I think they'll take a step back, cool off, and realize that they have a top-5 player and another very good one. Offering JB the supermax is a no-brainer. You trade him if he refuses. If he re-signs, his cap number for 2023-24 is still low, so you play that out, and then evaluate in the summer of 2024.
Spoelstra also had a pretty bad Finals loss against Dallas (Dallas was good, but not as good). That was about 4 years into his career already.
I think if you’re Wyc and you’re paying a big tax bill every year from now until you blow it up, then you have to make sure the best possible coach is hired in order to contend for NBA championships. I have a hard time thinking, especially considering the names available, Joe Mazzulla is the best available coach at maximizing the Celtics’s championship probability. That has to be the mindset when selecting a coach. I don’t think it’s recentism or heat of the moment to agree with that.
This is well put. You can't be "wasting" a year of this window with an experimental HC. Obviously the circumstances were unique this season.
Agree with all of your points. And to be fair, some changes were coming regardless of winning or losing this series. After the first three games of the ECF including last night's mess it is tempting to lean toward broad wholesale changes however things are hardly bleak for the future of this team.
sign JB, not sure on coach and have White as real starting and get a good young center--drop Grif since he doesn't play anyways--does Gallianri change anything?
Yeah I believe so, almost as an afterthought after lineups are announced and with no real pause for the audience to cheer or boo. Ime will certainly be booed, and the players will just as certainly speak in his favor.
In that case, you have to get rid of PBS and possibly the entire basketball operations staff.
I think they were still hamstrung by the timing of Ime's exit and the availability of outside coaching talent willing to join Mazzulla's staff. You don't usually see teams bring on a top assistant mid-season. There will be many more names available this offseason to fill out the staff from the outside if Stevens should go down that route.
That's not accurate. His last game was against a blah early Calipari Kentucky team featuring the player formerly known as Enes Kanter.
Oomph. When you've even lost Chad...
I think he’s lost just about everyone. The only person even close to the Celtics that is actually sticking up for him is the Barstool Sports Celtics guy.
I love this line: "But save for Robert Williams, Grant Williams, and Derrick White, they all went down with a whimper, at least when they weren’t pursuing their true passion — whining to the officials while the Heat play five-on-four at the other end. "
Some of this is on Mazzula, but some of it is on Spoelstra, I've honestly never been so impressed with a NBA coach as I have with him this postseason. Thibodeau made Bickerstaff look silly in the first round, the Cavs are a very talented team but the Knicks destroyed them. Then NY got to MIA and the tables were completely turned, everything Thibs tried was countered beautifully, and only Brunson's insane shotmaking kept NY from being swept.
Jimmy Butler missed game 2, or there’s a good chance that series would have been a sweep also.
How is this damning? They lost their defensive identity, I think that has been obvious for months. Brogdon doesn't call out the coach for that.
The Heat also shot 30% from 3 instead of 48%.
48% is unsustainable, but the Celtics aren't exactly making those shots hard. NYK competed a lot harder on the defensive end imo, and Butler was also a lot more limited, which made it harder to get quality looks.
Overall the thing with this series is that the Celtics are both playing poorly, AND MIA is red hot from 3. NYK were a trashfire on offense, decent on defense, but also MIA undershot what you would expect based on looks.
The 2020-21 team was the 7th seed. They started Romeo Langford, Evan Fournier, and Tristan Thompson in the playoffs.
I think it's kinda funny coming from Brogdon who seems to half ass it on the defensive end more than a lot of the guys on the team.
I think the bubble team definitely should have and could have beaten Miami.
They could have done some things differently in hindsight, but Ime really, really fucked them.
Scorched Earth, Woj/Shams-style, would have been really easy, but Brad doesn't leak. Which is the right, long-term approach. I also believe IME had a serious PR effort in place throughout, which worked about as well as possible for him. ESPN talking heads carried some serious water.
