Since I feel like litigating the Olympics a bit longer: JT was the 2nd-best playmaker on the team after LeBron, and Kerr not using him in that regard was criminal.
Yeah, JT would be given a lot more respect if people looked at him as a very tall PG instead of a traditional wing.
Yeah, the Celtics like to invert lots of stuff, and use their guards in the wing/big role as screen setters and dunker spot roamers, which further supports this.
That seem's pretty fucking arrogant to me, but maybe you're a much better basketball mind than a guy who's won multiple NBA championships.
Yikes...15-yards for unnecessary roughness.
It's one thing to criticize Tatum's usage, but suggesting that Kerr isn't sharp enough to use Tatum effectively is just ridiculous. James was great in his role, should they really have marginalized him to get Tatum in his Celtics role?
And to JT's credit he worshipped at the altar of Kobe in his first few years in the league, but he has decidedly evolved closer to a LeBron-type playmaker. (This postseason notwithstanding, JT is less proficient on the passing side but has the much higher shooting ceiling.)
1. There are minutes in which LeBron doesn't play
He seems to have won those championships like he won the Olympics.. put Curry in and let him hit every important shot.
no, they should have put Tatum in the exact same role, and subbed him in 1:1 with James whenever James went to the bench. 25 mins a game for Lebron, 15 for Tatum, taking advantage of their super-well-rounded skillsets, would've let everyone keep the same expectations no matter which one of them was out there.
It never made sense. Tatum is not a bad matchup for anybody, especially a team with only a handful of NBA guys. In the first game against Serbia, they were comfortably up the entire 2nd half. There was plenty of time to get Tatum in the game without insulting with garbage time minutes.
Where is your evidence he stepped aside rather than as a coach he allowed his players to lead? He decided who was on the court, and rolled with certain guys and they made an epic comeback. I see benching Tatum as over coaching, but at the most critical moment he didn't overcoach he turned the game over to guys he trusted (you are right they are better than his opponent's players) but he pushed the right buttons against Serbia.
This is blasphemy to most Celtics fans but I totally agree with this with regard to Red, and coaches in general. He was clearly a great GM but it's hard to know how good a coach he really was when you have that much talent. His successor won with zero coaching experience. A bad coach can screw up teams with that much talent but it doesn't take a great coach to win with it.
We’re not discussing a great team, but Doc Rivers probably deserves the Medal of Freedom for coaching this squad to a .500 record. It’s probably the greatest single-season coaching performance in NBA history.
Doc has penned a 25-yr HC career off that season
Game-thready angst about not being a true Alpha, etc etc. Not worth getting into.
If you ignore this stuff you will enjoy the Tatum experience so much more. Can you filter it out on X?
Because it’s fun to make fun of bad takes, plenty of people here think the same.
It's amazing how different the Tatum discourse is online (particularly Reddit and Twitter) compared with the real world. It's always fun to point out the cognitive dissonance around how a guy with multiple 1st team all-NBAs before age 25 and who was 3rd this year in jersey sales (behind Steph and Lebron) and now has a title is discussed as being barely top 10 and can't be the face of the league because of "aura."
If my experience as a Cs (Boston) fan out of market tells me anything, its when the locals are getting baited by the Boston press - and anyone from signallers to randoms on X.
It’s the doldrums of the offseason, my man.
I am posting my opinion here just like you. I will not be cutting that out but also, I am not seeking beef with you.
None of it tracks to me. He averaged 25/10/6 in the playoffs while playing really good defense. Those are basically MVP Bird numbers…with better defense. Yes, the shooting percentages are worse and that’s an area of modest concern but I really don’t know what people would be satisfied with when it comes to Tatum. He might be one of the more underappreciated stars in a long time.
Tatum, “what are they going to say now?”… apparently the same things they’ve been saying for years despite all evidence to the contrary.
It's all relative. Nobody serious (here or anywhere) thinks he's actually a bad player, and even those that really don't like him still think he's one of the best dozen players in the world. If someone on this board thinks he's not a top 5 player, that probably qualifies as being a "hater."
On the one hand, maybe DBMH is right insofar as this should go in that National Celtics Discourse thread. It was kinda created as a Take Containment Zone.
He's not wrong. Besides rim protection, he does everything very well and his disipline was pointed out in particular. How he hasn't made any defensive teams is beyond me.
Not a great look to who? Fans defend there MVP championship-winning player...more at 11
Only Boston fans are this weird about their own player, who’s made three straight first team all nba’s lol. Look at the company he’s in
