.... and its Doc fault that he loses with Orlando, even though he never had a higher seed (thus no home court advantage) but he gets no credit for beating a young hungry dangerous Atlanta team. Hmmmm... double standards are fun
I know this wasn't directed at me (since I haven't been in that thread) but as an anti-Doc poster, I feel compelled to comment. First, there's no comparison there, and certainly no double standard. In one case, his 42-win team had a 3-1 lead over a 50-win team but couldn't get his team to win 1 of 3. Yes it was a 1 v. 8, but there wasn't much difference between the teams. In the other case, he allowed a terrible 37-45 team to take his ridiculously superior 66-16 team to 7 games.
Second, I don't care what Doc did in Orlando results-wise, (in fact, I've defended T-Mac over the very same series you're talking about), but no, I don't give him credit for beating a sub-.500 Atlanta team that can't play defense or a set offense. I give him some share of responsibility for letting a team that bad take us to 7.
Why is everyone talking about the offense when clearly the problem on the road has been the defense. This team is averaging giving up 75.5 points per game at home and 100 points per game on the road.
Wednesday was the only game this postseason that the Celtics held an opponent under 97 points in a game on the road. And even then if the could have just come up with some stops in the third and fourth quarters, the game was in reach.
Yes, the offense has looked bad on the road, but this team's offense has always flowed better when the defense is making stops. I couldn't find what the Celtics seasonal per game stat was for fast break points but they've only had 43 fast break points in 5 games on the road.
I couldn't disagree more with this. I think our D has been very good in Cleveland with the exception of the first quarter of Game 3, when the Cavs simply made every shot imaginable. In every game, we have sought to pressure Lebron and let the other guys kill us - in the first quarter of Game 3, it happened, they killed us. Other than that, we've been doing an excellent job defensively especially considering we're going against the best offensive player in the NBA. We are giving the Cavs the shots we want them to take, they just hit a few more. (And I've said before, I think the biggest problem in Atlanta was that our offense was turning the ball over and bricking shots allowing Atlanta to increase the tempo, and a transition game naturally results in more points and higher field goal percentages. We didn't play good defense, but it was our inability to control tempo that prevented us from doing anything.)
As for the 3rd and 4th quarters of Game 4, maybe we could have come up with some stops? On the Cavs' first 11 possessions of the 4th quarter, covering the first 6+ minutes, we forced them to take 8 shots from outside 20 feet. They made one of those, a 3 by Gibson. We let Boobie get a 9 foot shot, we sent Lebron to the line once (where he went 1 of 2) and Joe Smith hit a shot. Other than that, the D was superb.
Our problem in that stretch was that we didn't take advantage at the offensive end and did the same thing, settling for outside shots repeatedly. Not surprising since we had Big Baby and PJ Brown, who aren't gonna give you post offense, at the 4 and 5, Posey, who is not gonna take it to the basket (no offense at all to Posey who has been our best or second best player in this series and maybe our most consistent player in the playoffs - yet is only playing 23 minutes per game), and Pierce and Cassell settling for jump shots. I'll give some credit to Sam, in the first 6 minutes of the 4th, he's the only one who took it to the lane at all, drawing a foul and hitting his two free throws, but I've said elsewhere when his shot isn't going, he can't be on the court.
So, when we held them to 8 points in the first 6 minutes of the 4th, it was our offense that didn't capitalize, also scoring only 8 (thanks to PJ Brown, who hit two 18 footers). So, our offense didn't play better when we were making stops - it played significantly worse. The next two defensive possessions, we stopped layup attempts by Gibson and Lebron, but still did nothing on the offensive end - that's what was killing us. Then we allow Joe Smith to take a 19 footer - which is what we want, but we let Lebron get the offensive board, fortunately he bricked another 3 - we were still forcing them to take the shots we wanted them to take and they for the most part weren't making them. But between the 9 minute mark and 3 minute mark of the 4th we scored 4 points. That was our problem.
We were forcing them to take shots we wanted, it was going to catch up with us at some point when we couldn't do anything offensively. It did when Lebron and Boobie hit back to back 3s to extend the lead to 7. Then Lebron got his monster dunk, but still we gave no response. And if we're in a close game, I'm fine with us letting Anderson Varejao take 11 and 19 foot jumpers down the stretch. He happened to hit both, but the defense was fine. It was the offense that choked, scoring a grand total of 12 points in the 4th quarter, whether we were making stops or not.
How people can continue to act like it's the defense is beyond me. We couldn't score in the 4th because defenses clamp down and we have no offensive sets to beat that. Our offense is isolation. That's why we lost.
And I'll admit, we could have made more stops in the 3rd but hey, they were hitting outside shots. We, on the other hand, had a stretch where in six possessions early in the 3rd quarter, Pierce and Allen missed easy layups (there's been a lot of missed layups to defensive pressure and well-officiated contact, but these two were just misses), and Rondo and Perk each missed a pair of free throws. We could have taken control of the game at that point but didn't because our offense didn't execute. And for the most part, even though we made fewer stops in the 3rd than in the 4th, our offense performed worse in the 4th.
Well, the point is that you don't stick in a cold BBD at the beginning of the 4th quarter. I would have been fine using BBD and Powe all along, not PJ Brown. (Brown had a decent game yesterday, but otherwise he has been a total non-factor.)With young players, you have to give them minutes in the first half if you want them to be successful in the second half. Having said that, BBD isn't the reason they lost the game.
There are two main reasons why they lost the game:
(1) Cassell stinks at both ends of the floor. If they had been using Eddie House and Tony Allen, they would be up 3-1 in this series. For every basket Cassell scores, he gives up two. He can't guard West, he can't guard Gibson.
(2) Rivers has been unable to make the offensive adjustments to free up Ray Allen and KG to score the basketball.
KG had two points in the second half. For starters, they need to push the ball, which is something they will never do when Cassell is in the game. The game is being played at Cleveland's tempo.
The coach is never entirely to blame. But Rivers is a mediocre coach at best, and the proof is in the pudding.
Brick, I'm 50-50 with you on the first part. Putting BBD in there was ridiculous. But Brown played very well Monday, he deserved his minutes, maybe he got too many, but Brown being out there wasn't the problem, Davis and Cassell (and KG being on the bench for the first 4 1/2 minutes of the 4th) was.
On your two points for why they lost the game, again, I'm 50-50. Cassell played bad, and shouldn't have been on the court to start the 4th - it wasn't going for him in the second or third, don't have him trying to work out his shot in the 4th. That said, your 3-1 statement is off base. Cassell was an enormous factor in us winning Games 1 and 2, dropping 10 in the 4th quarter of Game 1 and leading the second unit to take control of Game 2 in the 2nd quarter. Without him in there, we probably drop one of those games, so even if you don't put him in in Game 4, we're still probably 2-2.
And I agree wholeheartedly on the poor offense, inability free up KG and Allen and overall mediocrity of Doc.
I am anti-Doc. I think he's a nice guy who can be fine in the regular season, but subpar to mediocre coaches get destroyed in the playoffs routinely. I just hope it doesn't happen to us. He can't do anything about offense at this point - it's too late to start drawing up plays now, but hopefully he can adjust his rotations and start making sense of the game (i.e., play Posey 30+ minutes, don't rest 2 of our 3 offensive weapons at the same time, especially in the 4th, don't experiment with unused players in the 4th, don't play Cassell when his shot's not falling and he's disrupting the already poor offense, don't yank guys around for no reason, etc.). If he can do that, we'll win this series. If he doesn't, I just don't know. I love our homecourt advantage, but I don't want to keep relying on it.
Doc says attack, then sits Rondo for most the 4th quarter thus playing with a slower, jumpshooting team.
It is lip service.
Agree 100%.