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If there ever was doubt that Cassell is absolutely horrible it will be forever erased after last night. He was even more putrid and awful last night than ever before. The offense ran SO MUCH BETTER with House in there spelling Rondo on the bench. Seriously, I've been saying this for weeks, but Doc is either under pressure from Ainge and Wyc to play Cassell in order to save face or Sam has some dirt on Doc, or Doc is afraid Sam will kill the lockerroom chemistry if he benches him. There is NO OTHER REASON why Sam should play. House is a better shooter, ACTUALLY RUNS THE OFFENSE AND PASSES, and at least TRIES on D.

Something drastic needs to be done, someone needs to go all Tonya Harding on Cassell or something.

Totally agree..Im so sory we signed him.

Maybe Scal can help us, and injure Casell in practise, he is a specialist for that.

All playoffs when Cassell has played well (maybe 2 games) the team has still suffered when he is in the game. He always slows the ball up on offense and brings no energy. I feel because he is so use to gettin starters minutes he feels the need to get his same amount of shots in and he seems to think that he is a better option than pierce KG and jesus shuttlesworth. Not to mention his defense is dreadful; he either gives up an easy jumpshot or gets burned for a layup by a player like Jordan Farmar.

Although House only shot 2-8, he re-energized the team in the 3rd quarter and played solid defense; he plays a lot safer style of defense so although he may give up an open jumper he rarely gets burned. If Cassell comes in ahead of Eddie next game, you really have to question Doc as a coach.

No offense but House had trouble getting into the offense......without pressure from the Lakers the team has to get into the plays before the 12 sec point and THAT is the problem with House. He is not a POINT guard. The C's had to use Ray to bring the ball up. Not defending Sam but House is not the answer.....we need a real POINT guard. Sam IS a point guard not House....

Either way I would rather House over Cassell any day of the week. One lineup I would love to see when the offense is struggling to score is:

Ray Ray
Pierce
Posey
KG
Perk/Powe

Three good 3 pt shooters- can't help off of any of them which if anything would free up space for KG and could leave Powe and Perk with some open dunks.

Cassell was just trying to get the game going. Seriously no one else was even hitting the rim lol.

House played with a defensive intensity that Cassell just doesn't seem to share.

Kefa461 wrote:No offense but House had trouble getting into the offense......without pressure from the Lakers the team has to get into the plays before the 12 sec point and THAT is the problem with House. He is not a POINT guard. The C's had to use Ray to bring the ball up. Not defending Sam but House is not the answer.....we need a real POINT guard. Sam IS a point guard not House....

Maybe he had trouble getting into the offense because, after playing the same role for 75+ regular season games, he was completely supplanted by Sam once the playoffs started...

massey1992 wrote:Cassell was just trying to get the game going. Seriously no one else was even hitting the rim lol.

Get the game going by taking contested shots and not even looking to set anything up?

I can say this.
If we lose the series.
Sam will play a major part in it.
Please Doc don't play this guy.
Eddie was so effective last night.
Lets see, he shoots better then Sam, dribbles better, passes better and plays better D.
Is it such a hard decision???

I am going to write a new post about this, but Sam is killing us in a different way. HE NEEDS TO PLAY. But, he has to alter his game.

Doc is forced to play Sam, and Sam is the one not playing correctly. When Rondo is ineffective (which he was on Tuesday), the Celtics need tyo find an answer at PG. Eddie House provided some nice spacing, but his lacking of passing and dribbling ability really hampered the Celts offense n the 4th quarter.

HOUSE doesn't handle the rock well enough.

Ok, so Rondo is ineffective, and House can't start the offense. So, we have a guy who can do both in Cassell. If Cassell woudl just run the offense, pass, and take shots in rhythm of the offense he would be a gold mine and we would be up 3-0.

But, Sam is coming with a scorers mentality. He is chucking up the first shot he gets. I don't know why Rivers hasn't told him, "no more quick jumpers early in the shot clock."

Cassell can be a valuable player because he has the skill set and ability we need at that position. BUT, he is gunning the ball. He is shooting too much. I like the post ups, but he doesn't have to be a primary scorer.

His shots per minute is ridiculous. WE NEED CASSELL, but we need him not to chuck up shots.

Is there really a need to start a thread about a guy who played 6 minutes "killiing" the team?? Sure, Cassell was bad last night when he was in. But he didn't play in the second half. And the Celtics took a 2 point lead into the 4th. So he didn't kill us. The cold shooting of Pierce and KG, and the great shooting of Kobe and Vujacic killed us.

Pierce is entitled. He played great the first two games, and you could sense some nerves playing on the biggest stage in front of his home town. But KG needs to get it together. That's about 9 quarters out of 12 so far that he has played bad on the offensive end. He's not being aggressive enough with the ball, and he's missing wide open jumpers. We're not gonna be able to keep up with an offensive team like the Lakers if he continues like this.

Cassell did not kill us. Pierce's inability to hit a shot killed us. Going away from Ray Allen, the hottest shooter last night, killed us. The inability of the Celtics to stop Kobe or Sasha killed us. Those are the things that happened as the Celtics turned a 5 point lead into a six point loss. Cassell was no part of it. Even if we lose this series, it won't cassell's fault.

Is this news? Can we all agree that we shouldn't see Cassell again?

Yes, KG and PP also sucked. However, they weren't putting their selfish interest ahead of the team's. Cassell came in and just took shot after shot. All of them horrible and with a man on.

Cassell, who's the worst thing to happen to this team, took 4 shots in 7 minutes. Ray Allen, the one who was carrying the team, took 13 shots in 41 minutes. PP who was killing the team took 14 shots in 31 minutes.

Do you not see the problem here? Sam attempts more than a shot every 2 minutes he's out there. That's more than 20 shots, if he plays 40 min. Only Lebron and Kobe shot that much this season. Is Sam Cassell one of those 2?

And you know every single one of those shots come, not from the offense, but from his selfish antics!

FU Cassell! ET GO HOME!

CelticsWhat! wrote:Is there really a need to start a thread about a guy who played 6 minutes "killiing" the team?? Sure, Cassell was bad last night when he was in. But he didn't play in the second half. And the Celtics took a 2 point lead into the 4th. So he didn't kill us. The cold shooting of Pierce and KG, and the great shooting of Kobe and Vujacic killed us.

Pierce is entitled. He played great the first two games, and you could sense some nerves playing on the biggest stage in front of his home town. But KG needs to get it together. That's about 9 quarters out of 12 so far that he has played bad on the offensive end. He's not being aggressive enough with the ball, and he's missing wide open jumpers. We're not gonna be able to keep up with an offensive team like the Lakers if he continues like this.

Yes, because he has had a negative impact in all but 5 minutes that he's played in these entire playoffs combined. I'm sure the team dreads seeing him go in the game as much as all of us do.

For those saying Sam didn't kill us, you're wrong. Was he the main reason we lost. No, but he killed us in his 6 minute stretch none to less.

Consider what would have happened if we had House in instead of Sam. There could of been some ball movement thanks to the Big 3. KG would of posted up in the second QUARTER not the second half. What if KG scored some in there and we went into the half tied or up 2. What if KG gets into a groove thinking through the halftime about how he just relled off 6 in a game.

This is the playoffs, you can't just throw away 6 minutes like that.

Instead we had 6 minutes were Cassell dribbled the ball up the court, dribbled around a little, jack a shot. And his teamates? KG,Pierce,Ray Allen? Well they had to just stand around waiting for a pass that would never come to try and start the offense.

House outplayed both Rondo and Cassell last night simply because he can shoot threes and he gave the ball to the starters. Honestly in the off-season maybe we should try and steal someone like Fisher for Rondo's backup because he can shoot like House and dribble close to Cassell's ability.

tombattor wrote:Is this news? Can we all agree that we shouldn't see Cassell again?

Yes, KG and PP also sucked. However, they weren't putting their selfish interest ahead of the team's. Cassell came in and just took shot after shot. All of them horrible and with a man on.

Cassell, who's the worst thing to happen to this team, took 4 shots in 7 minutes. Ray Allen, the one who was carrying the team, took 13 shots in 41 minutes. PP who was killing the team took 14 shots in 31 minutes.

Do you not see the problem here? Sam attempts more than a shot every 2 minutes he's out there. That's more than 20 shots, if he plays 40 min. Only Lebron and Kobe shot that much this season. Is Sam Cassell one of those 2?

And you know every single one of those shots come, not from the offense, but from his selfish antics!

FU Cassell! ET GO HOME!

And case closed. I seriously think Sam tries to get in the amount of shots he'd have as a starter in his limited time. "I gotta get my 15 shots in 5 minutes". He's like the guy you **** HATE to play pick-up ball with.

celticfan42487 wrote:For those saying Sam didn't kill us, you're wrong. Was he the main reason we lost. No, but he killed us in his 6 minute stretch none to less.

Consider what would have happened if we had House in instead of Sam. There could of been some ball movement thanks to the Big 3. KG would of posted up in the second QUARTER not the second half. What if KG scored some in there and we went into the half tied or up 2. What if KG gets into a groove thinking through the halftime about how he just relled off 6 in a game.

This is the playoffs, you can't just throw away 6 minutes like that.

Instead we had 6 minutes were Cassell dribbled the ball up the court, dribbled around a little, jack a shot. And his teamates? KG,Pierce,Ray Allen? Well they had to just stand around waiting for a pass that would never come to try and start the offense.

House outplayed both Rondo and Cassell last night simply because he can shoot threes and he gave the ball to the starters. Honestly in the off-season maybe we should try and steal someone like Fisher for Rondo's backup because he can shoot like House and dribble close to Cassell's ability.

Yup. House was the best PG out there for us last night and Doc correctly, stayed with him as we made our run. I hope this will mean that we'll see more of House from now on.

House didn't shoot well, but all his shots were open jumpers that came from within the offense. When he's left open, it's his job to take the shot, even if he's not making them. If Sam was only taking those shots, I'd be fine with him, but Sam is trying to take his guy off the dribble and is shooting whether he beats his guy or not.

Even my Knicks fan friends, who hate the Celtics, were saying that someone has to kill Cassell because he's killing the Celtics. And as soon as we got the ball, everyone was like, watch Cassell takes another shot! and he did, every time.

tombattor wrote:-= original quote snipped =-


Yup. House was the best PG out there for us last night and Doc correctly, stayed with him as we made our run. I hope this will mean that we'll see more of House from now on.

House didn't shoot well, but all his shots were open jumpers that came from within the offense. When he's left open, it's his job to take the shot, even if he's not making them. If Sam was only taking those shots, I'd be fine with him, but Sam is trying to take his guy off the dribble and is shooting whether he beats his guy or not.
e.

What? Best PG out there? House was the best once we got into the offense? But, with House, we had to have Ray initiate the offense 25 feet out with 14 to go on the shot clock. House is just not the answer when Farmer is in there.

This is the series --- does Rondo continue to play well or does Sam finally not chuck up 5 shots in 5 minutes.

House was the best point guard we had. Not so much because of what he did on the offensive end, but his defense. He got a lot of deflections and was breaking up the Lakers offense. He is probably 10 times more aggressive on defense than Cassell is.

On the offensive end, he wasn't able to hit many shots but everything he took was in the flow of the offense. With Cassell you get a bad shooter trying to create or rather force his own shot, which is why I think so many people are upset with him.