Not much to complain about tonight when it comes to our play. Outside of some hot shooting from White and Brown early as well as a couple of defensive breakdowns, we were pretty in sync and forced a lot of tough shots and turnovers. People are going to point to our low assist total again, but the ball movement was good and we were getting whatever we wanted most of the night. Not worried about the low three-point numbers at all. FVV was very reserved with his shooting tonight and no GTJ obviously changes things too (as well as no OPJ/Boucher) while we were attacking the **** out of the paint (outscored the Celtics 68-40) just like we have been all preseason (we averaged 58 points in the paint which was #1) which resulted in a whole bunch of well-earned free throws.
OG and Scottie both looked unstoppable at times. By far the smoothest they have both looked offensively and I thought they were pretty locked in defensively even though the Celtics were racking up the points. FVV had a couple of ambitious passes that resulted in turnovers, but he had a good game even without hitting a three because he was getting to the rim and the line while also distributing most of the night and getting 4 steals. Achiuwa missed a ton of threes, but most of them were wide open looks that he needs to keep taking while he was good at the line and played well overall. Birch was the only starter that didn't play very well, but he also wasn't bad aside from that wide open missed dunk lol.
The bench pieces looked really good again for the 4th time this preseason which would be huge if their play carries over. Koloko just makes things happen on both ends and that post game has looked really encouraging throughout preseason; I seriously think he can give us 5-10 minutes of high impact play most nights if we want to change up the look/pace of the game. Even though Banton missed every three he took and missed a few open midrange jumpers, his shot looks improved and his ball control has been noticeably better in preseason. Champagnie, Thad and Juancho all had some decent moments and they were eating up boards (21 total). Even Dowtin (a couple nice scores inside) and Jackson (drawn charge, big rebound, a couple of blocks that somehow weren't counted on the stat sheet) were solid tonight.
That was a really fun game that could have been even better if the officiating wasn't so god awful though. So many bad calls both ways then a ridiculous 2nd tech on Tatum late in the 3rd for the ejection. Even that tech we got for the new rule was ridiculous. Hopefully they're getting this out of their system now lol.
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