was nowhere to be found on scouts' radars.  He was undrafted, was signed by GSW and cut.  He played in the D-league, for the Warriors Santa Cruz affiliate, for a year and then was resigned by GSW who sent him back down after only 4 games.  He signed 2 10-day contracts with the Philadelphia 16ers.  Finally, on 2/25/14, he signed a couple of 10 day contracts with Orlando and then signed a multi-year contract with them soon after.  My point?  This guy is making it in the NBA and he was undrafted after an exceptionally poor college career and underwhelming pro career start.  The mirror image of #2 draft pick Michael Beasley who had an awesome college career at K-State but is a traveling journeyman in the NBA (and almost out of it).

3.  Not one of Jae Crowder's better games, that's for sure.  7 points on 2-12, including 1-5 from 3.  Everything just looked "off" for him.  He's shown me enough to not go crazy on him but last night is not going into his scrapbook.  Him, Zeller and Turner stunk it up last night.  I'm ecstatic with our bench, for the most part, but not our starters.  Take Crowder off the bench and put him in the starting line up and our bench suffers.

4.  Jerebko did some things well, he just didn't do enough of them.  Nobody did, really.

5.  Except for the Flavor-of-the-Month, Gelato Man!  Gigi's offense is as smooth as italian ice cream.  After James Young's obligatory 6 thoroughly unproductive minutes in the 2nd quarter, Brad put Gigi in to sub for Crowder and Gigi went to work.  10 points on 4-5 shooting, 2-2 from 3 and 2 blocks in 10 minutes.  Two of those points were on a very high degree of difficulty baseline rainmaking tear drop.  He also hit a Dirk-like wrong-footed shot that was waved off because it was after the shot clock expired, but it was a helluva shot.  Defensively, Gigi was beat once off the dribble by the much faster Oladipo and once by Harkless.  He did play some very good switching, help defense, picking up Oly on a drive down the paint after he lost his man on a pick.  Switching defense?  Si.  Man-to-man?  Non cosi buono.  "Not so good", however, is not as good as James Young's "inesistente" (non-existent) defense.  I'm still trying to keep in mind that Young is only 19 years old, he missed camp and pre-season with injuries and is only now getting some minutes, but his 15 minutes of fame are running out.  If playing him so he can learn the NBA game is the way to go, then why isn't he learning the NBA game?  Brad has to fish-or-cut-bait.  Is he gunning for the playoffs, or is he focused on player development.  If he's committed to making the playoffs then he needs to sit James Young, or send him to Maine, and play Gigi.  Gigi is a 12 year pro.  James Young is Bambi.

6.  IT with 21 points on 5-14 shooting, 3-9 from 3.  That's the IT way.  He's going to get his points, even if it is in KoME-like fashion.  Brad was throwing darts again last night.  He needed offense, desperately.  Other than Bass nobody was giving him any, ergo the insertion of IT and the replacement of Young with Gigi.  There were a couple of times IT drove the lane and fell to the floor.  I didn't see any replays

7.  We had 1 TO in the 1st quarter.  We ended up with 14.  That's a lot of badness in 3 quarters.  I'm sure Brad will have a few words to say about that.  You can't shoot 39% AND have 14 TOs and think you have a shot at winning.

8.  Kelly with another rusty un-noteworthy game.  Will Danny trade him, a 7'er who can shoot, plus picks for a 7' who can block shots and keep Jerebko and Bass?  I'm going to give Kelly another game or two to knock the rust off.  He has only played 43 games this season and we're 61 games into the campaign.  I don't see him as "injury-prone" but he is missing a lot of games and that is making it hard for him to hit a rhythm.  I'm not sure what "rhythm" will do to help his lack of athleticism and difficulty in finishing around the rim against height, but it can't hurt.

9.  Moe Harkless beat our entire squad last night.  If Smart was a one-man wrecking crew on defense in the 1st quarter then Harkless owned the 2nd half.  He was blowing up everything and everybody.  We couldn't finish a 3-on-1 fast break because Harkless hustled back and knocked the ball out of bounds from behind.  Offensively, he attacked.  He burned Gigi once because he just drove past him.  Ok, I can understand maybe the underused Datome didn't scout Harkless as well as he should have, it's not like expecting game minutes is a no-brainer for Luigi, but you give Harkless the outside shot.  He is very tough on drives.  Gotta give it to Harkless though, last night was his night (Dedmon's too).  He is a career 32% 3pt shooter, shooting 18% from 3 this year (NOT a typo), but he was 2-3 last night.  When it's working, it's working.

10.  Remember Aaron Gordon, the high-flying defensive player people had Danny pegged us taking with #6 instead of Smart (Gordon didn't last that long, he was picked #4)?  2 points on 1-3, 0-2 from 3 in 15 fairly unspectacular minutes.  I was wondering if that was just a match up thing, or was he injured, but no.  He's averaging 15mpg for the season.  Maybe he's a late bloomer.  Looking at the players taken before Smart we have Wiggins and Parker, who are having ok but not eye-popping years; Embiid, who hasn't played a minute because Hinkie is enjoying his powerdive too much to pull back on the yoke and try to climb out of it; Gordon and Exum, who are having underwhelming years; and Mahcus Smaht.  Other than Elfrid Payton there is no player in the top 10 that I look at and think "Man, we should have taken him, or, if only he hadn't been grabbed first by that other team I'd be happier with him than with Smart" and even then I'm not really sold.  If you look at their numbers Smart's is very close to Payton's in ppg and assists, but Smart's assist-to-turnover ratio is a lot better than Payton's and Smart's defense is off-the-charts vs Payton's.

11.  We had 27fgas after 1, but ended with only 89.  We had at least one 24 second shot clock turnover.  Offensively speaking, for a team who lives and dies on pace a 24 second shot clock violation is an 800-pound canary-in-the-coalmine.

Now we have to play Miami, in Miami, on the 2nd game of a back-to-back.  This road trip, starting off with a win in Nwalins, could have been a good one.  We could have gone 2-1, easily, but now we have to bounce back and play really well tonight to do that.  Let's see how ferocious they come out and play tonight.  Brad has been pretty good at that.  He has been good at upping their intensity levels after playing a bad game, the high energy, well-focused Utah and NOP victories after the Cleveland debacle is a good example.


.

[cowens/oldschool]

bob great post, didn't actually read it, but I know the quality of your writing and what you see....we ARE not a playoff team and even if we don't get the top 3 picks, making the playoffs is not good for a team in a total rebuild, which we are in....we need to get the best possible players.

[kdp59]

one other note I will add.

teams have started putting a long player on Thomas now. so far it has disrupted his game . IT will need to do a better job of setting up team mates when teams do this in the future, instead of dribbling into the long armed bigger man and then throwing up bad shots (while falling to the floor).

[Sam]

Nice analysis as usual, Bob.  As you know, I try to supplement your commentary on individual player performances by focusing my attention on broad implications for the team.

At this juncture, it's requiring a longer leap of faith than I'm currently capable of to hold out a lot of hope for either Kelly or Young to become better assets than liabilities, at least this season.  Yes, I know it's only fair to allow Kelly more than a couple of return games before casting judgment.  But, throughout the year, there's been something about his game that produces better statistical results (rebounding, three-point percentages, etc.) than his total impact on the fortunes of the team.  And, yes, I know that it's only fair to allow Young more minutes before passing sentence on him.  But the minutes are actually piling up, and I'm not seeing even a trace of improvement in his game.  I'm not at all convinced that Datome's offensive skills will outweigh his defensive warts either, but offense is where the Celtics are most hurting at the moment, and I'd like to see GiGi get some more run on the chance that (1) he can inject a little life into the offense and (2) he might show enough to give him another look next season or include him as a legitimate filler in a trade over the summer.

It's asking a lot of a second unit to carry the load for any team.  But I believe Crowder is a much better fit for that unit than as a starter.  The essence of the second unit is energy, and the essence of Crowder is energy; and I believe they're both weakened without one another.  I understand that someone has to fill in for Bradley, and Crowder's recent performances made him a natural choice since Brad undoubtedly didn't want to take Thomas' scoring punch away from the bench.  But (and I know I'll get flack for this), in a season that's a developmental one anyway, I actually wouldn't mind seeing a starting lineup of Zeller, Bass, Datome, Smart and Turner while Avery's out.  More offense for the starters and more of Crowder's defensive yin for Isaiah's offensive yang for the bench.

Brandon Bass is now the closest thing to a dependable terror that the Celtics currently possess.  The word "dependable" is what separates his inputs from those of Thomas in the terror category.  At present, I can't think of a more adaptable and valuable Celtic.

However, in terms of overall value to the Celtics this season, I have to go with Brad. The guy has been doing the adjustment tango on the lineup dance floor all season long, with players coming and going and the mounting impact of injuries  Given the level of talent on this team, Brad has had little room for error in his decisions and has had to make a veritable lemonade stand out of a 15 foot lemon tree.  Backed up against an impenetrable wall, he has had no choice but to go small—not just because he has no height but because that strategy has presented him with his only tiny competitive advantage.

From my perspective, last night's game just reinforced a trend that has been forming in recent games.  Teams that can effectively go small will give these Celtics a rough time because they negate that tiny advantage mentioned above.  It has happened more than once now, and I suspect more teams will be quicker to go that route.  I won't say that going small has become a one trick pony for Brad, but it has arguably been the pick of the herd in producing success for the Celtics.  Now teams are learning how to neutralize that strategy.

Last night exemplified one reason why I had been happy to learn that JaVale might be coming here.  I didn't think he was going to be some kind of savior, and he could even have been totally underwhelming.  But he might have provided Brad with more size flexibility in his lineup selections, especially if Kelly had come back strong.  Moreover, his presence might have permitted Brad to give Zeller more rest during games, as Tyler clearly wears down upon repeated pressure.

I still feel they can be fun to watch; and I continue to find it unnatural to think of them as a developing team rather than a contending team.  But, unfortunately, that's exactly what they are.  And, whether we look at them individually or collectively, that's the only appropriate frame of reference.

Go Celtics!

Sam

[bobheckler]

one other note I will add.

teams have started putting a long player on Thomas now. so far it has disrupted his game . IT will need to do a better job of setting up team mates when teams do this in  the future, instead of dribbling into the long armed bigger man and then throwing up  bad shots (while falling to the floor).

kdp,

Excellent observation.  I noticed that in the GSW game, when they put 6'7" Shaun Livingston on him.

Brad should use double staggered screens to run off the bigger player they put on Thomas.  A single pick is still giving the pick defender the opportunity to prevent penetration and give IT's defender a chance to fight through the screen and catch him.  A double staggered screen will create more pnr opportunities as well as forcing his bigger, slower defender to go wider around the staggered screens.






bob


.

[k_j_88]

I'd probably start looking to move Kelly.


KJ

[cowens/oldschool]

I'd probably start looking to move Kelly.


KJ

agreed hes a nice kid with nice hair and all, but the NBA is a bottomline business, see him as too much of a liability going forward.

[Sponsored content]