Celtics 120 @ Rockets 123 Post-game Notes (44-20)

[bucknersrevenge]

Execution down the stretch. What ya going to do? Make or miss league. I like where we are at. No complaints today. Rockets are good.


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No complaints? How about Kyrie shooting 6-17? Or the costly turnovers by Kyrie, particularly the 2 in the 4th down the stretch? How about the putrid defensive effort from Kyrie and Horford? How about the missed lay up by Kyrie that could have iced the game? How about the complete lack of awareness when horford threw the ball away instead of calling TO or getting a jump ball? How about Kyrie and Horford both having the worst +/- on the team at -22 and -18? How about Kyries boneheadedness when trying to miss a free throw on purpose, TWICE? How about allowing Houston to close the game on a 12-2 run?

There was a TON of things to complain about tonight, and almost all of it came from Kyrie. Horford had his donkey moments tonight as well. This should have and could have been a huge Celtic win. To blow a lead that late in the game by simply pooping their pants down the stretch is completely inexcusable. This is a terrible loss. This is a loss that more then likely will come back to bite us in the ass in the near future.

So yea, I’d say there’s some things to complain about.

LOL!!! Priceless.

This is the los that comes back. Not any of the previous 19, THIS ONE. Not any loss we may have after it. But this one kills us. Houston is older and more experienced than us and they won a close game at home. And yes. Kyrie and Al didn't play great today. They play 82 games. There's bound to be one where they're off. Life goes on...and so does the schedule.

What about the any of the 4 wins before it? No chance any of those could've been the win that saves our bacon in the future?? There's a certain segment of fans incapable of seeing further than the 5 minutes in front of their face. Again, it's an 82 game season. Losses happen. Even losses where you give a game a way are balanced by those games you won but really shouldn't have and we've done quite a bit of that this year. Sure we're 44-20. How many times does Brad have to say that we're probably not as good as the # of wins we have before you believe him? But I get it. You need the soapbox, I mean ledge, so take the ledge. Jump off if this incredibly debilitating loss was too much. If this game was bad for you, I don't recommend watching the final 18 games. This will probably happen again at some point and I fear your heart may not be able to handle it.

[return2glory]

Somebody call the cops! Al Horford is stealing $25 million a year from the Celtics!!

No he’s not. He is stealing about $8- $10 million a year for the Celtics. I’m ok with Horford getting paid $15 million a year because he does a lot of good things on the floor for this team. But at $25 million a year, everyone knows he is super over paid.

Horford has been bad for a few weeks now.

I’m loving how Monroe has played over the last 2 games.

[GrandTheftRondo]

Yes. Ass of shame. Clearly me and you have 2 different views of this team. The Celtics have beaten every team ranked in the top 7 in total rankings. We have the 4th best record in basketball. We have the best defense in basketball. We’re a team with finals aspirations.

Tonight though? Our two stars had the worst +/- on the team. Kyrie was terrible, particularly down the stretch. We had a 6pt lead with close to 2 minutes left and choked so bad that the rockets finished on a 12-2 run. That deserves an ass of shame in my book.

Any time a team blows a 6pt lead in a game they led damn near wire to wire, by committing bad turnovers, missing lay ups, playing poor defense, making dumb decisions, and allowing a team to go on a 12-2 run to close out the game, yea I’d say that deserves an ass of shame.

If Kyrie plays to his averages, this is an easy Celtic win. He deserves an ass of shame for what I think was his worst game of the season.

Your expectations are far too high for a team that is missing its second best player.

My aspirations are too high? I don’t care who is missing. Hayward’s been gone from the jump. We’re still a 44-20 team. That’s good enough for 2nd in the conference and 4th overall. We’ve beaten every top ten team in the Nba at least once. We have the best defensive rating in the league. With how poor Cleveland has been all year, and even again recently after their trades, this Celtics team is absolutely a finals contender. I don’t think they can win a championship, but when you look at what they’ve accomplished, who they’ve beaten, who they’ve played tough, and how we’ve played recently, I absolutely think we can get to the big dance. I don’t think those are unrealistic aspirations at all.

Hell, we should have beaten a team on a 15 game win streak and who currently has the best record in the league. We gave this game away down the stretch. This team when locked in can compete with anyone, and that’s what makes this loss so frustrating.

Being 44-20 has no relevance in a game against a contender. The 2015 Hawks had the best record in the East and were nowhere near as good as Cleveland. I’m not saying we’re like that, but in games like this our limitations as a team without Hayward become apparent at times.

If we make the finals that’s impressive and I wouldn’t be shocked, but I’m not going to get all riled up if we don’t. The high expectations will be saved for next year when we’ve got a healthy starting five.

[CelticTillDeath]

LOL!!! Priceless.

This is the los that comes back. Not any of the previous 19, THIS ONE. Not any loss we may have after it. But this one kills us.

What about the any of the 4 wins before it? No chance any of those could've been the win that saves our bacon in the future?? There's a certain segment of fans incapable of seeing further than the 5 minutes in front of their face. It's an 82 game season. Losses happen. Even losses where you give a game a way are balanced by those games you won but really shouldn't have and we've done quite a bit of that this year. Sure we're 44-20. How many times does Brad have to say that we're probably not as good as the # of wins we have before you believe him? But I get it. You need the soapbox, I mean ledge, so take the ledge. Jump off if this incredibily debilitating loss was too much. If this game was bad for you, I don't recommend watching the final 18 games. This will probably happen again at some point and I fear your heart may not be able to handle it.

What the hell are you talking about? This loss is a loss that should have been a win. Those kind of games come back to rear their ugly head when it comes time for seeding going into the playoffs. This isn’t the only game that falls in this category. The lakers loss comes to mind as another off the top of my head. I’m sure if I go back to jog my memory, there’s a couple others just like those losses. Losses that shouldn’t have happened when you consider how that particular game played out, absolutely can come back to haunt teams that are jockeying for position. Tonight was one of those kinds of bad losses.

There’s no ledge. No one is jumping. I’m critiquing a team in a post game thread for pooping their pants down the stretch of a game, which ended up being the difference from winning to losing. Our stars, particularly Kyrie, played awful tonight. Giving the raptors a 3 game cushion with 18 games left, and with them having one of the easier schedules remaining, is absolutely going to make getting the one seed a whole lot tougher. This is all I’m saying.

I have no clue what your trying to say though. I can’t see five minutes in front of my face? All I’ve done is talk about the game I just watched, in a thread where that’s what we do, We talk about the game. We talk about how this game can effect things going forward. When you lose a game that you clearly should have won, that’s a talking point. This now can become a game that when we look back, could have cost us a certain spot in seeding, because this game should have been a W.

You win some and you lose some. No one is denying that. All I’m saying is, this one is one we shouldn’t have lost, and the ramifications could be costly. If you call that analysis “jumping off the edge” or “overreactionary”, then that’s on you. I’m just talking about what I saw.

[Shak_Celts]

damn, some of y'all need to relax, it's not THAT serious! I'm not happy about the way Kyrie and Al played either but some of you are acting like it's normal and the end of the world! GET OVER IT! ONE GAME!! Wow.

[CelticTillDeath]

Being 44-20 has no relevance in a game against a contender. The 2015 Hawks had the best record in the East and were nowhere near as good as Cleveland. I’m not saying we’re like that, but in games like this our limitations as a team without Hayward become apparent at times.

If we make the finals that’s impressive and I wouldn’t be shocked, but I’m not going to get all riled up if we don’t. The high expectations will be saved for next year when we’ve got a healthy starting five.

No one is arguing that Hayward wouldn’t make us significantly better suited to compete with the top teams, but what I’m saying is even without him all year we’ve done more then just hold our own against the top teams. We’ve beaten all of them at least once. And unlike the hawks of years past, there is a legit argument to be made that we are better then Cleveland as currently constituted. You couldn’t say that about those hawks teams.

Given the landscape of the east, and how we’ve shown we can compete with all of the leagues elite, making the finals is absolutely in play. Will we have better odds next year with Hayward? Of course, but we still have good odds this year without him.

So when we lead damn near wire to wire against the team with the best record in the nba, only to choke it away and allow a 12-2 run to close the game, I think that’s enough to have me and other fans extremely upset at the loss. We should have won this game, even without Hayward.

[Captain_Caveman]

Somebody call the cops! Al Horford is stealing $25 million a year from the Celtics!!

No he’s not. He is stealing about $8- $10 million a year for the Celtics. I’m ok with Horford getting paid $15 million a year because he does a lot of good things on the floor for this team. But at $25 million a year, everyone knows he is super over paid.

Horford has been bad for a few weeks now.

I’m loving how Monroe has played over the last 2 games.

What are you even getting at?

Monroe is a complete scrub and defensive **** pile who has done a decent job for two games against backup bigs.

Horford is helping to anchor an overachieving team and their #1 defense.

And you are trying to compare them somehow? Holy ****. Get a glove and get in the game. Just terrible. Absolutely terrible.

[Green89]

My stat of the night:

Smart and Tatum played about the same minutes tonight, but Smart took 12 shots and Tatum took 6. They both made 4 shots.

I have been as high on Tatum as anyone, but Smart was about 5 times better than him tonight.

Horrible post lol.

It’s like hitting a home run early in the game, but striking out in the 9th inning with runner’s on base and you lose. Big freaking deal you play well early, because it’s how you finish the game that matters. Smart always seems to come up lame in the end. And I stand corrected from an earlier post. He didn’t take that unnecessary, contested shot with under two minutes to go, it was with 2:34 to go. Either way, it was a **** time for him to become Mr. Hero Smart with the ball. Didn’t even look to pass there. I don’t care how well he played earlier in the game, he sucked with the game on the line.

I’ll take the far more efficient Tatum getting 12 shots a game and let Smart take only 6, any game, any night. Tatum’s the more efficient shooter and Smart has no business taking a dozen shots in any Celtics game. He’s not that good an offensive player to be taking that many shots away from better shooters. Thought he had turned a corner by not chucking shots, especially late in games, and staying under 10 shots per game in his first 4 back from injury. I guess I was wrong. He hasn’t.

[Green89]

Somebody call the cops! Al Horford is stealing $25 million a year from the Celtics!!

No he’s not. He is stealing about $8- $10 million a year for the Celtics. I’m ok with Horford getting paid $15 million a year because he does a lot of good things on the floor for this team. But at $25 million a year, everyone knows he is super over paid.

Horford has been bad for a few weeks now.

I’m loving how Monroe has played over the last 2 games.

What are you even getting at?

Monroe is a complete scrub and defensive **** pile who has done a decent job for two games against backup bigs.

Horford is helping to anchor an overachieving team and their #1 defense.

And you are trying to compare them somehow? Holy ****. Get a glove and get in the game. Just terrible. Absolutely terrible.

Sometimes, you just overanalyze the **** out of everything. The point is, we needed bench scoring and Monroe gives us that, regardless of how bad he is on defense. This team could have greatly used Lou Williams, and he sucks on D. Monroe as a bench big who can score in the paint is a tool we use to our advantage. We obviously didn’t want him for defense. Our team execs aren’t that stupid to have not realized what we were getting with him. But let me guess, you know better and would have added X player to our roster because you know it all, know it all in advance, and know more than anyone here about the Dubs. Your schtick is getting so old.

And regarding Horford, when he disappears in big games, we have a right to be pissed and criticize. Yes, overall, he’s been great this year and his value to this team is extremely underrated at times, and lots of criticism here is unjust, but let’s face it, Monroe was better tonight. Much better. The time to defend Horford and berate Monroe was definitely not tonight’s game.

[Wes-J]

My stat of the night:

Smart and Tatum played about the same minutes tonight, but Smart took 12 shots and Tatum took 6. They both made 4 shots.

I have been as high on Tatum as anyone, but Smart was about 5 times better than him tonight.

Horrible post lol.

It’s like hitting a home run early in the game, but striking out in the 9th inning with runner’s on base and you lose. Big freaking deal you play well early, because it’s how you finish the game that matters. Smart always seems to come up lame in the end. And I stand corrected from an earlier post. He didn’t take that unnecessary, contested shot with under two minutes to go, it was with 2:34 to go. Either way, it was a **** time for him to become Mr. Hero Smart with the ball. Didn’t even look to pass there. I don’t care how well he played earlier in the game, he sucked with the game on the line.

I’ll take the far more efficient Tatum getting 12 shots a game and let Smart take only 6, any game, any night. Tatum’s the more efficient shooter and Smart has no business taking a dozen shots in any Celtics game. He’s not that good an offensive player to be taking that many shots away from better shooters. Thought he had turned a corner by not chucking shots, especially late in games, and staying under 10 shots per game in his first 4 back from injury. I guess I was wrong. He hasn’t.

Tatum wet the bed after a promising start. Stevens couldn't even trust him down the stretch late.

Without Smart the game is not within reach. Worst "my" stat of the night I've seen in some time. A lot of things went wrong down the stretch but you're picking on Smart of all people. Who's overanalyzing now??

[ParticleMan]

monroe was great. this is his role, come off the bench and score. yeah he sucks on D, that's why he's not starter material. but if he can abuse backups bigs and rebound that is exactly what we need.

[GrandTheftRondo]

monroe was great. this is his role, come off the bench and score. yeah he sucks on D, that's why he's not starter material. but if he can abuse backups bigs and rebound that is exactly what we need.

Up until a few days ago the team was giving up more points than they were scoring with him out there. Maybe the last two games have changed that somewhat. Still, he’s a disaster defensively. In a playoff game you cannot have players out there leaking points when every possession is so valuable.

[jirrit]

Yes. Ass of shame. Clearly me and you have 2 different views of this team. The Celtics have beaten every team ranked in the top 7 in total rankings. We have the 4th best record in basketball. We have the best defense in basketball. We’re a team with finals aspirations.

Tonight though? Our two stars had the worst +/- on the team. Kyrie was terrible, particularly down the stretch. We had a 6pt lead with close to 2 minutes left and choked so bad that the rockets finished on a 12-2 run. That deserves an ass of shame in my book.

Any time a team blows a 6pt lead in a game they led damn near wire to wire, by committing bad turnovers, missing lay ups, playing poor defense, making dumb decisions, and allowing a team to go on a 12-2 run to close out the game, yea I’d say that deserves an ass of shame.

If Kyrie plays to his averages, this is an easy Celtic win. He deserves an ass of shame for what I think was his worst game of the season.

Your expectations are far too high for a team that is missing its second best player.

My aspirations are too high? I don’t care who is missing. Hayward’s been gone from the jump. We’re still a 44-20 team. That’s good enough for 2nd in the conference and 4th overall. We’ve beaten every top ten team in the Nba at least once. We have the best defensive rating in the league. With how poor Cleveland has been all year, and even again recently after their trades, this Celtics team is absolutely a finals contender. I don’t think they can win a championship, but when you look at what they’ve accomplished, who they’ve beaten, who they’ve played tough, and how we’ve played recently, I absolutely think we can get to the big dance. I don’t think those are unrealistic aspirations at all.

Hell, we should have beaten a team on a 15 game win streak and who currently has the best record in the league. We gave this game away down the stretch. This team when locked in can compete with anyone, and that’s what makes this loss so frustrating.

You're only giving perfect reasons not to see this as an AoS-game. Kyrie's lay-up was in and out and would have sealed it. Kyrie and Al both had one off their off-games yet we were still leading the red hot Rockets in their house. Off-games happen man. Meanwhile we still almost beat them. I'm more happy with the 45 solid minutes we got. Our game finishing has to improve and we should expect more from our stars but I'm 1000% confident they will give more once PO's start. Hell maybe even next game.

[Tiny ball]

A positive is Monroe is finding his way and we would definitely need him in the playoffs when the game slows down.

Great game, horrible loss. On to the next one.

?? The game will not slow down in playoffs if you are playing GS or the Rockets.

The Celtics should learn from GS and pick up pace not slow it down. I get so mad watching Kryie slowly dribbling up the court. What year is he living in 1980?

[Gant]

Houston's good enough to have an outside shot at beating Golden State. That's sort of cool.


That was a really fun game. Boston's bench is finally and fully fortified.

The Celtics are headed in the right direction, which is all that matters.

[Tiny ball]

Monroe and Morris starting to play well..... crickets for the haters.

Been on the positive Monroe train for awhile but can't say the same for Morris.

Hey people were expecting Monroe to average 20/15 straight off the bat, takes time!

People here are little bit out there. Some the idiots on tv "radio" in Boston are worse. I'm little out there but at least I believe nothing from TV news.. My programming is Celtics basketball. That's all folks.

[Tiny ball]

Houston's good enough to have an outside shot at beating Golden State, which is sort of cool.


That was a really fun game. Boston's bench is finally and fully fortified.

The Celtics are headed in the right direction, which is all that matters.

Odds are they just will not stay healthy..

Celtics are headed in right direction.imho

[Tiny ball]

Your expectations are far too high for a team that is missing its second best player.

My aspirations are too high? I don’t care who is missing. Hayward’s been gone from the jump. We’re still a 44-20 team. That’s good enough for 2nd in the conference and 4th overall. We’ve beaten every top ten team in the Nba at least once. We have the best defensive rating in the league. With how poor Cleveland has been all year, and even again recently after their trades, this Celtics team is absolutely a finals contender. I don’t think they can win a championship, but when you look at what they’ve accomplished, who they’ve beaten, who they’ve played tough, and how we’ve played recently, I absolutely think we can get to the big dance. I don’t think those are unrealistic aspirations at all.

Hell, we should have beaten a team on a 15 game win streak and who currently has the best record in the league. We gave this game away down the stretch. This team when locked in can compete with anyone, and that’s what makes this loss so frustrating.

You're only giving perfect reasons not to see this as an AoS-game. Kyrie's lay-up was in and out and would have sealed it. Kyrie and Al both had one off their off-games yet we were still leading the red hot Rockets in their house. Off-games happen man. Meanwhile we still almost beat them. I'm more happy with the 45 solid minutes we got. Our game finishing has to improve and we should expect more from our stars but I'm 1000% confident they will give more once PO's start. Hell maybe even next game.

al looks like he needs month off. Sit his ass down.

[Tiny ball]

monroe was great. this is his role, come off the bench and score. yeah he sucks on D, that's why he's not starter material. but if he can abuse backups bigs and rebound that is exactly what we need.

Up until a few days ago the team was giving up more points than they were scoring with him out there. Maybe the last two games have changed that somewhat. Still, he’s a disaster defensively. In a playoff game you cannot have players out there leaking points when every possession is so valuable.

He rebounds and he scores moves his feet a bit.Think I remember something about him killing GS in game this year. They had no one that could stop him. Kind of like what he used to do some games against the Celtics. I like him a lot.

[radcot]

We played 9 guys in this game and 7 of them scored in double figures and Jaylen had 9. That is great team balance! Yes, mistakes were made and shots were missed in the last 3 minutes. That happens ALL the time in playoff-level games, of which this was one. The victory goes to the team who makes the most plays & the fewest mistakes during that final stretch of incredibly intense basketball. Turns out this time it was Houston, which is no surprise considering they have the best record in the league, are in the midst of a major winning streak, and were playing at home. How can you NOT come away from this game encouraged? The "no moral victories" argument is juvenile.