sunskerr wrote:The Celtics-Heat series just again showed the value of having at least two star guys who can go out and score on their own in the playoffs. Bam got frozen out HARD because he's not a guy who can isolate and get you a bucket, and the Heat were left with Jimmy who had to do EVERYTHING as Oladipo and Lowry looked extremely washed up. Tyler Herro being out might have made a difference but he was out and that is that.
Meanwhile as the set plays and fancy offenses ground to a halt with the increased physicality in the playoffs, the Celtics had Brown and Tatum who could still be threats.
Great points here!
Our team though built for skill, IQ and depth, had no athleticism, energy, PHYSICALITY, TOUGHNESS, sense of urgency. We had a total of 4 players that could go get their own offense in Paul, Book, Ayton, and Holiday off the bench. All of our other players needed to have the offense set up for them. And Paul and Booker wore out and were basically cooked by the end of the regular season having to carry the offensive load for the team BECAUSE:
1-
Our bench depth and overall depth was an illusion. Most of the players were coaches ' favorites rather than players with legitimate impactful production. Our depth was lousy and we needed higher tier proven/ established impact players rather than comfort options that were brought in based upon familiarity with our coach or Paul.
2-
We didn't have any legitimate gamers with their own individual isolation abilities and high end talent. Instead we chose "nice guy" average ( oft inconsistent) players that were good for culture, but were not real gamers. They didn't have the actual athleticism, physicality, toughness to impact games in our favor to create consistency and momentum for the team. The causality of this is that we constantly had to play from behind and never truly dominated lesser teams because we constantly got outworked and outhustled! This caused our two stars to get burned out even quicker.
3-
We didn't utilize Ayton enough in our offense to sustain easy/ consistent offense in mismatches and allow our shooters to get cleaner looks and sustain a better offensive rythym. As a result, Ayton became uncomfortable in a guard centric offense that he wasn't built for. And our shooters lost their confidence and rythym from no longer having high percentage open looks. And our offense began to falter much more from the perimeter. Ayton also became less engaged and our without our defensive anchor being fully focused and engaged, our defense also became porous.
What we need to add:
High end talent, athleticism, isolation scoring and legitimate GRITTY, TOUGH, AGGRESSIVE, hungry players with high motors and a sense of urgency! Crowder is inconsistent offensively and isn't really tough ( his idea of tough is just dumb, ill timed fouls and complaining mostly). We need strong, physical players that play with aggression and can shut opposing players doesn't and make high impact defensive plays. Plays that fire a team up and foster urgency.
We need more legitimately strong isolation scorers that can generate offense once opposing teams just target our two stars (Paul/ Book) because they know that we won't actually utilize Ayton anyways in mismatches. As much as everyone doesn't like Kyrie Irving, He's a perfect option for our isolation needs, But even beyond that, he's a direct conduit to Durant for this team due to their strong/ odd connection wherein Durant really likes playing with him! Alternatively, at a much lower cost, there's legitimate good options in the draft which everyone loathes. Those players would address a definite need for our team in regards to Youth ( energy/ high motor/ hunger), high end athleticism, talent, physicality that we otherwise can't currently afford in free agency anyways. But certain areas of our roster must be remade or upgraded significantly. Because our team of finesse, unathletic, average skilled "nice guy" cast off types will continue to get crushed by the actual stronger, more physical, more athletic, more aggressive and hungry legitimate gamers in the league.
