Official Celtics 2022 Off-Season Thread

[Feed Your Head]

Plus a TS of 62%, and a net rating of +31.2

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[Shak_Celts]

Happy birthday to the GOAT!

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This made me cry! Great!!

[Triple M]

The Nuggets offense was hot going into yesterday's game # 1 in O rating in the last 15 games

Denver first half offensive rating 113.2
Denver Second half offensive rating 82.4

[Fencer reregistered]

One other thing I'm a little worried about is I think Ime is showing that he really likes a short rotation. So I could definitely see him just playing:

Smart
Brown
Tatum
RWill
Al

DW
Grant
Theis

And that team IMO is going to be really impacted by the lack of shooters. I think if he goes with this 8 man rotation we are going to have some woeful shooting nights.

My hope is that he puts PP into the rotation right away and lets him take some lumps to carve out a role for himself. We absolutely NEED a shooter off the bench but it's not gonna happen with PP proving himself in garbage minutes. It has to be a planned effort on the coaching end.

More than 4 guys will play at the 1-3 positions, for if it's only 4, they'll be averaging 36 minutes/game in regulation.

[AgentGreen]

Nuggets just beat the Raptors on a back to back after losing against us. This game showed many again how dangerous and lethal Jokic can be if you can't guard him with some size.

Robert Williams and Horford will be crucial for us in the playoffs as they showed against the Nuggets. We also added Theis to the rotation! Most bigs will have a tough time playing against Boston. Not to forget we also have ""Unicorn"" Kornet on the bench.

[zoyathedestroya]

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[zoyathedestroya]

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I didn't realize Ime Udoka already coached the Celtics to a title.

[ParticleMan]

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I didn't realize Ime Udoka already coached the Celtics to a title.

Bill the player: I need a breather coach
Bill the coach: get back out there! You don’t hear Hondo complaining!

[bisme37]

538 thinks we're going to finish in 4th at 49-33.

They also say our full strength lineup is the best in the league.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-nba-predictions/?ex_cid=rrpromo

[steefP2]

538 thinks we're going to finish in 4th at 49-33.

They also say our full strength lineup is the best in the league.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-nba-predictions/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Yeah raptor seems almost disqualifingly bullish on the Celtics. It over interprets line up data for one. That said this team is hard to really know what we got. The numbers all look amazing but we’ve all seen our lack of shooting come bite us in the ass. I’d probably rank us as a low 50’s team in quality at full strength and maybe the 4th best team in the east (a tad homer ish maybe). Covid and injuries across the league introduced a ton of noise in all the team statistical profiles imo.

That said, if we keep the ball movement and defense up AND suddenly the jays find their shots again ? Our ceiling could be really quite high. On the flip side, this kind of ensemble cast team falls apart quite quickly with even 1-2 injuries so we’re probably less resilient than most in the top 6 in the east

[sam_I_am]

538 thinks we're going to finish in 4th at 49-33.

They also say our full strength lineup is the best in the league.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-nba-predictions/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Yeah raptor seems almost disqualifingly bullish on the Celtics. It over interprets line up data for one. That said this team is hard to really know what we got. The numbers all look amazing but we’ve all seen our lack of shooting come bite us in the ass. I’d probably rank us as a low 50’s team in quality at full strength and maybe the 4th best team in the east (a tad homer ish maybe). Covid and injuries across the league introduced a ton of noise in all the team statistical profiles imo.

That said, if we keep the ball movement and defense up AND suddenly the jays find their shots again ? Our ceiling could be really quite high. On the flip side, this kind of ensemble cast team falls apart quite quickly with even 1-2 injuries so we’re probably less resilient than most in the top 6 in the east

I really like our team but we still have 2 major holes. As everyone knows we lack shooting or a third scoring option that the other top 4 teams do have. We also have limited ability to defend Embiid, Durant and Giannis unless Al can somehow age backwards in time for playoffs. Miami also is undersized but their shooting will put major stress on the bigs to stay with their shooters.

I think if we can avoid Philly and Milwaukee until ECF we can hang with everybody else. This team is actually built to battle high octane scoring teams like Miami, Chicago and the Nets. You never know who is going to be banged up by round 3. I never thought I would have this much optimism ….. reminds me a lot of the Scary Terry team.

[Fencer reregistered]

It's frequently mentioned that our record against good teams is fine, but we've done worse against bad ones than (other) good (Eastern?) teams have.

Well, our conference record is pretty comparable to anybody else's in the East too. So our downfall may in particular have been losses to a bunch of not-so-good Western teams, such as San Antonio (2X), the LA teams and Portland.

[Curmudgeon]

Let's see what happens on Tuesday against Embiid, Harden and Co.

[playa-hater]

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No No, it's Ime's system.. Sorry couldn't help it. but that was too easy..

[playa-hater]

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Using this post again to say that I am so happy that Boston legitimately has a Core 5.

3 definite stars IMO ( If Jaylen doesn't Go WTF sometimes) RW is a monster Role playing perfect complement to the Js. Smart has been a solid role player for over a month and D White may Fit even better than a higher level player like Beal. DW is the ultimate do a bit of everything GLUE GUY we need.

I love that the Core 5 have similar timelines. The Celtics just needs to find/develop one or 2 more bench pieces and we should compete well for years IMO.

[Fencer reregistered]

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I didn't realize Ime Udoka already coached the Celtics to a title.

Bill the player: I need a breather coach
Bill the coach: get back out there! You don’t hear Hondo complaining!

Russell once said that his main job as coach was to decide when guys needed breathers.

I didn't realize how much he simplified that task.

[Fencer reregistered]

Russell apparently had 3 playoff series where he averaged 48.0 mpg or more, and a bunch more where he averaged over 47. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/russebi01.html

Havlicek didn't go quite that far, but he often played a lot more minutes than anybody would today.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/havlijo01.html

Cousy peaked at 46.5 mpg, Cowens at 47.0, Bird at 45.0.

[steefP2]

It's frequently mentioned that our record against good teams is fine, but we've done worse against bad ones than (other) good (Eastern?) teams have.

Well, our conference record is pretty comparable to anybody else's in the East too. So our downfall may in particular have been losses to a bunch of not-so-good Western teams, such as San Antonio (2X), the LA teams and Portland.

To be more specific, we’ve absolutely beaten the r pants of the dredges of the league. It’s more that we have very disappointing record vs the mediocre but not awful teams, exactly like those teams you mentioned above. It’s not that we lost to the magic or kings a bunch. But dropping games vs the hawks, spurs, clippers etc

Ultimately we probably would’ve lost the games in that period regardless as both our injuries and level of execution prevented us from playing anything resembling quality basketball.

During our worst stretches I think of it as the Celtics beating themselves more than anything else

[zoyathedestroya]

Start of season to 11/01/2021 (7 games): Celtics 27th in defensive rating
11/02/2021 to present (51 games): Celtics 1st in defensive rating

When will our offense catch up? Even in these last 11 games where we went 10-1 with a couple of blowout wins, our true shooting % is just ranked 14th, offensive rating 11th. It's the defense that's carrying us to these victories, much like in Stevens' strongest seasons.

[AgentGreen]

Start of season to 11/01/2021 (7 games): Celtics 27th in defensive rating
11/02/2021 to present (51 games): Celtics 1st in defensive rating

When will our offense catch up? Even in these last 11 games where we went 10-1 with a couple of blowout wins, our true shooting % is just ranked 14th, offensive rating 11th. It's the defense that's carrying us to these victories, much like in Stevens' strongest seasons.

Our offense will catch up when the Jay's find a way to stay consistent. I'm not so worried about Tatum, he has stretches when his shot isn't falling but he makes it up with his defense, rebounding and passing. Brown on the other hand dissapears when he's having a tough stretch on the court. His forced drives to the basket because of his lack of court vision hurt the team. Most of the time during his forced drives he loses the dribble and creates another turnover. He needs to rotate the ball more and pick his moments better for attacking the basket.