What the...?

The Nets....The Nets????!!!!! at home????!!!!!

LACelt

Pretty rough trade eh? We took the court without our mojo today...lingering effects from that alabama asswhuppin the Cavs laid on us.

This team has enough talent to possibly win the NBA championship, IMHO but it has become completely disfunctional. I didn't see the game but from what I read....They seem to be playing as if their just playing out the string... to get it over with...DISFUNCTIONAL... if they stay that way, they'll struggle to win the division forget about the playoffs. They need to act as if they had a common purpose. As if, they wanted to win the NBA championship.

yes lacelt that is all true. there are good men working on it. But at the end it's up to the players.

Guy's

It is also as though the Celtic team in its present form and cast of characters are uncoachable! I posted this a month ago, this is really crazy. They lose to the Nets on home court! Now no one will fear us on our court.

Hey, I will give the benefit of the argument that we have had injuries and players timing are off due to new teammates in the line-up, and management perhaps did not upgrade some positions, but lose to the Nets..........A cancer has set in be it player or team attitude.

Question, what was our record since Big Baby came back and Sheldon Williams was demoted to the bench? The question and the answer are interesting.


112288

Babys post defense is somewhat adequate,but his ability to stop penetration after it gets by the first defender is like a turnstile,he just doesn't have the length......I would play Sheldon immediately,as Sheldon can slso help cover up some of Sheeds deficiencies which Baby also cannot do.Our defense was so much better earlier in season when SW was getting his minutes.

cow

davis missed a ton of games.to me it seems he is trying to bang too much with his shot. he had that real nice midrange game late last year. i keep thinking he will get better with time.

Cow,

Are you sure of what you're saying about Glen Davis and penetration?

I'd be willing to wager that, even with all the games he missed, he leads all Celtics in charges taken and is the # one reason why the Celtics lead the league (by a fairly wide margin) in charges taken. The number one tactic for stopping penetration is to get in front of penetrators, and isn't that the very essence of taking a charge? Davis is constantly doing that when penetrators get by the first line of defense. Yeah, sometimes he commits a foul in doing so, and sometimes the foul shots are missed rather than allowing easy layups or (in away games) crowd-revving dunks. And, frankly, I think he moves his feet on defense much better than Sheldon does too.

Sheldon does block more shots, but any advantage in that respect is negated on offense by turnovers caused by his poor hands. By way of contrast, Glen Davis has great hands, in addition to being a much more versatile offensive threat, whereas Sheldon is pretty much of an offensive one-trick pony (nice little jumper).

Moreover, everyone's been moaning about the Celtics' lack of offensive rebounding, and Glen Davis is WAY ahead of all other team members in offensive rebounds per 36 minutes.

Glen's certainly far from perfect due to his vertical limitations, and it bugs me when he gets so many shots blocked; but at least he's pounding the paint, and he also makes more field goals per 36 minutes than Sheldon Williams.

As a rule, the bench takes the leftovers and tries to work with them. Whenever a starter's out (a frequent occurrence this season), the bench gets raided. If that fact is taken into consideration, I believe the bench guys have shown an ability to coalesce more readily than the starters when they get some of that good old continuity. Right now, they're missing a great stabilizer in Quis, and Nate is in the earliest stages of becoming oriented, so they're somewhat back to the drawing board. But I believe the biggest concerns in bringing back the Celtics to a contending level involve the staying power of the starters rather than the bench's capabilities against their counterparts on other teams.

Sam

Sam

Look at the tape of yesterdays game,will see many instances where the wing or point goes right by Davis on his way to basket,SW would have blocked or bothered those attempts much better and I know Baby is good at taking charges.Look at the tape,tell me what you see?
I would bet our rebounding stats were way better with SW and I know our record was too....thats not all on Davis,but we know his strengths and weaknesses,he gets his shot blocked down low consistantly,maybe the midrange game will come back,but how often have we seen it.Team seemed to be playing great earlier in year,Baby can do more,but sometimes less is more,SW can block and alter shots and bang and rebound......Baby was just given his minutes back,did he earn them?has it helped or hurt the team?I just see so many instances where I know hes hustling,but don't see the results in our favor enough.

cow

Cow,

I just did spend five hours looking at the tape (including loads of replays and several times when I went to sleep and had to rewind—not
the easiest tape to watch. Sorry, but I didn't see "many instnaces" when a wing or point went right by Davis. There might have been a
couple when the guy got up a head of speed, but that's one of the things I was looking for and I didn't see anything like "many instances."

I took a lot of notes, and I noted several instances when either Perk or Sheed seemed totally out of it on defense (I guess Perk was under the weather), but the only messy defensive note I have involving Glen was when Perk never made it over midcourt on a Nets transition and Glen and Tony were left to battle Lopez and Yi after a missed Nets outside shot. Glen boxed out Lopez for quite a while, but Yi just reached over Tony and kept the ball alive until Lopez got loose and laid the ball in.

I know there were some plays on which Harris, in particular, got around his man and scored; so perhaps I overlooked one or two on which Glen had a realistic opportunity to impede him. But I'm quite sure that there weren't "many." The Celtics' rotating defense often leaves bigs a little out of position to be the kind of consistent intimidator Russell was, and Glen's obviously not that type of defensive threat anyway.

One thing that shows up when one watches the same play repeatedly is that what appears to be an error by one guy in the heat of the moment is, in reality, a secondary result of a breakdown elsewhere that only comes to light when the play is reviewed. For example, I found myself initially blaming Nate for a couple of things that were really revealed as someone else's fault upon more meticulous review. I'm wondering whether that's where we disagree. Maybe you can review the tape and point out the "many instances" to me by referencing their rough timing.

Sam

Sam

Davis is hustling. He tries the whole time he is out there. I think he wants to give the team what he sees it desperately needing which is a low post scoring option.

I'd like to see Glen mix some of that with a little bit of that sweet midrange game he had last year.

Inre Shelden he seemed like a real good rebounder and the team needs that. Sometimes effort and hustle can be contagious. Hell try playing em side by side and see what happens.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the coaches meetings when they discuss Shelden and our rebounding woes. There's got to be a reason why a player who started out doing a great job on the defensive and offensive boards per minute can't get off the bench for more than 2 minutes in a blowout.

bob

bobheck

I concur. He has been banished.

Shouldnt a good rebounder be a "key"/big positive for a unit that is gonna go out and run?

I like davis better than shelden "all over" but shelden might be better with nate/tony/rasheed?

Kobe Bryant cant finish anymore in traffic against athletic bigs

watchin this Denver game and man the refs just put the whistles in their pockets

Sam
Thankfully I didn't see whole game,in 2nd quarter saw at least a few instances where in an uptempo borderline transition the penetrator went right by Baby leading to a few scores.When I did check in on game for a few instances pained me to see KG play his heart out and the positive team results just weren't there.

jeb
Good call,I would love to see Baby and SW together,the way Sheed has been playing,undisciplined defense and jacking up 3's/bricks,let him spend sometime on the bench.Last year we had an effective bench with Leon and Baby playing in tandem,I used to call them Silas and Unseld,the way Sheed is going its worth a look.

cow