RealGM

i just don't understand why these guys play didn't play against utah? Do you think they could've helped us win against the jazz? they are contributing well right now against milwaukee.

I'm pretty sure they're already familiar with the system.

I think Doc didn't want to mess up our rhythm, but now that we lost to Utah with the same players, Sam and P.J. will be integrated into the rotation and will be made ready for the playoffs. I say both will play 10+ minutes against San Antonio and Houston.

Maybe I'm not seeing things right, but as far as I can tell, PJ Brown and Sam Cassell are the Celtics 11th and 12th men.

Eddie House is still the first point guard off the bench, and will continue to be, unless he or Rondo is hurt or injured.

Tony Allen is still the backup shooting guard.

Sam Cassell is the 5th guard, I suspect, able to backup any of the four guards ahead of him if foul trouble, injury or cold shooting warrants it.

PJ has assumed Scot Pollard's job of back up post defender with size/length.

Whether PJ can pass Leon in the rotation to become backup power forward will depend on whether PJ's jump shot and defensive length are needed.

Ditto with whether PJ can pass Glen Davis in the rotation as backup center (actually, watching the Milwaukee game, PJ may have already passed Glen Davis as backup center).

It looks like PJ is there to allow Garnett to play less C.

I wouldn't read too much into any one game, since matchups and individual performance will warrant playing time on a day by day basis.

The more certain thing seems to be Scal's relegation to 13th man, with Gabe Pruitt in D-League for the rest of their season and Scot Pollard out for the year.

I disagree with Cassell being the fifth guard. I think he should be and will eventually be the first pg off the bench behind Rondo. He was brought here because House is not a true point guard, so I don't see any reason House should continue to log pg minutes. We should have 48 minutes of pure pg play from now on, imo, unless something is wrong with Cassell or Rondo, like injury or foul trouble.

Isn't sam coming off an injury and PJ semi retirement. At their age I don't think its as simple as throwing them into the deep end.

Jammer wrote:Maybe I'm not seeing things right, but as far as I can tell, PJ Brown and Sam Cassell are the Celtics 11th and 12th men.

Eddie House is still the first point guard off the bench, and will continue to be, unless he or Rondo is hurt or injured.

Sam Cassell is the backup point guard for this team, or at least will be very soon. He's still learning and adjusting to the offense, but there's no doubt he's a better PG than House and will be the one backing up Rondo. House is the one who will fill the role of 5th guard/3rd PG/3rd SG (and occasionally the 2nd SG as instant offense off the bench when it's needed).

Last night's game showed how valuable Cassell will be. His ability to set up an offense allowed us to play the bench with zero members of the Big 3 in there and still run an effective offense. When House was asked to do that, he and the rest of the Celtics offense was extremely ineffective.

House is just not a PG and my guess is both Doc and Danny realize this. Cassell is being eased into the backup PG role and House, who will have his minutes cut down quite a bit, got a look at what his new role is going to be when he's actually in there last night. Playing off the ball, not being asked to run the offense and just bombing away from the outside like he does so well.

Because Doc would rather watch House struggle than give Cassell a chance

Sam still has some meshing to do IMO.

He shot the ball very well last night but I thought he was pretty much a one-man show when he was in.

He did drop it into KG a couple of time (probably because of their history) but in general I thought ball movement suffered some while was playing.

Integrating him into the Celtic approach is obviously a process in work but I think Sam needs to move the ball around more.

Making a beeline for the hoop certainly works when the shooter is hot but it is a lot easier to defend than having a number of players whipping the ball round.

Both still need refining although I'd hope Sam would be futhur along by now.

Also I don't quite remeber but I don't think anyone in UTAH was a traditional Center style of play. Millsap beign the exception because usually with guys like him [Maxiell as a very general broad relation] Baby's fat does a good job of holding him down.

I think PJ still looks a couple steps slow, but we need to throw Sam out there with the real players and we need to start seeing how he messhes.