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Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference?

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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#21 » by JR Hawks » Tue Jun 11, 2019 1:51 pm

When it comes to our young players, Celtics fans have a bad habit of 1) Overestimating their maximum potential, 2) Assuming they will reach that potential, and 3) Getting confused and thinking they have already reached that maximum potential. That's how Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, average at best NBA players with PER's in the 13-15 range, are somehow assumed to already be stars rather than potential stars.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#22 » by sully00 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:13 pm

LuckyLeprechaun wrote:Nope. We had no MVP level player. Other teams did. It is very rare in the NBA for a team without one to beat a team with one in the playoffs. "The rest of the team" only matters when both teams have 1.


Love or hate em Irving was good enough this season to be the best player on a championship team if everyone else lived up to the hype. He struggled against MIL in postseason so be it for the regular season he did his job.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#23 » by canman1971 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:22 pm

sully00 wrote:
LuckyLeprechaun wrote:Nope. We had no MVP level player. Other teams did. It is very rare in the NBA for a team without one to beat a team with one in the playoffs. "The rest of the team" only matters when both teams have 1.


Love or hate em Irving was good enough this season to be the best player on a championship team if everyone else lived up to the hype. He struggled against MIL in postseason so be it for the regular season he did his job.

Yes, and I think he struggled because for the most part, everyone else sucked so all the focus was on Kyrie.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#24 » by sully00 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:42 pm

canman1971 wrote:
sully00 wrote:
LuckyLeprechaun wrote:Nope. We had no MVP level player. Other teams did. It is very rare in the NBA for a team without one to beat a team with one in the playoffs. "The rest of the team" only matters when both teams have 1.


Love or hate em Irving was good enough this season to be the best player on a championship team if everyone else lived up to the hype. He struggled against MIL in postseason so be it for the regular season he did his job.

Yes, and I think he struggled because for the most part, everyone else sucked so all the focus was on Kyrie.


It wasn't even sucked as much there just wasn't any consistency there was no solid #2 option. While it is great to have guys step up I think this team needed a legit #2 guy and it just kept revolving. I think over the second half Horford, Tatum and Brown became more consistent but it feels like that lack of reliability was already the norm.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#25 » by bfchs123 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 2:48 pm

Answer to the question in the OP has to be no - this Toronto team is really good and obviously it starts with Kawhi but they also have great complementary pieces that play the type of team defense that previous iterations of Brad Stevens' teams used to play.

I think what becomes abundantly clear every year at this time is that you 100% NEED a true #1 scoring option who will get buckets down the stretch and consistently put up 20+ pts a night. This is way more important than having 8 ok-to-good guys where you don't know each night where the scoring comes from.

Ideally your #1 option is a wing/tall guard, and this is the reason why Durant, Kawhi, Lebron, etc. run the most effective teams. You could see in this playoffs how Kyrie and even Steph have struggled to get good looks down the stretch vs. tight defense. Any of the guys I just mentioned can pick a match-up and get buckets on anyone. AD isn't a wing but he is a clear #1 and can score points in crunch time against anyone too. Having a second elite scorer like Kyrie I think would make them both even more effective.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#26 » by JR Hawks » Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:02 pm

sully00 wrote:
canman1971 wrote:
sully00 wrote:
Love or hate em Irving was good enough this season to be the best player on a championship team if everyone else lived up to the hype. He struggled against MIL in postseason so be it for the regular season he did his job.

Yes, and I think he struggled because for the most part, everyone else sucked so all the focus was on Kyrie.


It wasn't even sucked as much there just wasn't any consistency there was no solid #2 option. While it is great to have guys step up I think this team needed a legit #2 guy and it just kept revolving. I think over the second half Horford, Tatum and Brown became more consistent but it feels like that lack of reliability was already the norm.


Lack of reliability is the trademark for young players. It's why veterans are so critical for title contenders. The idea of having our supporting case be all younger players was silly....and Kyrie knew it.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#27 » by sully00 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:24 pm

JR Hawks wrote:
sully00 wrote:
canman1971 wrote:Yes, and I think he struggled because for the most part, everyone else sucked so all the focus was on Kyrie.


It wasn't even sucked as much there just wasn't any consistency there was no solid #2 option. While it is great to have guys step up I think this team needed a legit #2 guy and it just kept revolving. I think over the second half Horford, Tatum and Brown became more consistent but it feels like that lack of reliability was already the norm.


Lack of reliability is the trademark for young players. It's why veterans are so critical for title contenders. The idea of having our supporting case be all younger players was silly....and Kyrie knew it.


The supporting cast was Gordon Hayward and Al Horford they are not young players. As I just pointed out the two young guys and Al where the only players who ended up being consistent and reliable double digits scorers. Sure the team was a little too young and to an extent that was by design this wasn't supposed to be a championship or bust season. This team looked like a team that was going to get blown out of the playoffs early a year ago because of the injuries they overcame it and went on a run. In the end if I told you that Hayward would struggle and Brown would get replaced in the starting line up early in the year I think this year went about as you would expect.

If Irving was signed for three more years there wouldn't have been the drama.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#28 » by jfs1000d » Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:37 pm

Yes. We did.


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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#29 » by djFan71 » Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:56 pm

captain green wrote:No we were deep but not top heavy. Irving was the wild card and played flat as super star could so no he is basically an all star not super star.
So I put us at 4th. Other gm's went for it ours stayed pat. This year nets and knicks are going all in too so we won't stand pat.

This for me. I had us #1 going into the season and Bucks 2nd since I loved what they did. Us being 1 due to:

1) If it's close, the homer in me wins out
2) I hoped Hayward would be close to fully back by end of year,
3) I thought we could out-bench other teams and never give them a break.
4) Wasn't sure if Kawhi would be healthy

2-4 didn't work in our favor. I still think we were better than Philly, though. Even with them taking TOR to 7 (see #1).
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#30 » by Tiny ball » Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:04 am

JR Hawks wrote:
sully00 wrote:
canman1971 wrote:Yes, and I think he struggled because for the most part, everyone else sucked so all the focus was on Kyrie.


It wasn't even sucked as much there just wasn't any consistency there was no solid #2 option. While it is great to have guys step up I think this team needed a legit #2 guy and it just kept revolving. I think over the second half Horford, Tatum and Brown became more consistent but it feels like that lack of reliability was already the norm.


Lack of reliability is the trademark for young players. It's why veterans are so critical for title contenders. The idea of having our supporting case be all younger players was silly....and Kyrie knew it.
if coach would have benched Tatum when he started bricking fade away shots he might have grown into the second option..
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#31 » by ermocrate » Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:40 am

Yes, we had, unfortunately the amount of **** in some players' brain was too much to succeed. We need to clean the closet trying to have the same amount of talent back.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#32 » by SichtingLives » Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:12 pm

Sure, if you want to only consider players strengths as their "talent" and ignore their weaknesses. But thats not how you measure talent. We were a 49 win 4 seed and got throttled in the second round. That is exactly how talented this team was. The talent mantra was nothing more than a classic case of green goggles.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#33 » by soxfan2003 » Wed Jun 12, 2019 8:05 pm

Jurry wrote:Sure, if you want to only consider players strengths as their "talent" and ignore their weaknesses. But thats not how you measure talent. We were a 49 win 4 seed and got throttled in the second round. That is exactly how talented this team was. The talent mantra was nothing more than a classic case of green goggles.


The way I figure it after seeing the Milwaukee series and enough regular season games/Indiana series.
Bucks moderately better in pure talent thanks to the importance of having a genuine MVP caliber player like Giannis
Bucks also moderately better in terms of having that talent being spread out evenly in a logical manner and having synergy/chemistry.

I think Boston Celtics are more talented than they showed against the Bucks but Milwaukee still the significantly better team in terms of talent and fit.

Fit matters. Having 3 relatively short all-star PGs on the team would make the team have some very talented players but the talented wouldn't be distributed in a way that actually wins tough playoff series.

Ainge has to address both a talent problem and a fit problem. If he doesn't, it will be another year of team underachieving. Danny Green may make some mistakes on the court at times but he seems pretty bright when it comes to what wins NBA playoff basketball games. Green if he was honest would call the Celtics fairly soft/undersized. Baynes is on the roster but unlike Marc Gasol he isn't good enough to play many playoff minutes. And say what you will about Serge Ibaka but I'd take him when it comes to defense over Morris. And then Raptors have Siakam with length/athleticism/improving skill and the very tough Leonard.

No one on the Celtics can consistently score inside against a tough half-court defense. Perhaps in a different way but Toronto would have done the same thing to Boston that Milwaukee did.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#34 » by ParticleMan » Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:03 am

Nah we weren't close to being the most talented. for starters giannis and kawhi are way better than anyone we had. for us to make that up, we needed to have a bunch of things happen:

- tatum needed to step up into all-star status. fail.
- brown needed to build on last year's playoffs and take the next step. fail.
- ditto for rozier. huge fail.
- smart needed to learn to shoot. better, but still fail.
- and most of all, hayward needed to return healthy and back to being an allstar. huge fail.

basically NONE of those things happened. the only bright spot in the entire season was marcus morris morphing into dirk for about a third of the season. then spending the rest of the year trying to replicate that. pretty much everyone else you could argue underachieved vs expectations.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#35 » by pac213up » Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:47 am

The simple answer is no.

Irving is overrated. Great scorer that does not make anyone else better or have the ability to play to other's strengths. Significant liability on the defensive end. Needs to reach Curry efficiency levels offensively to make up for his defensive inability.

Hayward did not recover as well as many hoped he would.

Rozier regressed and Brown and Tatum did not take a step forward.

Stevens - Was not able to get players to buy into roles. Left the ball in Irvings hands way too much. Lack of experience handling NBA egos.
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Re: Did We Really Have The Best Talent In Eastern Conference? 

Post#36 » by Taget » Thu Jun 13, 2019 7:31 pm

Talent matters no doubt. But so does chemistry. And the ability to put all that talent together. Which is why Steve Kerr for instance is underrated. Conversely the Wizards have for years have had massive talent. With his injury and massive contract it is easy to forget just how good John Wall was. But talent is not enough. Best example of course being the monstrosity Isiah Thomas built with the Knicks. He amassed every disgruntled personality and underachiever high on talent but low on everything else to create a massive high salary train wreck.

That was the lesson we got this year. Not that all our players were terrible or brats. But it is not just a matter of talent but how the pieces go together and how they are used. If you put the Greek Freak aside (and admittedly you shouldn't!) we have better talent than the Bucks. But one team worked together as a team the other didn't.
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