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Parasite wrote:Didn’t see it. But just from the box score I’ll give it to Brown. Anybody know why Kornet didn’t play? The fact Grant Williams is getting minutes over him is pretty mind-boggling.

One thing I noticed about Kornet is he easily gets beat off the dribble.

Grant is better keeping his man in front of him.

JHTruth wrote:

Parasite wrote:Didn’t see it. But just from the box score I’ll give it to Brown. Anybody know why Kornet didn’t play? The fact Grant Williams is getting minutes over him is pretty mind-boggling.

Brad Stevens coaches this team. 'Nuff said

So we are going to play Kornet at the 4 now? Get real people. Kornet didn't play, because Thompson was back and he was one of our best players.

Giving out cigars anymore doesn't seem right. If I have to I just settled with Smart.

TT?? Come on, our standards are at a all-time low.

Why do we make it so damn hard. We were fortunate to win this one. Played with a lot of force and effort tonight, and it was great to win a slugfest, but we seem to lack the fortitude to keep our leads and put away teams. I think we're a more talented and deeper team than the Knicks, but their toughness and fight at the end of the 1st half led us to really have to fight for it at the end of the game.

Did RW3 foul out or did Thompson put his ass on the bench at the end of the game. Are you kidding me. Too funny. Romeo's gonna be a real stud on this team. Can't wait! Nesmith's leap will be next season. Grant and Semi played their roles. We lose without Smart and not for that shot at the end. Brown played great. That's how he has to play every night. Effort, energy, force. The rest of the stuff will fall in line. Tatum, the best player on the floor, smokes it, Brown, Smart and Thompson get drinks on the house. Big W!

Quick passback even before the double comes. Hope Jays make this instinctive. Even if Smart had missed that wide open three in rhythm, it was still the right play.

On the other hand, I don't think Tatum has earned that reputation to be doubled yet. Just put single coverage on him, stay home on shooters. Tatum will just iso stepback. If he makes it, he makes it. Celtics ball movement mostly happens on these types of doubles on Tatum. Rarely will he drive to the basket one-on-one. So just let him iso.

Fierce1 wrote:

Parasite wrote:Didn’t see it. But just from the box score I’ll give it to Brown. Anybody know why Kornet didn’t play? The fact Grant Williams is getting minutes over him is pretty mind-boggling.

One thing I noticed about Kornet is he easily gets beat off the dribble.

Grant is better keeping his man in front of him.

No doubt. Grant has that elite NFL combine strength. He could bench press Kornet 25x.

We had previously lost 6 of our last 7 tail-ends of B2Bs. @ OKC was the lone win.

Easy VC for Brown. Kept us in it the entire game. Shot well from 3 and mixed it up with strong drives to the basket.

Scal wryly noted how Thompson couldn't go because of "conditioning" out of the health and safety protocols against Philly, but was ready (for big minutes) 24 hours later.

That may have been his biggest vet move, as it left Rob to try to handle Embiid and maybe still a bit psyched out against NYK, with Thompson back going really hard the next night.

Celtics now 1-8 against teams with top 5 defensive rating. Things are looking up.

Brown.


(hey, I'm a man of few words).

tlee324 wrote:

playa-hater wrote:

GoCeltics123 wrote:

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to be honest Brown is always aggressive.. too much so. Tatum is sometimes too passive. and both can be dumb asses..

I think you can live with aggressive mistakes than passive ones. That's why many fans ignore Marcus' flaws, because most of the time it's through hustle.

Nah, I think there has just always been an obsession here with per game scoring and shooting percentages. For my money, Marcus wears his faults on his sleeve while the faults of other, often much higher-paid guys still fly under the radar. While not one of our most talented players, Smart is definitely our smartest player, and arguably our least flawed and best all-around player. It's between him and Tatum on the latter two. Or possibly Fournier, who I am not yet as familiar with.

Kemba is one of the league's worst defenders, and one of the worst playmakers among point guards. Jaylen has zero feel for team offense, and is still rocking a Carmelo-esque 1:1 career assist to turnover ratio. None of our top 3 scorers are particularly efficient. Tatum, Jaylen, and Kemba are all ride or die checkers that rarely pass or get to the line. It took Jaylen 26 FGA and 7 FTA to get to 32 points tonight. Took Tatum 21 FGA and a whopping 2 FTA to get 25 points tonight, and he had 8(!) turnovers to boot. Both shot near 50% for the game, but the overall efficiency was not very good at all, nor is it that uncommon for them (or Kemba).

There is this notion that Marcus can't shoot and is careless with the basketball, but I don't think the stats back that up. He eFG% is higher than Kemba's and only 2.6% lower than Tatum's. He leads the team in assists and is 4th in turnovers, while also being our best defensive player. I feel like both Tatum and Jaylen make way more dumb plays a game. Marcus draws charges while Tatum gives them up like it is a part-time job. Jaylen can't dribble or pass his way out of a paper bag, and routinely gives away possessions for no reason.

In sum, I guess I just don't get why we take about his flaws so much, given that he only makes $13m a year. It's low-hanging fruit for casuals IMO. If he could shoot better, he'd be our team's best player and on a max contract. Meanwhile, we gloss over the flaws of much higher players because I guess that is just too much of a painful truth about this team and where they are (not) headed.

/rant.

Jaylen's efficiency is really being compared to Smart's right now? They aren't on the same planet. I'd be horrified if Smart's usage were at 30+. He plays his role well; giving him more responsibility, or assuming he could take on more and all factors would be the same, is a mistake, in my opinion.

GoCeltics123 wrote:

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And the result of them digging deep was a 2-pt win vs. the Knicks.

Fierce1 wrote:Speaking about bounces, Celts got 53 rebounds in this game and 16 of them were offensive rebounds.

Celts are a very good rebounding team this season.

Weird stat note of the night:

TT was third on the team in offensive rebounds and fourth in rebounds overall, but first in blocks.

And that was while playing a few minutes less than Time Lord did.

tlee324 wrote:Jaylen's efficiency is really being compared to Smart's right now? They aren't on the same planet. I'd be horrified if Smart's usage were at 30+. He plays his role well; giving him more responsibility, or assuming he could take on more and all factors would be the same, is a mistake, in my opinion.

It sure is. While I clearly went in on all 3 of our stars pretty equally there, the entire basis for Jaylen being paid nearly twice as much money as Smart is his play on the offensive end. And yet, he creates for no one, turns it over frequently, barely gets to the line, and can't convert when he does. Notwithstanding the fact that Smart is a better defender, the offensive efficiency gap between them is nowhere near as large as posters here seem to think. Like, demonstrably.

The salaries are important here. Smart is not supposed to provide Kemba/Tatum/Jaylen salary-level impact on a Tony Snell contract. Why is that even remotely expected, other than the fact that our star players have been consistently broken down for like 4-4.5 seasons now?

In the end, I don't blame Ainge, Jaylen, or anyone else for why we are here, but here we are. My point here is simply that giving Smart such a big piece of the blame so consistently at that contract while not recognizing his contributions and the lackings of other higher-paid players and a supporting cast full of young scrubs is perhaps a failure to understand basketball on an incredibly basic, fundamental level. Ainge, Stevens, and several front offices seem to side with me on that, IMO. Smart is literally the least of our problems.

Smart was huge in the 4th, complete with a "winning play" putback. this was a great marcus smart game. trouble is, we haven't seen too many of those this year.

jaylen made shots in a game where points were very hard to come by. deserves the VC. tatum really has to learn how to play better when the opponent turns up the physicality. last two games have exposed him as a guy who you can be physical with and he will settle for bad shots and turn it over.

but i went with tristan. +/- is a fickle stat but +24 for tristan and -21 for rob was pretty reflective of the way this game went. rob is another guy who has all kinds of trouble when the physicality goes up.

overall we're a team that only knows how to win pretty. we clearly have more talent than the knicks but here we are battling for the 7th seed, because almost nobody on our team but smart and tristan know how to play ugly. it's good we came away with the win today but we're still a .500 team and our record don't lie.

At least we played with energy and our defense was better than in the last few games. But our BBIQ as a team (and individually) is really low. Just stupid turnovers, bad reads, I do not know if we can fix this...

When Fournier is back at least we can sit Grant or Semi, that will help us immensely. We also need a good stretch four that can make the difference off the bench but that is an issue for the summer.

Langford has good length and can defend but most importantly his shot looks much smoother. I hope he keeps shooting well if that is the case he will help this team.

All in all, I just want this team to finally be at full strength, so we can set a rotation and work on automatism.