Celts Build Brick Wall, Put Their Backs Against It! G5 Loss vs PHI 5/9 (PHI leads 3-2)

[Hal14]

Because it is very rare in the modern NBA to make it out of the 2nd round after going to NBA finals the previous season so maybe it's not a failure?

Is it really a failure for a 2 seed to lose to a 3 seed that has the league MVP? I don't think so.

Boston was the favorites to win this series and win the championship. I'd say it's a pretty big failure, considering they had home court advantage, if they end up losing to Philly.

Yep, and they had legitimately every possible favorable card fall in their favor.

Dodge Miami in the 1st round, get a very meh Atlanta team.

Someone else knocks out Milwaukee for them, giving them home court through the entire playoffs (not that that matters much for these guys.)

You play Philly with an injured Embiid, and lose a game he misses entirely. This is also a team you have always matched up extremely well with.

At the very, very least losing this series would be a significant missed opportunity. Everything went their way up to this point. Just no excuse.

It would be a bummer if we lose this series. But it's not that surprising for a 2 seed to lose to a 3 seed - especially when that 3 seed has the league MVP and a former MVP - their 2 stars are 29 and 33 so much more experienced than our stars at age 25 and 26. If all things are equal, the team with the league MVP and a former MVP, led by stars who are 29 and 33 is probably gonna beat the team whose stars are only 25 and 26 (neither of whom has won an MVP). Not to mention the 3 seed has a coach who has won a title, whereas the 2 seed has a rookie head coach.

[The Corey's]

Boston was the favorites to win this series and win the championship. I'd say it's a pretty big failure, considering they had home court advantage, if they end up losing to Philly.

Yep, and they had legitimately every possible favorable card fall in their favor.

Dodge Miami in the 1st round, get a very meh Atlanta team.

Someone else knocks out Milwaukee for them, giving them home court through the entire playoffs (not that that matters much for these guys.)

You play Philly with an injured Embiid, and lose a game he misses entirely. This is also a team you have always matched up extremely well with.

At the very, very least losing this series would be a significant missed opportunity. Everything went their way up to this point. Just no excuse.

It would be a bummer if we lose this series. But it's not that surprising for a 2 seed to lose to a 3 seed - especially when that 3 seed has the league MVP and a former MVP - their 2 stars are 29 and 33 so much more experienced than our stars at age 25 and 26. If all things are equal, the team with the league MVP and a former MVP, led by stars who are 29 and 33 is probably gonna beat the team whose stars are only 25 and 26 (neither of whom has won an MVP). Not to mention the 3 seed has a coach who has won a title, whereas the 2 seed has a rookie head coach.

lol

[return2glory]

Extending him was idiotic.

Extending Joe? I disagree. Again, considering the situation he was handed, he has done incredibly well. No coach is going to do super hot getting the job a day before training camp and losing 3 members of the staff with essentially no replacements. What Joe M did this season is admirable considering the crap situation Ime handed this team. This season was looking to be a bust after losing Hardy and losing Ime in the manner he was lost. Everyone forgets how worried we all were.

Brad screwed up in not hiring more assistants, which will be fixed this summer. Joe is clearly a good coaching talent.

This season is still a bust if we lose in the second round after making the Finals last year.

This season is a bust because we are better than last season with the addition of Brogdon.

Last year was a fluke. I've said it like 50 times on this board that last season was a fluke. Here is is again.

There is no way last year's team gets past the Bucks with Middleton. With Middleton out, they still took us to 7 games and it was Grant Williams not Tatum or Brown that stepped up in game 7.

We also don't get past the Heat with Hero missing 5 of the 7 games for them in that series. The Heat still took us to 7 games. And I remember game 7 being close.

Last year's team wouldn't have gotten out of the 2nd round either if not for luck/fluke.

I'm very confident we could beat the Sixers team this series, if Embiid missed about 4 or 5 games. Even without him for game 1, we still lost to them, at home.

[return2glory]

Read on Twitter

Just a fun fact.

What years? They've actually done it 7 times:

1. 1962
2. 1968
3. 1969
4. 1970
5. 1981
6. 1988
7. 2022 (vs Bucks without Middleton, our best player in the deciding game 7 was Grant Williams).

So last year was a fluke. Those other times, I'm sure the Celtics had more clutch players and better coaching than his current team.

[Mr_Mojo_Risin]

I trust Brad when it comes to being able to pick out coaching talent. Brad screwed up in not hiring assistants throughout the season to bolster the bench and help Joe. It sucks what is happening, but almost no coach is going succeed, even experienced ones, when they are handed the keys to the car a day before training camp + losing 3 coaching staff members with essentially no replacements (Ime, Hardy, and Damon).

That’s where Brad screwed up more than anything.

Extending him was idiotic.

Extending Joe? I disagree. Again, considering the situation he was handed, he has done incredibly well. No coach is going to do super hot getting the job a day before training camp and losing 3 members of the staff with essentially no replacements. What Joe M did this season is admirable considering the crap situation Ime handed this team. This season was looking to be a bust after losing Hardy and losing Ime in the manner he was lost. Everyone forgets how worried we all were.

Brad screwed up in not hiring more assistants, which will be fixed this summer. Joe is clearly a good coaching talent.

I felt this way until the playoffs. Not calling timeouts in crucial moments and backing your philosophy is one thing, but more than once he has admitted he should have called a timeout when he didn't, which means he's not learning from his mistakes quickly enough or at all.

In addition he does not adjust in game or between games quickly enough and allows the opposition to get comfortable and remain that way for too long, while his own players get more and more uncomfortable and he doesn't have their back by changing things up. Waiting too long to call timeouts in this respect is a double whammy. It's one thing to want the guys to learn in the regular season, it's another in the playoffs.

I know he wants read-react basketball which takes an extremely long time for a team to get right and means a lot less set plays, but from time to time you need to throw that out when things aren't working.

I have no doubt he is extremely smart and highly knowledgeable about basketball, you can't get to be an assistant coach in the NBA otherwise and it would be hard to fool Brad. I have no doubt he has his own philosophies and approaches things a bit differently. I like different thinkers so I've been patient on that front too. But if he is that smart and not adjusting then I can only conclude he is either too stubborn or frozen, neither are acceptable.

Game 6 and Joe's approach will basically determine what I think about whether we should keep him if we lose. It's not a matter of if we lose but how. If we lose with new adjustments to address previous issues and trying a few different combination of players earlier if things aren't going well then maybe I'll be patient. If we go out with Joe doing nothing different then I want him gone.

[return2glory]

Boston was the favorites to win this series and win the championship. I'd say it's a pretty big failure, considering they had home court advantage, if they end up losing to Philly.

Yep, and they had legitimately every possible favorable card fall in their favor.

Dodge Miami in the 1st round, get a very meh Atlanta team.

Someone else knocks out Milwaukee for them, giving them home court through the entire playoffs (not that that matters much for these guys.)

You play Philly with an injured Embiid, and lose a game he misses entirely. This is also a team you have always matched up extremely well with.

At the very, very least losing this series would be a significant missed opportunity. Everything went their way up to this point. Just no excuse.

It would be a bummer if we lose this series. But it's not that surprising for a 2 seed to lose to a 3 seed - especially when that 3 seed has the league MVP and a former MVP - their 2 stars are 29 and 33 so much more experienced than our stars at age 25 and 26. If all things are equal, the team with the league MVP and a former MVP, led by stars who are 29 and 33 is probably gonna beat the team whose stars are only 25 and 26 (neither of whom has won an MVP). Not to mention the 3 seed has a coach who has won a title, whereas the 2 seed has a rookie head coach.

That and the fact that this current Celtic team is a soft, 3 point happy shooting team and doesn't have leaders nor clutch players.

They have Tatum, who was more worried about being the MVP and having the highest scoring average in Celtic history than focusing on a title. His "brand" is more important than titles. Then we have Brown who has improved in a lot of areas of his game, much like Tatum, but neither is a leader nor clutch in big moments.

Rookie coach or not, Joe has been good overall and below average in the playoffs. Brad failed him in not getting strong assistants with NBA head coaching experience.

Brad also decided Al and Rob would get the job done. Our center position has been average at best.

We gave any wins in games 1 and 4. Game 1 was without the MVP of the league and we still lost to them, at home.
Game 4, we lost the game because of so many bad coaching decisions and Brown being Brown and leaving the hottest player on the floor all alone for an open 3 in the closing seconds when we were up 2 and needed to prevent a 3 from going in.

[makubesu]

I just want to say, I think we all agree this core is mentally weak. Down 3-2, put on your big boy pants and win 2. That’s not a high bar, teams do it all the time. It’s just about refusing to quit. I’d love to see it from our guys, and shorten what is sure to be a long offseason…

Sorry this makes no sense, at all.

You got the first part right in saying this core is mentally weak. Knowing that, you can stop right there.

Expecting a mentally weak team to not quit and win the next 2, then if they could pull that off they wouldn't be a mentally weak team. It's like betting on a horse with a bad leg to win the big race.

We have a mentally weak team with a rookie coach who is in over his head. Let's see them for who they are and stop expecting much from them.

This team had their shots to win the series but blew games 1 and 4. This series is over/season is over.
This isn't the Charlotte Hornets were are playing against. They can't protect home court. I would love them to surprise us,
but I'm not counting on it.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t bet a dime! My meaning was the opposite: if they do come back, don’t throw a parade, because that’s a pretty low bar.

[TheMartian]

from Brian Windhorst:

This year's Celtics have different priorities, much of it coming from the styles of their coaches.

Last season, Ime Udoka generally focused on defense first and made lineup and strategy decisions to back it up. For example, Udoka often played defensive specialist big men Al Horford and Robert Williams III together. Horford is a strong on-ball big man defender. Williams is one of the best weakside shot-blockers the league has seen in the past decade and is especially dangerous when he is allowed to roam free as a safety-style protector.

Celtics first-year coach Joe Mazzulla was on Udoka's coaching staff, but Mazzulla has a different view. He tends to focus on offense and makes decisions that lean that way. For example, the Robert Williams-Horford pairing is largely a thing of the past and hasn't been seen against Joel Embiid and the 76ers.

But the Celtics rank 10th among playoff teams in defense this year, a big drop from last season.


That pretty much sums things up.

There you go. The answer to the question regarding the Celtics' defensive woes.

Not a fan of the offense that Joe is "focusing" on as well.

[RickyDizzle]

Folks do know our season isn't over yet, right? They've been strong on the road. Maybe they'll just bend over and take it in the next game, but I think they are pretty likely to win Game 6... an elimination game after after a huge dud.

It’s over, nephew. This team is not winning a championship.

Still sure of that?