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Post-Game Thread, Magic - Home
by bobheckler Sat Mar 14, 2015 1:15 pm
Who says Friday the 13th is bad luck? We needed all the luck the leprechaun could give us and he delivered. We couldn't throw the ball into the ocean from the edge of the pier for most of the game. I mean, we blew A LOT of bunnies. It wasn't pretty (unless you mean "pretty ugly") but it was a win and a win is a win is...
This game is almost like a microcosm of our season-to-date: Start off like crap, rally a bit, then suck and then surge towards the end to a rewarding finish. We are 7-3 in our last 10 games. Our record since the all-star game is a respectable 8-5, with two straight road losses after the all-star game (Sacto and LAL) dragging us down, but remember, the Sacto and LAL games were right as the Thornton-for-Thomas and Prince-for-Jerebko/Datome trades were happening. We played with only 11 players active in Sacto (Kelly was out with his ankle and the newbies hadn't arrived yet, so Brad played 10) and LAL was an OT loss. My point here is that if you look at how this team has played post all-star game, ESPECIALLY after the newbies showed up and was able to get at least a walk-through Brad's playbook, we have done very, very well. Our losses, other than those two were the competitive loss to the best team in basketball, GSW, the anomaly blow out loss to Cleveland and the head-shaking implosion in Orlando. 8-5 since February 20th, 8-4 (at worst) since the newbies showed up, already 3 more wins than last year with 18 still to play and 7-3 in our last 10. That's having fun.
We shot 31% in the first. We were lucky to only have been down 5. At the half we were down 10, with our shooting improving to a still execrable 38%. We had 10 turnovers. We sleep-walked through the entire first half. We were able to shave 4 points off the lead by the end of the 3rd by only committing 1 turnover.
1. The ending might have been very, very different if Elfriid Payton could hit free throws. Until last night I had thought I had seen it all. I saw National Baton Twirling Champion Calvin Murphy's 78 consecutive free throws made, I saw Rick Barry shoot over 90% 6x from the line underhand (one year was 94.7%!) and Ray Allen's machine-like repetition. I have also seen Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Shaquille O'Neal and Ben Wallace but never have I seen anything like I saw last night from Payton. On any other night I would have felt sorry for the kid. Last night, of course, I was doing a jig on his grave. 4-15, with most of them not even being close. Other than that, though, he played over his head. He can't shoot from outside, but he was 2-3 from 3 last night. He penetrated at will, dished at will and was in the middle of everything. His free throws, though, wiped out all that wonderful effort and production.
2. Two players we haven't seen much of and haven't been that impressed with so far, Kelly and Phil, were the engines behind our win. Kelly did exactly what he was told to do and that was shoot from the outside, dragging Vucevic out with him. Orlando was forced to put Aaron Gordon on him, he was killing Vucevic. 5-8 for Kelly, 3-5 from 3 for 13 points. He looked pretty good, pretty confident. A double-double from a guy who never pulls his warmups off. He was a pitchman after breathing from a helium balloon. He rocketed through the lane. He came in sharp as a tack. 10 assists and only 3 TOs, 2 steals and 4 rebounds from our other mini Mighty Mouse. He was a catalyst that picked up the tempo, the energy and picked the Orlando defense apart with penetrations and drop down passes to Kelly and others. It's not going to change the bigger picture, when Thomas comes back Phil is going back to the bench, but Brad has to feel good about Phil Pressey into a game now.
3. No, I haven't forgotten about Evan Turnabout. He was 0-5 in the 1st quarter, taking his usual assortment of bad shots and 3-10 at the half. He was NOT getting a lot of love on the Game On thread and I'm not even talking about me. Turner couldn't hit a jumpshot if his life depended on it. After halftime he came up and the first thing he did was to take a quick, not-even-one-pass ME-ball jumpshot miss. No bueno. And then...Turner went 3-4 in the 3rd, most of it coming on penetration layups and NOT jumpshots and went completely unconscious in the 4th. He was 6-6 in the 4th on just about everything. I had seen him have games against us when he was with Philly, but have not yet seen one since he came here (Disclaimer: I followed the boxscores diligently and was on the Game On threads occasionally but didn't actually watch any games for 3 1/2 months). I don't expect him to do this every night, that would be unfair, but Brad has to figure out what it is that got Turner to focus like that and bottle it. As bad as he was in the first half, and brother was he ever bad!, that's how good he was in the second. Last night, on the Game On thread, I said I was going to look at Turner's shot chart. Well, here it is: in the 1st quarter he was 0-5 with 3 of those misses coming from outside, 2 from 3; in the 2nd quarter he was 2-4 with one mid-range jumper and one at the rim, the misses were one outside and one inside. So, in the first half he had 9 fgas and only 3 of them were in the paint. In the 3rd quarter he had 2fgm at the rim and one elbow jumper fgm, the lone miss was a free throw line extended jumper. In his explosive 4th quarter, where he went 6-6? How about 5 of 6 being outside shots and only one in the paint. So, it wasn't that he changed his game and started attacking the rim, it was that he started hitting his outside shots. Believe it or not only 1 of the 4th quarter fgm was a 3. Probably nobody on this board has been tougher on Evan Turnover than me but I gotta give him props for last night. 30 points on 12-20, 16 and only 3 TOs? Hard to talk smack about that. In fact, if anything, I'm glad they came on, what are for him, more makeable mid-range jumpshots than 3s. I'll happily trade oh-for-a-bazillion on 3s for 5-6 from long 2 all day, every day. Remember what made you a star last night, Evan. It wasn't from being a bombardier.
4. Another blah night from Zeller. 2-8 on the night in 19 sleep-walking minutes. Got a shot blocked by Gordon because he tried to flip it in instead of dunking it. Bass would have dunked the ball AND Gordon with it. A little more aggression please, Tyler. Don't make me have to come east and kill your puppy.
5. Speaking of Bass, he had a relatively quiet night. What is a "quiet night" for Steady Eddie lately? How about 8 points on 4-6 and 7 rebounds, 2 offensive and 2 blocks in 31 minutes. Not high scoring, but solid. One of those blocks came in the 3rd quarter with a Wilson-burger block of Vucevic's 4' shot at the rim and the 2nd on was a BIG one, with only 1:07 left in the 4th on Victor Oladipo from 3' out after an Orlando timeout and Boston clinging to a 4 point lead. You can draw them up and expect them to score, but you still have to get past Bass. Maybe the reason why Bass didn't get as much love on the Game On thread as he usually does is because he didn't have as many 2-handed flushes as usual. Only 2 last night. That's how spoiled we've gotten with Steady Eddie. Only 2 dunks and only 2 blocks on point-blank shots. Sniff. Why did he even bother to show up?
6. In the ongoing soap-opera "as the backup 3 turns" both Gigi and Young got a few minutes, 7 and 6 respectively. Gigi, however, took a very good charge, taking away a basket from Orlando while James Young played matador defense on his man, letting him penetrate and dish and joined the paratrooper corp and fouled Payton on a 3pt fga. Young's poor defense was so obvious Payton played him like a veteran and threw the ball at the rim because he knew Young couldn't stop himself. Gigi, 3pts scored and 2 points taken away (his +/- was a +5, I think coincidentally) while Young also scored 3 but gave up 3 (fortunately, Payton went 1-3 from the line). On the other side of the fence, Moe Harkless is looking more and more like what Gerald Wallace used to be, a high energy defender and opportunistic scorer.
7. Channing Frye was a no-show. Vucevic, who did not play last game against us, scored 16 points on 7-17 and 11 rebounds. Dedmon grabbed 8 boards and a spectacular block but only 5 points. That's 9-22 for 21 points from their bigs. I'll take that. Aaron Gordon had 11 points on 4-8 and 8 boards, playing multiple positions. A lot of pundits had us taking Gordon at #6 instead of Smart. We were up to our eyeballs in 4s last year, so from that perspective taking Gordon wasn't what we should have done but last night it was a tossup. Smart did well on the defensive end, he held Oladipo to 11 points on 5-14 and that isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but he is struggling, struggling, struggling on the offensive end. Gordon is an uber-athletic jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. His defense was good last night, but not great. He was 1-3 from 3 last night. As far as I am concerned I'll give him that shot all night. Payton too.
8. We, somehow!, sneaked out above Orlando in fg%, 42.5% to 43%. They had 19 turnovers (they average 15.0/game) to only 16 of ours. Once again, our opponent's turnovers exceeded their season average. What we did not do a good job on, obviously, was keeping Elf Payton off the free throw line. Hmmm, wait a minute, that practically counted as an empty possession by them. Nevermind, good coaching Brad. Next time just make sure the guys know to let him shoot anywhere he wants from 16' out.
Charlotte came back from being down a ton against Chicago. Miami lost. We are now 1/2 game behind Miami for 9th and only 1 game back from Charlotte for 8th. We are now 17-16 at home. Now, here comes a tough one. Indy is 9-1 in their last 10, they are riding a 7 game winning streak and are 18-14 at home. If we win this one...
bob
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This game is almost like a microcosm of our season-to-date: Start off like crap, rally a bit, then suck and then surge towards the end to a rewarding finish. We are 7-3 in our last 10 games. Our record since the all-star game is a respectable 8-5, with two straight road losses after the all-star game (Sacto and LAL) dragging us down, but remember, the Sacto and LAL games were right as the Thornton-for-Thomas and Prince-for-Jerebko/Datome trades were happening. We played with only 11 players active in Sacto (Kelly was out with his ankle and the newbies hadn't arrived yet, so Brad played 10) and LAL was an OT loss. My point here is that if you look at how this team has played post all-star game, ESPECIALLY after the newbies showed up and was able to get at least a walk-through Brad's playbook, we have done very, very well. Our losses, other than those two were the competitive loss to the best team in basketball, GSW, the anomaly blow out loss to Cleveland and the head-shaking implosion in Orlando. 8-5 since February 20th, 8-4 (at worst) since the newbies showed up, already 3 more wins than last year with 18 still to play and 7-3 in our last 10. That's having fun.
We shot 31% in the first. We were lucky to only have been down 5. At the half we were down 10, with our shooting improving to a still execrable 38%. We had 10 turnovers. We sleep-walked through the entire first half. We were able to shave 4 points off the lead by the end of the 3rd by only committing 1 turnover.
1. The ending might have been very, very different if Elfriid Payton could hit free throws. Until last night I had thought I had seen it all. I saw National Baton Twirling Champion Calvin Murphy's 78 consecutive free throws made, I saw Rick Barry shoot over 90% 6x from the line underhand (one year was 94.7%!) and Ray Allen's machine-like repetition. I have also seen Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Shaquille O'Neal and Ben Wallace but never have I seen anything like I saw last night from Payton. On any other night I would have felt sorry for the kid. Last night, of course, I was doing a jig on his grave. 4-15, with most of them not even being close. Other than that, though, he played over his head. He can't shoot from outside, but he was 2-3 from 3 last night. He penetrated at will, dished at will and was in the middle of everything. His free throws, though, wiped out all that wonderful effort and production.
2. Two players we haven't seen much of and haven't been that impressed with so far, Kelly and Phil, were the engines behind our win. Kelly did exactly what he was told to do and that was shoot from the outside, dragging Vucevic out with him. Orlando was forced to put Aaron Gordon on him, he was killing Vucevic. 5-8 for Kelly, 3-5 from 3 for 13 points. He looked pretty good, pretty confident. A double-double from a guy who never pulls his warmups off. He was a pitchman after breathing from a helium balloon. He rocketed through the lane. He came in sharp as a tack. 10 assists and only 3 TOs, 2 steals and 4 rebounds from our other mini Mighty Mouse. He was a catalyst that picked up the tempo, the energy and picked the Orlando defense apart with penetrations and drop down passes to Kelly and others. It's not going to change the bigger picture, when Thomas comes back Phil is going back to the bench, but Brad has to feel good about Phil Pressey into a game now.
3. No, I haven't forgotten about Evan Turnabout. He was 0-5 in the 1st quarter, taking his usual assortment of bad shots and 3-10 at the half. He was NOT getting a lot of love on the Game On thread and I'm not even talking about me. Turner couldn't hit a jumpshot if his life depended on it. After halftime he came up and the first thing he did was to take a quick, not-even-one-pass ME-ball jumpshot miss. No bueno. And then...Turner went 3-4 in the 3rd, most of it coming on penetration layups and NOT jumpshots and went completely unconscious in the 4th. He was 6-6 in the 4th on just about everything. I had seen him have games against us when he was with Philly, but have not yet seen one since he came here (Disclaimer: I followed the boxscores diligently and was on the Game On threads occasionally but didn't actually watch any games for 3 1/2 months). I don't expect him to do this every night, that would be unfair, but Brad has to figure out what it is that got Turner to focus like that and bottle it. As bad as he was in the first half, and brother was he ever bad!, that's how good he was in the second. Last night, on the Game On thread, I said I was going to look at Turner's shot chart. Well, here it is: in the 1st quarter he was 0-5 with 3 of those misses coming from outside, 2 from 3; in the 2nd quarter he was 2-4 with one mid-range jumper and one at the rim, the misses were one outside and one inside. So, in the first half he had 9 fgas and only 3 of them were in the paint. In the 3rd quarter he had 2fgm at the rim and one elbow jumper fgm, the lone miss was a free throw line extended jumper. In his explosive 4th quarter, where he went 6-6? How about 5 of 6 being outside shots and only one in the paint. So, it wasn't that he changed his game and started attacking the rim, it was that he started hitting his outside shots. Believe it or not only 1 of the 4th quarter fgm was a 3. Probably nobody on this board has been tougher on Evan Turnover than me but I gotta give him props for last night. 30 points on 12-20, 16 and only 3 TOs? Hard to talk smack about that. In fact, if anything, I'm glad they came on, what are for him, more makeable mid-range jumpshots than 3s. I'll happily trade oh-for-a-bazillion on 3s for 5-6 from long 2 all day, every day. Remember what made you a star last night, Evan. It wasn't from being a bombardier.
4. Another blah night from Zeller. 2-8 on the night in 19 sleep-walking minutes. Got a shot blocked by Gordon because he tried to flip it in instead of dunking it. Bass would have dunked the ball AND Gordon with it. A little more aggression please, Tyler. Don't make me have to come east and kill your puppy.
5. Speaking of Bass, he had a relatively quiet night. What is a "quiet night" for Steady Eddie lately? How about 8 points on 4-6 and 7 rebounds, 2 offensive and 2 blocks in 31 minutes. Not high scoring, but solid. One of those blocks came in the 3rd quarter with a Wilson-burger block of Vucevic's 4' shot at the rim and the 2nd on was a BIG one, with only 1:07 left in the 4th on Victor Oladipo from 3' out after an Orlando timeout and Boston clinging to a 4 point lead. You can draw them up and expect them to score, but you still have to get past Bass. Maybe the reason why Bass didn't get as much love on the Game On thread as he usually does is because he didn't have as many 2-handed flushes as usual. Only 2 last night. That's how spoiled we've gotten with Steady Eddie. Only 2 dunks and only 2 blocks on point-blank shots. Sniff. Why did he even bother to show up?
6. In the ongoing soap-opera "as the backup 3 turns" both Gigi and Young got a few minutes, 7 and 6 respectively. Gigi, however, took a very good charge, taking away a basket from Orlando while James Young played matador defense on his man, letting him penetrate and dish and joined the paratrooper corp and fouled Payton on a 3pt fga. Young's poor defense was so obvious Payton played him like a veteran and threw the ball at the rim because he knew Young couldn't stop himself. Gigi, 3pts scored and 2 points taken away (his +/- was a +5, I think coincidentally) while Young also scored 3 but gave up 3 (fortunately, Payton went 1-3 from the line). On the other side of the fence, Moe Harkless is looking more and more like what Gerald Wallace used to be, a high energy defender and opportunistic scorer.
7. Channing Frye was a no-show. Vucevic, who did not play last game against us, scored 16 points on 7-17 and 11 rebounds. Dedmon grabbed 8 boards and a spectacular block but only 5 points. That's 9-22 for 21 points from their bigs. I'll take that. Aaron Gordon had 11 points on 4-8 and 8 boards, playing multiple positions. A lot of pundits had us taking Gordon at #6 instead of Smart. We were up to our eyeballs in 4s last year, so from that perspective taking Gordon wasn't what we should have done but last night it was a tossup. Smart did well on the defensive end, he held Oladipo to 11 points on 5-14 and that isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but he is struggling, struggling, struggling on the offensive end. Gordon is an uber-athletic jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. His defense was good last night, but not great. He was 1-3 from 3 last night. As far as I am concerned I'll give him that shot all night. Payton too.
8. We, somehow!, sneaked out above Orlando in fg%, 42.5% to 43%. They had 19 turnovers (they average 15.0/game) to only 16 of ours. Once again, our opponent's turnovers exceeded their season average. What we did not do a good job on, obviously, was keeping Elf Payton off the free throw line. Hmmm, wait a minute, that practically counted as an empty possession by them. Nevermind, good coaching Brad. Next time just make sure the guys know to let him shoot anywhere he wants from 16' out.
Charlotte came back from being down a ton against Chicago. Miami lost. We are now 1/2 game behind Miami for 9th and only 1 game back from Charlotte for 8th. We are now 17-16 at home. Now, here comes a tough one. Indy is 9-1 in their last 10, they are riding a 7 game winning streak and are 18-14 at home. If we win this one...
bob
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bobheckler- Posts : 62620
Join date : 2009-10-28
Re: Post-Game Thread, Magic - Home
by bobheckler Sat Mar 14, 2015 1:58 pm
Videos compliments of redsarmy.com
bob
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bob
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bobheckler- Posts : 62620
Join date : 2009-10-28
Re: Post-Game Thread, Magic - Home
by bobheckler Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:16 pm
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2015/3/14/8214629/boston-celtics-play-brad-stevens-kelly-olynyk
Watch this beautiful Celtics play designed by Brad Stevens
By Mike Prada @MikePradaSBN on Mar 14, 2015, 10:26a 12
Few coaches draw up set plays like Brad Stevens. He's known for his last-second designs, but this one early in the fourth quarter of Boston's win over Orlando was nice too.
It looks like a staggered double screen for Avery Bradley on a sideline out of bounds situation, but as Bradley cuts through, Jonas Jerebko turns and surprises Nikola Vucevic with a screen for Kelly Olynyk. Olynyk fades to the three-point line and Vucevic slams into Jerebko's pick, giving Olynyk a wide open look.
This is yet another reminder that the best set plays are slight modifications of more basic ones. Beautiful stuff.
bob
MY NOTE: This article and video was on SBNation's home page and not on the Celtics-specific celticsblog.com. The word on Brad is getting out...
.
Watch this beautiful Celtics play designed by Brad Stevens
By Mike Prada @MikePradaSBN on Mar 14, 2015, 10:26a 12
Few coaches draw up set plays like Brad Stevens. He's known for his last-second designs, but this one early in the fourth quarter of Boston's win over Orlando was nice too.
It looks like a staggered double screen for Avery Bradley on a sideline out of bounds situation, but as Bradley cuts through, Jonas Jerebko turns and surprises Nikola Vucevic with a screen for Kelly Olynyk. Olynyk fades to the three-point line and Vucevic slams into Jerebko's pick, giving Olynyk a wide open look.
This is yet another reminder that the best set plays are slight modifications of more basic ones. Beautiful stuff.
bob
MY NOTE: This article and video was on SBNation's home page and not on the Celtics-specific celticsblog.com. The word on Brad is getting out...
.
bobheckler- Posts : 62620
Join date : 2009-10-28
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