AussieCeltic wrote:GrandTheftRondo wrote:ciueli wrote:
The Indiana Pacers were one of the worst rebounding teams in the NBA last season (28th in the NBA) and they actually won the rebounding battle against the Celtics in the EC Finals, there is absolutely no excuse for that, Boston was 5th in rebounding during the regular season. Can't just handwave that away as a product of a bad matchup, especially when the Pacers were without Haliburton for 2/4 games.
Digging more into series stats, they main reason the Celtics won was the free throw disparity (90 FTA to the Pacers' 56) and 3 point shooting (34.9% on 172 attempts to the Pacers' 33.9% on 115 attempts) and they sure won't be able to rely on free throw disparity against the Mavericks (Mavs were 9th in FTA in the regular season, Boston 24th), there's real pressure on Boston to play better against Dallas because they won't be able to rely on Pascal Siakam bricking open 3s in crunch time.
The concern with Boston, is that they have not looked dominant at any point in these playoffs in spite of they hype, and they lost in 2022 to a team that seems very similar to this Dallas Mavericks team in construction, they let Steph pick them apart then and I could see it happening again with Luka. Maybe getting Porzingis back will fix this, but it remains to be seen if he really is healthy and ready to go.
They lost the 2022 finals because of the warriors defence.
Defensively their plan to stop everyone but Curry actually worked well but they just couldn’t score easily enough to capitalise.
I love how he says Boston hasn’t looked dominant all playoffs.
I mean, if you just forget about the first 2 rounds where they had the 2nd highest winning margin in NBA history.
But sure if you forget that and throw out they’re 12-2 in the playoffs, I guess he has a point.
Your team dropped a game against the Heat with no Jimmy Butler even when you had Porzingis for all but one game in the series, their third best player was either Caleb Martin or Jamie Jaquez Jr., that's a pushover team you shouldn't have lost a game to.
Then your team dropped a game against the Cavs without Jarrett Allen, a team so undersized they were starting 6'5" Isaac Okoro at PF, their main rotation literally had 1 player over 6'5", Evan Mobley. They didn't even have their star player Donovan Mitchell the last two games.
Then your team matched up against the Pacers, and they out rebound you for the series in spite of the fact that they were a bottom 3 rebounding team during the regular season and the Cetics were top 5, three out of the four games are close at the end in spite of them missing Mathurin the entire series and Haliburton half the series, that's their entire regular season starting backcourt BTW.
None of this inspires confidence heading into the next round against Dallas, Doncic is a vastly better player than anyone the Celtics have gone against so far this postseason, they are lighting tough Western Conference teams on fire with their play of late, they aren't undersized like the Heat and the Cavs were, and now we're hearing there's no guarantee Porzingis will suit up for game 1. If you aren't at least a little concerned about your teams chances in the Finals and how this is shaping up like 2022 did when the Celtics were also favoured you haven't been paying attention.
