Analysis of Celtics Games, '21-'22 Season
- Thread starter Imbricus
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Nothing specific, but that doesn't mean you need to play the same 5 guys down the stretch and in each overtime. We don't have some automatic crunch time 5 that just HAS to be out there.
With Smart and RW out I get the rotations were a bit limited, I just feel like you can mix and match a bit rather than commit to the same 5 the entire time. Is a fresh PP or JP going to get to an extra loose ball or knock down an extra shot? Who knows...
I just have a hard time believing a tired DS and JR really needed to be out there the entire time. They aren't that good, we have a bunch of pretty equivalent players.
Yeah but watching the game the team D rotations were really sharp. That was about all that was working. Best chance to win was to play those guys. They should have won.
I agree with the take on the D. They allowed six points in the last 4:01 of regulation which allowed them to tie. Then then held the Wizards scoreless until 2:24 of the first OT which is when Washington began its comeback.
Richardson was good along with Al who was a beast except when he got put in switch jail.
They are going to be ok. I don't know what that means for playoff prospects but their D has potential to be a difference maker imo.
/Positive takes
The team is snake bit.
And has been for going on 5 years.
When Brad secures the anti-venom serum they'll be ok.
But the supply chain is a little jammed.
hang in there.
And has been for going on 5 years.
When Brad secures the anti-venom serum they'll be ok.
But the supply chain is a little jammed.
hang in there.
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There are some positives to take away from the game that are already mentioned but JB and JT with 56 shots and 5 combined assists aren't one of them.
It's super easy to defend BOS - when either JT or JB have the ball, you just swing the defense towards them and yes they'll score some but they'll also turn the ball over and take tough shots.
So to me it's not as much syncing JB and JT up but figuring out a way they can make others - including each other - better.
Something go look forward to, I guess.
Feel free to delete this, but should this be a monthly thread rather than annual? It's fairly big in a partial month
The only substitutions the Wizards made during that same time was rotating Bertans and Avdija for Off/Def after Harrell fouled out. Nobody is talking about the Wizards “exhausted players” because they won the game. It’s October…..nobody is tired.
Also worth noting that they shot 2 for 26 from three, which I read somewhere was the second-worst performance by a team with a minimum of 25 attempts. the Celtics not hitting threes was a key reason for Washington's success.
Also, in terms of excessive minutes, that is partly due to 1) the 3 overtime games and 2) Rob missed one of the OT games and Al missed the other two.
Yes, if you think about it, what was most amazing about that game was that it went into double overtime at all, when their three-point shooting was that abysmal. It would be interesting to find out a team's lowest three-point shooting percentage, for a game in the modern NBA, when that same team also won the game. The Celts were probably on the verge of setting a record there.
Agree with this strongly.
There were multiple times when Tatum or Brown got doubled, they passed out of it, and then instead of continuing to get the Wiz in rotation and find the weakside open three, the ball cam right back to Tatum/Brown for a shot.
They seem almost determined NOT to get teams in rotation, which is hard to understand.
According to this article - https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2021/10/30/celtics-wizards-takeaways-double-overtime/ - , JT's ISOs are averaging .68 ppp. That puts him in the 14th percentile. ISOs are 22% of JT's offense, which is one reason he's shooting 40% from the field and 27.3% from 3P.
They have also never tried to build any kind of two-man game sets for the two of them. I don’t know how to find the stats but I am guessing assists from one to the other in the half court are few and far between.
And yes, I know you don’t want to crowd them together to potentially make them both easier to defend in the same area, but if they are both just going to iso anyway you might as well try some stuff that has them both getting a touch on the same possessions instead of one camping in the corner while the other pounds the ball.
I would suggest that part of this is Tatum's general struggles. (I am very much against Tatum iso-ing too much and in poor matchups. But it is not as if he has been really bad on isos but really good on everything else.
As others have pointed out (including EJ), if they are hunting people like Ball or Harrell for mismatches, they're not going to have actions with JB and JT together since JB/JT are being guarded by the two best defenders on the other team.
I'm not smart enough about basketball to figure out the solutions but it sure doesn't seem to be working at this point.
Something to look forward to as the season progresses!
Which seems wrong because other teams do have success using their 2 best players playing off each other.
Anyway, some of the 2/26 from 3 was just the hoop goods saying "not tonight". That is where the small sample size argument indeed applies. If the defensive intensity carries over, some of those shots will start falling.
They got to get one of those Bird highlight videos, edit out all the shots, and make JT watch that before every game and practice
I'm not sure if any team could start 0-for-20 on 3s (ended 2-for-28) and still be in a ballgame. In this NBA, playing in a 20-30 point hole is about impossible to recover from.
To their credit they found an alternative exit to that fucking hole and almost got out.
And they probably should have, but I'm not going to pile on or second guess today.
if they keep playing as hard as they did last night, they should be ok.
I'm still a beleiver that this is a good team.
To their credit they found an alternative exit to that fucking hole and almost got out.
And they probably should have, but I'm not going to pile on or second guess today.
if they keep playing as hard as they did last night, they should be ok.
I'm still a beleiver that this is a good team.
For me it’s as much about getting defenders moving and feeling uncomfortable as it is getting them both touches. If Tatum and Brown are both threats through the same action, it should open up the defense more.
Instead we have iso play with the kickout option often someone like Smart or DS or Horford and opponents will generally be happier to allow those guys to shoot at volume than to provide a lane for Tatum/Brown.
I’m not smart enough either but it seems clear they are too easy to defend.
I missed this game. It would be nice to hear from someone who watched whether the bad shooting on either team's part was the result of good contests or just bad shooting.
Boston was just shooting terribly. For Washington it was a combination. Boston was very good at making Beal work for everything, but Dinwiddie was just shooting like he was a Celtic,
That matches what I saw, but I also didn’t watch the beginning of the game and my sense was in the second half the bad shooting had created a scenario where the Celtics were only attempting threes if wide open. Our defense was significantly improved over earlier games and there also seemed to be a better balance as to the rate of switching and better communication on switches.
I’m still optimistic about this team. We still have the ability to be a really really good defense and I am not going to give up on that a few games into a season with a new coach, a new system, and a disrupted preseason where 2 starters couldn’t be around the team. The offense won’t be elite but should settle into being good once Tatum gets going with consistency. I do wonder if Tatum is somewhat frustrated because his focus this offseason was drawing more fouls and the new rules mean he’s still not getting calls despite his improvements. There are a bunch of positives in Tatum’s early season offense that are being masked by poor shooting as well as a still developing feel for what angles/contact get calls during games.
Nobody, ever has played defense well enough to cause an 0-for-20 from 3s shooting slump. The Celts missed the entire spectrum of 3s, from wide-open corner looks, to top of the arc bombs, right or left on the arc, contested or not, it just didn't matter, the hoop was sealed shut.
Eventually they gave up and attacked the hoop.
As an aside, it was almost comical that after going 0-for the first half, the Celts suffered the further indignity of watching Montrezl hits a mid-court 3 at the buzzer.
It was that kind of night.
Fucking Halloween
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Horford still looks like a spry 29yr old 5. Still think this team is best with him and TL sharing the 5. Too many minutes
JRich getting comfortable, finding his spots. Liked his on-ball D
Jaylen with an answer from Ime's challenge, is a major positive
I guess young guys will eventually get a chance, just have to be patient. Nesmith breaking Tatum's 3pt record in practice is pretty worthless in Ime's eyes
Don't love Ime's rotational/situational uses so far but he wasn't brought in for that.
Tatum was real bad. JT needs to get back on D after a missed shot, hopping up/down/complaining to the official needs to be snuffed out by Ime. Jayson should be embarrassed with his antics after misses. Think Ime's firm voice is necessary here and should be corrected with video work
Not enjoyable piling up losses, watching this crap but not overly concerned yet.
JRich getting comfortable, finding his spots. Liked his on-ball D
Jaylen with an answer from Ime's challenge, is a major positive
I guess young guys will eventually get a chance, just have to be patient. Nesmith breaking Tatum's 3pt record in practice is pretty worthless in Ime's eyes
Don't love Ime's rotational/situational uses so far but he wasn't brought in for that.
Tatum was real bad. JT needs to get back on D after a missed shot, hopping up/down/complaining to the official needs to be snuffed out by Ime. Jayson should be embarrassed with his antics after misses. Think Ime's firm voice is necessary here and should be corrected with video work
Not enjoyable piling up losses, watching this crap but not overly concerned yet.
If they play all year with the defensive effort and execution they had in that 2nd Wiz game, they'll be a very good team. They'll still struggle offensively sometimes, so they won't be a top-tier contender.
Will they play with that effort most of the time going forward? The last year has made me pretty skeptical.
Wake me up when they do it 3 games in a row and I'll get excited.
It's nice that JR is looking more comfortable; that adds a lot.
Will they play with that effort most of the time going forward? The last year has made me pretty skeptical.
Wake me up when they do it 3 games in a row and I'll get excited.
It's nice that JR is looking more comfortable; that adds a lot.
I think it is possible that the Celtics are opening their year the same way the Patriots did. Not so much player turnover at key positions, but instead they have a whole new coaching staff. Sic games in is too soon to draw definitive conclusions.
I don't have time to watch alot of non-Cs games so honestly asking, how do other teams do it? Seems like the cloest team to the Cs was LAC last year and from what little I watched, and IIRC, they didn't run a lot of PG / KL actions, did they?
Just out of curiosity, I plotted Tatum's game scores (X-axis) against Jaylen's game scores (Y-axis) over the last three regular seasons. Basically the entire post-Kyrie era.
It seems like each player tends to have their best games at the other's expense but that's not exactly borne out by the data. Obviously it would be more informative if compared against other star pairs.
It seems like each player tends to have their best games at the other's expense but that's not exactly borne out by the data. Obviously it would be more informative if compared against other star pairs.
Completely. The only way that it might mean something is if other pairs have correlated performances.
You don’t feel that their style of play where each needs to ball to be effective factors into this? Maybe that changes if/when one becomes a plus playmaker but this doesn’t appear to be random when one of them isn’t involved in the action.
Quite the contrary, I do feel that they are non-complimentary, which is why I attempted that little bit of analysis. It's just that the data don't support my feelings here.
Maybe a very slight negative correlation, perhaps? Does it look at all of their games or games where they are both playing?
Help me understand what the data is saying if you can. Logic suggests that when you have two players who are pretty much one dimensional on the offensive end that they will not be as involved or productive when the other is having a big game. This isn’t say a Booker/Paul or old schoolers, Stockton/Malone…..this is more of a my turn/your turn type of relationship so when it is ones “turn” the other isn’t providing much.
I’ve been beating the “they don’t play off each other well” for awhile now so if data is saying that this isn’t true I want to hear more to make it make sense.
The data just reports on their individual game scores. It seems to be random which shows that they don't impact each other at all which makes sense if they are just taking turns. They could both have good games, bad games, or one good and one bad but it is based on their own game that night showing they don't impact each other. If they impacted each other you would expect the scores to go up and down together.
The 2017-2018 Celtics made it to game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals with a playoff roster of:
19 year old Jayson Tatum
21 year old Jaylen Brown
23 year old Terry Rozier
23 year old Marcus Smart
31 year old Al Horford
Rest of Roster:
Marcus Morris
Aaron Baynes
Greg Monroe
Shane Larkin
Semi Ojeleye
Abdel Naber
Guerschon Yabusele
What. The. #%*^@$ is happening?
19 year old Jayson Tatum
21 year old Jaylen Brown
23 year old Terry Rozier
23 year old Marcus Smart
31 year old Al Horford
Rest of Roster:
Marcus Morris
Aaron Baynes
Greg Monroe
Shane Larkin
Semi Ojeleye
Abdel Naber
Guerschon Yabusele
What. The. #%*^@$ is happening?
Team would look a lot better had they kept Terry though. Hindsight tho. I didn't see him being as good as he's been.
It was a super weak East, but, uhh, yeah. This team is more talented but that team was tough as nails. Sometimes tough as nails can get you a surprisingly long way.
Yeah I was going to say the same thing. We obviously shouldn’t be this bad and there are clearly other issues even if some choose to be blind to them but that was a super weak conference then and our young’s didn’t know any better than to leave it all out on the floor.