After wrapping up Durant, I'm not too worried about Butler causing trouble for this group of Celtic defenders. Herro will be hunted relentlessly on offense; they should play him off the floor. The Heat will probably play really good defense and Bam is an incredible player on that end of the floor, but I don't see Miami having the offensive firepower to keep pace with the Celtics.
I'd be thrilled, considering he's much better on-ball. If I were looking to exploit Jaylen, I'd try to force him onto Strus or Robinson and run back cuts and screens all day waiting for him to get lost.
Lol just realized I got distracted by people talking about the Heat.... I meant to say Allen and Connaghton
They may keep Jaylen off of GA because of the injury but Jaylen's issue on defense is off the ball. I think AL starts on GA and Grant also gets a lot of time on him. I think they hold off using JT early but wonder if he covers GA if the game is close in the fourth quarter.
Giannis will play 40 or more minutes if needed. He did it in the Suns series last year and multiple times in the Nets series last year.
MIL has pretty good 3pt shooting (but they'll miss Middleton a lot)
I think - know - people are sick to death of the success of Boston teams. I guess, we can be a little abrasive or something. I found the opening of this to be delightful:
Right, the Heat try really hard, and that allows you to roll up lots of regular season wins with sufficient talent. But in the playoffs, the more talented teams are targeted on exploiting your weaknesses. And now they’re really bearing down too.
It is worth remembering that when basketball restarted in the bubble that year, Gordon Hayward showed up looking as good as he ever had as a Celtic. And then got hurt in the first playoff game. And Al was in Philly, Rozier in Charlotte.
I don't think you missed anything. JB grabbed at his hamstring after G4; said that he tweaked it but that he would address it. I don't believe anyone's said anything about a MRI or a strain, and I even searched twitter for it!
I listened to them recently and vowed never to do it again. There are too many good NBA podcasters out there to waste time with that crew.
There's a bit of a thing where a LOT of analysts latched on to the idea of Tatum either as a no-pass scorer, or a 1B supporting star, or a good help defender who's not an elite on-ball D guy.
I don't think the messages have been discouraging, just realistic. Jaylen has had hamstring issues before, so it's impossible to say how this will be play out. Just be thankful he will have had nearly a week between games to rest and rehab his hammy.
Exactly...why bother listening to that terrible crew when you can listen to The Lowe Post, The Mismatch and even Simmons/Russillo on Mondays.
Part of their calculations must include the chance that PHI beats MIA and BOS is a much bigger favorite over them than MIA?
No, because they have PHI as a 57-43 favorite over MIA. The Celtics are marginally more favored over MIA by a similar ratio. This makes sense since this is a raw stats exercise and not a matchup-based one.
Unless you really, really like overall team regular season record (by 1 game) as the best predictor of success, it's hard to see any way in which Miami is a better team than Boston (assuming health).
Interesting that they have PHI favored over MIA. I would have thought the # 1 seed that just crushed their opponent would be favored over the 4 seed that struggled with a depleted TOR team
What it comes down to is that RAPTOR loves Embiid (as does every other metric). He's the difference. The fact that he's injured isn't accounted for so long as it doesn't affect his availability.
JB is very familiar with yoga. Here's an article from when he was high school that says he was doing hot yoga twice a week: https://usatodayhss.com/2014/offseason-offerings-jaylen-brown-dishes-on-hot-yoga.
I'm probably not up to speed on all of the messages coming out recently but I'm staying positive about the hammy by focusing on the fact that he felt it in the first half and they let him keep playing even though they were already up 3-0 in the series. This is a game that they could have afforded to be cautious if they felt there was any need to be.
Portis and Holiday, who are already starters, are going to replace their second best scorer’s production with one less offensive threat on the court to worry about defensively? The Bucks should hope it’s that simple.
Yeah this is mostly nonsense. If the Bucks beat the Celtics it's almost definitely going to be because Giannis is dominant. A very reasonable possibility, and more likely than Portis or Holiday replacing Middleton's productivity.
Boston being cold from 3 is my biggest concern. The 3 point shooting relies at least in part on guys (Smart, White, Horford, Theis) who are average or worse shooters. I don't think it drags them down, but it is a concern.
I really hope the Celtics don’t settle for threes. Brown and Tatum can feast on non-Holiday defenders. I’m hoping that Rob Williams is a little more back to his regular season form so when Lopes goes to help on a driver, they can just throw the lob to Rob. A healthy Rob Williams should be able to really feast at the basket whenever Lopes and GA are trying to defend the paint.
2 of the 3 (not the same two) also picked the Nets in 6 and 7 games for round one.
The Celtics haven't been getting any real respect from NBA pundits.. they talk about how good their defense is, but when it comes to talking about who could win it all they fall behind the usual suspects. The Heat are their biggest obstacle to the Finals at this point with Embiid and Middleton hurt. Just doesn't seem like the C's have gotten any respect for how well they played to end out the season and then just sweep a preseason favorite to win it all.
You will see a lot of 3’s from the Celtics this series. The Bucks pack the paint and force you to beat them from deep. I think I read that 5 of the Celtics 12 top 3 pt attempt games ever have been against Milwaukee recently. They need to make their 3’s for sure.
Looking at the 4 games this year, the Celtics have attempted the following # of 3’s against MIL:
For all of the talk about Middleton’s absence and Giannis’ presence, Milwaukee’s path to victory involves turning the series into a three point contest and then winning that three point contest.
I think the Celtics offense is much better suited to attack inside the arc against a Milwaukee team that does not have Middleton. I have no problem with the Celtics taking threes off of great ball movement and off of drive and dish opportunities, but pounding the paint should work against this team. One added bonus of players like Brown and Tatum driving to the rim is possibly getting Giannis into file trouble
Lopez and Allen will have to come up big for them to win, and that's not a spot I hate being in.
I'd love to see Theis continue to get minutes. Keep the big guys fresh, it's going to be a physical series down low.
