The approach from Thibs is anyone but Tatum. He’s seeing a second body any time he drives. They’re sagging off every shooter, even Derrick White. But I do agree that is getting in his head to more than anything throw off his rhythm.
They won a title last year with Tatum being pretty inefficient. Not to overly simplify again but one or two made threes on very good looks is the difference in this series right now. Tatum should have a lot more assists and hockey assists.
I haven’t been able to watch full games this round, but the Knicks were two plays away from losing to the Pistons and two plays from being down 0-2. At some point that’s got to swing the other way.
Yeah, I mean the Celtics are going to shoot >50% of their shots from three no matter what the current trend is, and if they go down that way, they go down that way…process over results, etc. Right now, they aren’t falling. But like, the Knicks have good wing defenders - three of them. Bridges has made lots of looks go from looking pretty good to looking pretty hairy…
The wild thing about this series is that the Celtics have had no issue getting out to huge leads…then they just keep blowing them. Obviously the Knicks get a lot of credit for that, but Boston just playing decent down the stretch would have given them a 2-0 lead. They’re playing like you might expect an inexperienced team like the Pistons to play. These are long time stars with rings on their fingers and the Knicks are just making them fold.
there has been a multi-year trend of the Celtics being generally excellent and also very poor in close games, which Mazulla famously (and correctly) suggested they should play less close games.
It has been true I think for three years now, however, which maybe speaks to obviously excellent process/play that may require some situational flexibility?
I have a theory as to why this may be btw
The Knicks are tossing bodies at Tatum all game and in late game situations the Celtics, like most teams, tend to ride their guy, and Tatum for all his strengths is only an average distributor (ditto Brown)
Like, I know what people keep saying, but these aren’t screaming open shots the Celtics are missing. Bridges, Hart, Anunoby are good at closing out. Tatum gets an advantageous watch and just screws around until they can send a double. This isn’t just missing shots, I think they’re playing badly.
Quite the speech from Draymond in the locker room last night. I wonder how his teammates feel about him.
Can you provide a link?
What’s the take here on the fact that like 4-5 of the most unlikely (according to win probability) comebacks in NBA history (a mix of things like “blowing 7-8 point leads in the final 40 seconds” and “blowing 20+ point leads in 10 minutes”) have occurred in this post season?
Is it a series of outliers just crazily clustering together with no rhyme or reason? Is there something new in play-style dictating this?
They’re almost all done by the Knicks or Pacers (though Nuggets did it to OKC) who are two diametrically opposite teams.
If I’m a teammate, this doesn’t rate for me really? He’s not talking about the team, if he wants to nurse a grudge, that’s fine.
Look - I know he went to MSU so we have to hate him (especially since he assaulted Wolverine), but my general take is that Draymond is both a phemonemal player, a no-doubt first ballot HOF player, an undoubtedly intelligent man in many respects, and ALSO in horrible lack of impulse control which leads to him showing his a$$ sometimes in ways he doesn’t need to.
This specific speech I don’t think would move the needle but I mostly just mean generally I wonder what his teammates think of him (not specific to last night). To your point he’s both a great player AND an embarrassing child who harms the team with his behavior. It’s just amazing to me that he’s going for the “the media hates me” narrative, does he actually think anyone buys that?
Draymond is a great player, but he also doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt because his antics has hurt his credibility several times. He’s smart, can process the game at a high level, defend and be a great connector.
Draymond has gotten the most out of his abilities then almost anyone and good for him. But, when he acts like an a$$ which is almost every game, what does he think most people think. I am a Black man and I think he comes off as a bullying a$$hole who crosses the line with fouls and antics. Almost all NBA players complain, a lot.
When ever he comes off as a peace maker during incidents I just fall out laughing because it is just so disingenuous. When you look up flagrant foul in the dictionary it should show a picture of Draymond with a follow up caption of him complaining about it. How many times is he going to get away with kicking someone in the gonads before the NBA gets serious. Rant over.
Just started listening to Zach Lowe’s Thursday podcast and both him and Fred Katz point to 3 point shooting variance and situational awareness. This was my original thought when I saw your question earlier. The 3 point shot allows teams to get “hotter” and get back into games quicker, and teams seem to get “colder” when there is any shooting regression to the mean.
I still think that situational awareness/game management, is a real problem across all sports now as we see more crazy comebacks/collapses. I know this is a basketball thread, but you’ll see a lot of football coaches make mind-numbing decisions and in the postgame press conference they’ll shrug it off and say “the analytics said…”. I’m not hating on analytics, but I think we are at a point in time we have more information available on best practices late in games, but also a blatant misuse of this information in application.
For example, OKC fouling up 3 with 14 seconds left in game 1 seemed like they made that decision too soon and didn’t run any time off the clock. They made the same decision to foul up 3 with Gordon at his own FT line and Jokic on the bench…Denver had no timeouts and would’ve needed a stoppage in play to get the best player in the world back on the court. It seems like there’s a disconnect between theory and application.
I finally listened to this, and I think Katz’s discussion of “introducing variance” is what gets me about how the Celtics play
Like, you have better players. You are up 20. Why are you taking 16 of your 24 shots from three?
The Knicks are not a good three point shooting team, and their best shooter has taken 1 three pointer this series. They don’t get to the foul line well. They need to two-point their way to victory basically, and the only way to close a 20 point leas in twelve minutes is for something wild to happen. Over 82 games, shooting a ton of threes works out, but this is 12 minutes, and in that small a sample, the odds of an outlier occurring on that three point volume (all off the dribble, basically no passing) is high! You need to score like 15 points that quarter! Maybe!
Rehire Atkinson
Aaron Gordon is insane. GW dunk to tie series 2-2 against LA, GW 3 to steal game 1 against OKC, game tying 3 to force OT and take game 3
He’s having a great postseason.