Really? As in, “will never score meaningful points in a playoff game again”?
I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more minutes for Tillman.
Round 2: Celtics vs Cavs
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
- Start date
I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more minutes for Tillman.
Love it.
This team is also much different from past iterations of the Jays. They may have their lulls but they snap out of it. LFG and make Strus cry in G5.
He is 38. But I said that he looked finished, not that he was finished.
Five I think, but, yes, an improvement over 9.
Many would (do) think it's a spooky sign a MIN or DEN would cream them in the Finals.
People are trying to figure out if the Cs can win the title this season. One way to do that is to evaluate how they perform in their playoff games, and project those performanceinto the future.
To date the Cs have played a below average Heat team, and are currently playing a slightly above average Cavs team. Tonight that team was down their best player.
It’s looking likely that the Cs won’t play a team most will consider very good until the Finals. So we’ll keep reading the tea leaves.
As to the margin, that’s one way to assess performance.
This is what I mean when I say one of my only issues with the team and Joe is that they let other teams dictate their offense too much. They turned down a fair amount of good looks from three, and that bogs down the offense.
View: https://twitter.com/MichaelVPina/status/1790195792428335253?
View: https://twitter.com/MichaelVPina/status/1790195792428335253?
The Cavs shot 31% from 3 on that volume given most of these in the 2nd half were contested looks and the Celtics shot 17 more free throws.
Yeah I don’t really care about the results tonight specifically. The only chance most teams have to beat the Celtics is to go off from three, and limit the Celtics threes.
Celtics can get baited, that’s all I’m saying.
Ehhh... they came out flat tonight. It wasn't just Cleveland hitting a few jumpers and us missing a few, we had some ugly turnovers and some confusion on defense. We were a mess.
...for the first 3 minutes. Then, as you noted, we called timeout, I presume Mazzulla had everyone do some espresso shots, and the proverbial disco was resumed. But still.
Is it predictive? Hell no. We've been mauling teams all year and all playoffs right from the jump. I expect a feisty first quarter or so from Cleveland, and then they start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel*, and we romp in the second half.
* spoiler alert: it's Aruba.
It’s a frustrating watch, but I’m trying to remind myself that the Celtics are the only team in the playoffs missing a key contributor in KP and still easily dispatching their opponent. If Dallas were missing Washington, or Denver Gordon, or OKC Chet, or Minny Gobert (okay, maybe analogy stops there), those would be built in excuses for underperformance.
Here's the lead-tracker game-flow chart from Game 2:
What part of that is coming out flat? Look at that chart and tell me which half we had the greater issues in.
It oscillates wildly between "this team barely beat an undermanned Cavs team, how will they beat the winners from the big bad west?" and "this team can only win in blowouts, how will they survive when the games inevitably tighten when they get to the finals?"
People are bored of the Celtics after they've made consistently deep playoff runs, and had an incredible regular season. And deserved or not, the EC playoff field is just collapsing all around Boston, making their march to the finals even less interesting. Whatever, they're 7-2 (and as mediocre as their home record is, 4-0 on the road is excellent), they've got the best net rating in the league after 9 games (at +12.3, it's slightly better than their regular season rating of +11.7), and they're doing it without KP, whom everyone agrees is the real game-changer from past years.
Amen to this. Let's talk about all the enjoyable things from tonight.
I enjoyed Angry Possibly A Bit Dirty Jaylen tonight. We almost never get to see Tatum play angry, and I'm not sure Kornet or Holiday or White are capable of it. Jaylen looked like he was about to go Incredible Hulk and was getting booed every time he touched the ball. That's fuckin' awesome.
Jrue Holiday visibly giving more of a shit on defense than anyone else on the floor. Even if a screen took him out for a second, he would fight to get back into position, allowing his help to recover too.
Jayson Tatum's poised drives and decisions. His shot taking may not always be ideal, but the game is always slowed down for him when he's got the ball in his hands initiating the play.
Max Strus fouling out by slapping Jaylen Brown in the dick on a shot attempt. We're out there leading by ten and he's literally playing slap-dick. Or maybe that was just his 5th foul. Whatever, doesn't change things.
Mazzulla spotting his challenge opportunity, and taking it. Horford's block came before the incidental contact down below, which on its own wasn't enough for a foul, and furthermore we had a clear recovery of the ball before the whistle. I didn't think we'd get the overturn, but that was the shot for him to shoot.
Payton Pritchard with some more deep 3s, and clutch free throws to boot.
Our first playoff clutch possessions! Only a few of them. But dammit, it was a mere 5-point lead with under 5 minutes! I'm sure that will shut everyone up now.
Looking forward to some nice film breakdowns over the next few days, and then over the week before the ECF starts. The future is now, old man.
That's fair as are the other points. Betting markets are very efficient so the team underperforming the spread means something there. Its probably as simple as that though - sports gambling is having an impact on how people root for even their teams.
That said, most of these other series are all hard fought battles. Watching all these other games and then expecting Boston to smash all day, every day feels unrealistic. Each game is a hand fight and the teams know each other so well. And the other teams are also showing that they can play competitive basketball even with key players out. Why would the Cavs be any different? They are pretty deep and JBB knows how to adjust.
This is why I stayed out of this thread after Game 2. I didn’t even read it. It was ONE game. Shit happens in sports and the NBA. They lost Game 2 in the first round and everything was fine. Not sure why the sky had to be falling this time. They’re winning most games handily without one of their most important players. Bring em on!
Something else happened after Jaylen hit that three.. because he was walking back up court and DW stopped him and then someone on the bench came and grabbed him as well.. I don’t know if the defender did something or what.. it was never shown on camera.
I feel like many were not fine after game two against Miami as well.. several posts saying things similar to ‘this team never changes’
Ref walking up the floor spotted up at the wing instead of the sideline and JB had to move him off the spot before knocking down that 3. JB was telling him to stay out of his way.
I love Jaylen Brown.
View: https://twitter.com/NBCSCeltics/status/1790191673177211070
Was Tatum really 11-25, 2-8, 9-9, exactly, for the 2nd straight game? Dude is the model of consistency. 11 Rebounds, 5 assists 6 TO's vs 13/6/5 is pretty on point too.
Yeah he was talking some shit to someone on the Cleveland side of the floor.
Actually reviewing the play now (~1:12 left in the game), Jaylen started out the possession standing right in front of the Cleveland bench, so someone could've said something, and then as he slid over to above the break (where Tatum found him for the 3), he got bumped by the ref, who he had to slide around. Makes the 3, timeout. And then after the Tatum pat that he reacted to, he started yelling down-court... so he might've even been yelling at the ref. And Mazzulla and eventually Tony Dobbins had to come get him and drag him back to the bench.
edit: yeah, that clip makes it clear. "get out of the way", he's yelling. OK, could be worse. Kinda funny. "you're not wrong, Jaylen, just please shut up and come to the bench"
Thanks! We rewound it and weren’t sure what happened.
Joe saw it immediately and got JB out of there (thought it was DW but my memory was incorrect)
JB isn’t scared of letting others know what’s on his mind.
Sure. That doesn’t disprove my point though. The sky was not falling either time.
Edit: What I meant in my prior post is that we just had an example where one loss wasn’t a big deal and was eventually forgotten, so there was no reason to flip out…at least not yet.
One of the refs set a moving pick on Jaylen before Tatum found him, and he had to push the ref out of the way.
It’s because no one truly thinks they will lose in the east. The entire playoffs will just be projecting how it looks against the west. It’s a super weird run. Two outmanned opponents to date. Heat were / are hate able but no Butler. We don’t hate the Knicks or Cavs or Pacers. Just a weird run.
That Jaylen three was decisive - it iced the game. It is absolutely nuts that Jayken had to navigate around a ref in that situation. I hope the league takes action against that guy.
Correct. Joe has said he wants the Celtics to take more shots and more threes than their opponents - that's part of his answer to how the Celtics win on a cold shooting night. Tonight, Cleveland took (and hit) more threes (15-48 vs 12-32) and took (and hit) the same number of 2s as the Celtics did (26-41). The Celtics margin in this one was their advantage at the free throw line (21-24 vs 5-7). I think Joe would have liked them to get more threes, and turn it over less.
I stand corrected. Is it fair to say the C's played poorly in the second half of Game 2, or is that crossing a line too?
Yeah that’s all fair. I think I just tend to view sports in bigger chunks…like when I was coaching tennis if a player got broken in the first game I didn’t consider it coming out flat. If he/she let it snowball and goes down 0-3 in the next five minutes then we have issues.
But it’s not my intent to argue semantics, especially when we are on same page wrt the rest of it. Just wanted to explain my pov.
Love JB's fire last night, but the reaction to the ref was a bit over the line IMO. It wasn't like he had to completely displace him. He gently brushed him aside.
To be fair, humans are conditioned to look at things a certain way, and what we see with the Celtics is a team that was like a Ferrari during the regular season. They had sustained high level performance for games at a time, and blew opponents away, and it was a wonderful thing to see. And now we have this Ferrari on the racing circuit and it's running against inferior vehicles (or ones with damage like the Cavs last night) and rather than blowing them away, its barely finishing ahead of them (at times). And we aren't really sure why. Rather than celebrating victories, after the race we run over to the car and pop the hood to try and figure out what's wrong. That weird "why" troubles our brains, and we work it out on message boards.
But at same time the playoff celtics have a nearly identical win % with a better net rating than they did in the regular season.
that said, I totally get the human nature described in your post. I try to fight it though, as it’s a bit more fun (for me) to just enjoy the ride.
I think it was some pent up frustration with the refs. Some blown calls and that Strus incident earlier
It was a road playoff win against a decent team, albeit one without its best player. Cavs followed the "formula" to beat the Celtics (take lots of 3's while limiting the 3 point attempts by Boston), but still lost at home. I get the concern that the team they were facing was not the Nuggets, but playoff games are truly pass/fail, and the Celtics passed.
Ref is not supposed to be there in the first place.
Disagree. The ref was out of position and could have ruined a key play. Imagine Brown getting tangled with the ref and that play becoming a turnover or a missed basket fast break. It could have cost them the game. I don't blame Brown for being pissed.