To needing a road win to avoid returning home down 3-1. For reasons that go beyond this season G4 is arguably the biggest single game in the history of this franchise.
The 2nd Season - 2019 Playoff Thread
- Thread starter ElUno20
- Start date
Yeah, the Sixers winning would be the better outcome for the Celtics imo, just because they're in Philly's heads, and match up well against them.
Agree, and I don't know that it's particularly close, since they had no chance in the LeBron years. You have to think Kawhi is 98% gone if they lose this series.
You can dislike Embiid as a person but the guy is an elite basketball player. When he plays like this, he is almost unstoppable.
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I'm agnostic on Embiid the person, but what's the opposite of "acting like you've been there before"? I appreciate the passion, but dude, you're up 2-1 and just had your first good game of the series.
Meanwhile, a disjointed, desultory, and lackluster performance from the opening tap by the Raps, outside of Playoff Kawhi being Playoff Kawhi in the 3rd quarter.
Edit: lol @ Paul Pierce saying there's "a big talent disparity between the two teams." You have to work hard to say as much dumb stuff as he does. How's that Celtics-Bucks series he announced was over after Game One?
Meanwhile, a disjointed, desultory, and lackluster performance from the opening tap by the Raps, outside of Playoff Kawhi being Playoff Kawhi in the 3rd quarter.
Edit: lol @ Paul Pierce saying there's "a big talent disparity between the two teams." You have to work hard to say as much dumb stuff as he does. How's that Celtics-Bucks series he announced was over after Game One?
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DeRozan? What a joy they were together in the spring! Karl Malone and Stephon Marbury always come to mind when this topic comes up. When I was a kid I remember George McGinnis stinking it up for the Sixers in the post-season too.
Embiid is the classic front runner athlete. He seems like a good guy but I can see how his on court persona annoys people.
Heh, DeRozan was who I thought of also. Chris Paul also very quietly seems to slink out without too much fight every season...
Yeah I want to see him battle when the going gets tough.
Good win for Philly tonight, Toronto really needs to step it up.
PP obviously trying to say outrageous things but it seems to me that TOR without KL is basically on the same level as IND without VO.
Philly has done nothing yet, not until they hold serve in Game 4. This is an immature team that fortunately is getting great leadership from Jimmy Butler. Embiid might decide his knee hurts in Game 4 or 5 and take the night off. Knee, stomach, it’s always something. If he wasn’t so awesome, Philly might start booing the bum.
Embiid got to the 2nd round last in his first full season of NBA basketball. He adjusted well to Toronto’s game 1 punch, focused on D, and then found his offense in game 3.
I get that he hams it up, and is a weird combination of a heel and a clown. I alternate between laughing at him, laughing with him, or wanting to punch him in the face. But the piping hot takes about his basketball performance are ridiculous.
I get that he hams it up, and is a weird combination of a heel and a clown. I alternate between laughing at him, laughing with him, or wanting to punch him in the face. But the piping hot takes about his basketball performance are ridiculous.
I’m going to admit it guys, I love Embiid. He is such a weird dude with a kind of weird game to match. He looks kind of soft but his athleticism is ridiculous. If he didn’t play for Philly, I’d think a lot more people round these parts would feel the same.
Yes, but I don't understand why guys try to run him off the 3 point line like that. He uses that upfake all the time. He shot 30% from deep this season. I'd let him jack those up all game.
Taking out his last two seasons where he averaged 11 minutes a game, he put up a 19/10.5/2 line. Shooting in the 55% range.
That bests his regular season output line.
His upfake is silly and its rare to see people falling for it these days. I completely agree with you. Let him shoot.
If you don’t contest those shots though that 30% goes north pretty quickly. We’ve all seen or heard discussed about how so and so hit 10-20 straight shots in warmups......these guys aren’t going to miss a whole lot when left unguarded. This is one area where I feel analytics has come a long way which is why we see so many hard closeouts on 3-point shooter even those shooting in the low 30’s.
Embiid in 2019
Wide open threes 31.6%
One threes 29%
Tightly covered 11% (only 9 attempts)
Locked down 0% (0-2)
All Embiid's threes are open threes. He misses more than 2/3s of them.
Compared to missing 89% of them which is my point on why hard closeouts are crucial in today’s game. I would expect over a larger sample Embiid to improve greatly on that number.
I think that he's great. Overall not a fan of the unnecessary roughness phase that he has chosen to dive into lately. It's one thing to have an edge, but it's easy to step over that line too. That said, he's a kid still and should get better at observing that line. His quirkyness and bravado is a plus imo, and his game and fight factor is unassailable right now.
Yeah, a lot of this is also comfort, so if he is allowed to get a rhythm in the exact same spot, I wouldn’t feel good about letting him shoot that over and over.
Finally, the open/wide-open numbers are notoriously awful. People on Twitter have gone through and checked them, and they’re horrifically discrepant with what actually happened on the floor. Total garbage.
He started off terrible so got the rep. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/k/kempsh01/gamelog-playoffs/
If bigs closes out aggressively on Embiid, he takes him off the dribble and either makes a layup or gets fouled, or both. We saw it at the end of game 2 with Toronto when Gasol tried to close out on him. He took 250 open threes this season and missed around 70% of them.
If teams decide to close out aggressively on Embiid, he's not going to stand out there, covered, and miss 89% of them on a high volume. He's going to just drive to the hoop. There's not going to be a higher sample until he starts hitting the open threes at a higher percentage.
They had a Jimmy Butler mic'd up segment last night where he was imploring him to just keep shooting the three. Seems suboptimal but I'm just some guy on a couch.
Here we go!! A couple crucial G3’s in a tied series. Tonight is the setup for these 4 teams to play in their biggest game of the season which will be G4 for the two losing teams.
Bos/Milw should be another wonderful contrasts of styles. The Bucks want to get out in secondary transition prior to the Celtics being set.....while the C’s know their formula of aggressively retreating multiple defenders worked in G1 but this was against a Bucks team that didn’t attack even off misses (noon start yada yada yada). To me, this game comes down to a matter of commitment on the game plan and since it is easier to slow the game down than speed it up this favors the Celtics (couldn’t we have had a 1pm start? I kid I kid).....but the Bucks have Giannis and I have a hunch that he’s going to get a better benefit of the doubt on his penetrations than he has been. Either way this ends up I like the UNDER!
Boston 106
Milwaukee 103
Port/Den both teams shifted their emphasis in G2 on the defensive end. Denver made everything difficult for the Blazers on one end while on the other end Portland forced the ball out of Joker’s hands while variance of a Make/Miss on makeable shots smacked the Nuggets in the face. I’m taking the better team coming off a loss and getting points here.
Denver 112
Portland 101
Bos/Milw should be another wonderful contrasts of styles. The Bucks want to get out in secondary transition prior to the Celtics being set.....while the C’s know their formula of aggressively retreating multiple defenders worked in G1 but this was against a Bucks team that didn’t attack even off misses (noon start yada yada yada). To me, this game comes down to a matter of commitment on the game plan and since it is easier to slow the game down than speed it up this favors the Celtics (couldn’t we have had a 1pm start? I kid I kid).....but the Bucks have Giannis and I have a hunch that he’s going to get a better benefit of the doubt on his penetrations than he has been. Either way this ends up I like the UNDER!
Boston 106
Milwaukee 103
Port/Den both teams shifted their emphasis in G2 on the defensive end. Denver made everything difficult for the Blazers on one end while on the other end Portland forced the ball out of Joker’s hands while variance of a Make/Miss on makeable shots smacked the Nuggets in the face. I’m taking the better team coming off a loss and getting points here.
Denver 112
Portland 101
The internet and Twitter can be an awful place. However, its also used for good. This is one of those times. Please forgive me if you don't like this sort of thing - I really only try to share stuff I think is really cool or clever...
Why do I feel like I’m watching a St. John’s-Fordham game in Portland? Good god this is awful basketball.
Murray was wide open next to him and Jokic takes a fade-away 3. The one time Jokic doesn’t make the right decision. Portland should pull away at home in Double OT.
