ok who's flip flopping on posey now?

[dark_lord]

I've been against giving Posey the money from the beginning and Im still there. He wouldn't have changed this, and this blatant "I told you so" muck should be saved until the playoffs, when we will really see what Posey's subtraction meant.

i think everyone will agree he will contribute this season and the next.....i think whether we signed posey to the extra year can not be accurately assessed until the contract is in its 3,4,5 years.

[nickagneta]

He and Danny commented about just how bad that small ball lineup with Posey playing the 4 was for this team. They noted how much better and more efficient they were with a more standard lineup with length and size up front. If they had read the Posey situation earlier and gone ahead with filling their bench openings with different types of players instead of running back to Eddie and Tony once word had it that they lost Posey, this would be a different and better team.
 

c'mon, nick. you know that if DA had filled Posey's spot with another player before Posey signed with NO, he would have gotten killed for not waiting to go after Pose...

the big mistake that DA made wasn't missing on Barnes or Pietrus or Mo Evans, etc...the big mistake was actually thinking that giving Pose that 4th year he wanted would be worse than not having him on this team right now...

as for small ball not being effective or efficient, the problem with that observation is that even if technically true, not having the option of small ball has made us very one dimensional.

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

[indeedproceed]

I've been against giving Posey the money from the beginning and Im still there. He wouldn't have changed this, and this blatant "I told you so" muck should be saved until the playoffs, when we will really see what Posey's subtraction meant.

i think everyone will agree he will contribute this season and the next.....i think whether we signed posey to the extra year can not be accurately assessed until the contract is in its 3,4,5 years.

I agree with everything you just said. I don't however think that he would've changed much during this skid.

[Change]

Posey was the X factor last season. The man could do it all. The one thing I missed is his feistiness the way he would bother players put his body on the line by taking charges & going after lose balls. I never thought a player that avg 7.4 last season would mean so much to us.

[threzd]

I'm probably gonna get killed for this, but I think Posey is overrated by some people on this board, or at least being wrongly seen as someone who would have singlehandedly stopped this skid and guaranteed us 2 more championships.

What is James Posey? A good 3 point shooter, a good rebounder, a solid individual and excellent team defender, a tough and reliable veteran Doc can count on, a great locker room guy and a hustle player who gives it his all.

What is he not? A go to guy on offense who can create shots for him and the team to lead the bench or a big man with length. I feel these are our most pressing needs, and Posey really fits neither.

With Posey our team would no doubt be better, and he might have been able to fire the team up to the point where we would have won one or two more games. But to think that Posey would automatically be our savior or that if he had been on our team we would not struggled through this stretch sounds pretty ludicrous to me.

[D Dub]

I'm probably gonna get killed for this, but I think Posey is overrated by some people on this board, or at least being wrongly seen as someone who would have singlehandedly stopped this skid and guaranteed us 2 more championships.

What is James Posey? A good 3 point shooter, a good rebounder, a solid individual and excellent team defender, a tough and reliable veteran Doc can count on, a great locker room guy and a hustle player who gives it his all.

What is he not? A go to guy on offense who can create shots for him and the team to lead the bench or a big man with length. I feel these are our most pressing needs, and Posey really fits neither.

With Posey our team would no doubt be better, and he might have been able to fire the team up to the point where we would have won one or two more games. But to think that Posey would automatically be our savior or that if he had been on our team we would not struggled through this stretch sounds pretty ludicrous to me.

Great post.  I couldn't agree with you more.  TP

[pearljammer10]

It isnt Posey that we are missing, it is a player of his position. Posey wasnt/isnt a god and just because hes James Posey isnt the reason the bench is under performing. We need an athletic swingman who can score and play team defense. Posey was an ok 3 point shooter and a good defender he wouldnt be the answer to all our problems. Yes James Posey is missed but that doesnt mean he is the only player that would help our bench.

[Redz]

I'm probably gonna get killed for this, but I think Posey is overrated by some people on this board, or at least being wrongly seen as someone who would have singlehandedly stopped this skid and guaranteed us 2 more championships.

What is James Posey? A good 3 point shooter, a good rebounder, a solid individual and excellent team defender, a tough and reliable veteran Doc can count on, a great locker room guy and a hustle player who gives it his all.

What is he not? A go to guy on offense who can create shots for him and the team to lead the bench or a big man with length. I feel these are our most pressing needs, and Posey really fits neither.

With Posey our team would no doubt be better, and he might have been able to fire the team up to the point where we would have won one or two more games. But to think that Posey would automatically be our savior or that if he had been on our team we would not struggled through this stretch sounds pretty ludicrous to me.

All true, but so much of the Celtics dominance last year was based on giving teams nowhere to go on offense.  Everywhere they looked there were two guys on the ball.  This was where Posey's presence is missed the most.  No, he's never been a go to guy. But he was huge in making the Celts D look like they were playing 6 on 5...and this led to easy buckets on the other end.  I'm not seeing much at all of this sort of thing this year - even when they were winning.

[winsomme]

He and Danny commented about just how bad that small ball lineup with Posey playing the 4 was for this team. They noted how much better and more efficient they were with a more standard lineup with length and size up front. If they had read the Posey situation earlier and gone ahead with filling their bench openings with different types of players instead of running back to Eddie and Tony once word had it that they lost Posey, this would be a different and better team.
 

c'mon, nick. you know that if DA had filled Posey's spot with another player before Posey signed with NO, he would have gotten killed for not waiting to go after Pose...

the big mistake that DA made wasn't missing on Barnes or Pietrus or Mo Evans, etc...the big mistake was actually thinking that giving Pose that 4th year he wanted would be worse than not having him on this team right now...

as for small ball not being effective or efficient, the problem with that observation is that even if technically true, not having the option of small ball has made us very one dimensional.

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

i'm not gonna get into a semantical debate with you about "doing what you do" and not caring what the other team is doing etc....or criticizing something Vince Lombardi said...what-have-you....

but let me ask you this, what do you think Bill Belichick would say to your assertion that game planning is an unimportant part of preparing a team for a game?

you may think that my point about showing other teams different looks is comical, but it has been supported by a lot of basketball people in recent days....including JVG. They also talked about it on BSs podcast with Stein and Bucher. and i stand by it.

anyway, my point about Posey wasn't that DA should care about public reaction in deciding what moves to make...my point is that hindsight is an awfully powerful factor in knowing what should and should not have been done...

Posey was the best option out there. he gambled, placed too high an importance on the 4th year and got burned. doesn't mean that he should have targeted different players. it means, like i said earlier that he should have been more willing to go the 4th year..

[nickagneta]

He and Danny commented about just how bad that small ball lineup with Posey playing the 4 was for this team. They noted how much better and more efficient they were with a more standard lineup with length and size up front. If they had read the Posey situation earlier and gone ahead with filling their bench openings with different types of players instead of running back to Eddie and Tony once word had it that they lost Posey, this would be a different and better team.
 

c'mon, nick. you know that if DA had filled Posey's spot with another player before Posey signed with NO, he would have gotten killed for not waiting to go after Pose...

the big mistake that DA made wasn't missing on Barnes or Pietrus or Mo Evans, etc...the big mistake was actually thinking that giving Pose that 4th year he wanted would be worse than not having him on this team right now...

as for small ball not being effective or efficient, the problem with that observation is that even if technically true, not having the option of small ball has made us very one dimensional.

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

i'm not gonna get into a semantical debate with you about "doing what you do" and not caring what the other team is doing etc....or criticizing something Vince Lombardi said...what-have-you....

but let me ask you this, what do you think Bill Belichick would say to your assertion that game planning is an unimportant part of preparing a team for a game?

you may think that my point about showing other teams different looks is comical, but it has been supported by a lot of basketball people in recent days....including JVG. They also talked about it on BSs podcast with Stein and Bucher. and i stand by it.

anyway, my point about Posey wasn't that DA should care about public reaction in deciding what moves to make...my point is that hindsight is an awfully powerful factor in knowing what should and should not have been done...

Posey was the best option out there. he gambled, placed too high an importance on the 4th year and got burned. doesn't mean that he should have targeted different players. it means, like i said earlier that he should have been more willing to go the 4th year..

I never said anything about game planning.

I am not looking at this in hindsight I have been saying the same thing since the end of last season. Check my posts. He should have just gone and got veteran players that fit the style that he said they played best. That would have meant walking away from Posey from the get go.

[Toine43]

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

I'm not going to get into the meat of this debate, I just want to contest what you're saying about Lombardi and the "don't worry about your opponents" philosophy. I don't think that this is a good way to defend your argument. Yes, the legendary Red Auerbach and Vince Lombardi may have operated using this philosophy, but Doc Rivers does not. Of course, Doc is far from being a legendary coach, but that's besides the point. Doc clearly prefers to play different lineups depending on his opponent. It's no coincidence that whenever the Celtics play against a lineup with 2 undersized guards (e.g., the Knicks with Duhon and Robinson) Doc puts in Eddie and Rondo at the same time, when he rarely does so otherwise. This is just one obvious example, and there are plenty of others. Again, without picking a side in this argument, I just wanted to point out that Doc almost always bases his lineup upon his opponent's lineup.

[nickagneta]

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

I'm not going to get into the meat of this debate, I just want to contest what you're saying about Lombardi and the "don't worry about your opponents" philosophy. I don't think that this is a good way to defend your argument. Yes, the legendary Red Auerbach and Vince Lombardi may have operated using this philosophy, but Doc Rivers does not. Of course, Doc is far from being a legendary coach, but that's besides the point. Doc clearly prefers to play different lineups depending on his opponent. It's no coincidence that whenever the Celtics play against a lineup with 2 undersized guards (e.g., the Knicks with Duhon and Robinson) Doc puts in Eddie and Rondo at the same time, when he rarely does so otherwise. This is just one obvious example, and there are plenty of others. Again, without picking a side in this argument, I just wanted to point out that Doc almost always bases his lineup upon his opponent's lineup.

In that case then he's not really being one dimensional like winsomme says he is.

My point was first, even if you are one dimensional, which I never claimed, you can still overcome it with simple performance. Second, I don't think their one dimensional at all. Three different guys bring the ball up on the starting team. Three different guys can drive penetrate and finish. Three different guys can post people up well. Three different guys are great outside shooters. And four different guys are great passers.

This team is far from one dimensional and as you said depending on the matchups Doc uses his bench differently. Opposing teams aren't jumping plays because they know what's happening. Most of the Celtics turnovers are self inflicted and not due to some one dimensional giving away everything offense. You don't have to have the components to play small ball to be multi-dimensional. Simply run when you have the chance, search out the open man with ball movement and play with a fire and you can succeed.

And if Doc had different players coming off the bench instead of the one's he does have he could continue that multi-dimensional approach. But what Danny did was force Doc into the same style as last year with players he admitted didn't play it well.

[Jon]

I'm probably gonna get killed for this, but I think Posey is overrated by some people on this board, or at least being wrongly seen as someone who would have singlehandedly stopped this skid and guaranteed us 2 more championships.

What is James Posey? A good 3 point shooter, a good rebounder, a solid individual and excellent team defender, a tough and reliable veteran Doc can count on, a great locker room guy and a hustle player who gives it his all.

What is he not? A go to guy on offense who can create shots for him and the team to lead the bench or a big man with length. I feel these are our most pressing needs, and Posey really fits neither.

With Posey our team would no doubt be better, and he might have been able to fire the team up to the point where we would have won one or two more games. But to think that Posey would automatically be our savior or that if he had been on our team we would not struggled through this stretch sounds pretty ludicrous to me.

It's true that he doesn't fit a huge need.  You could probably add that he's not a reliable backup point guard to your list too.  Still, was a valuable bench player that jived with the starters and allowed them to a winning style of small ball, something you can't say about the small ball they're trying to play now. 

Ultimately I think the question about Posey should really be "is/was he necessary to winning it all this year?"  If the answer is yes to that, then the years really don't matter.  As much as I hope that Danny can segue our current championship caliber play into more championship caliber play post Big Three, there'll likely be some down years.  If winning another title or two now meant paying Posey too much when this team is rebuilding, I'm still all for it. 

[winsomme]

He and Danny commented about just how bad that small ball lineup with Posey playing the 4 was for this team. They noted how much better and more efficient they were with a more standard lineup with length and size up front. If they had read the Posey situation earlier and gone ahead with filling their bench openings with different types of players instead of running back to Eddie and Tony once word had it that they lost Posey, this would be a different and better team.
 

c'mon, nick. you know that if DA had filled Posey's spot with another player before Posey signed with NO, he would have gotten killed for not waiting to go after Pose...

the big mistake that DA made wasn't missing on Barnes or Pietrus or Mo Evans, etc...the big mistake was actually thinking that giving Pose that 4th year he wanted would be worse than not having him on this team right now...

as for small ball not being effective or efficient, the problem with that observation is that even if technically true, not having the option of small ball has made us very one dimensional.

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

i'm not gonna get into a semantical debate with you about "doing what you do" and not caring what the other team is doing etc....or criticizing something Vince Lombardi said...what-have-you....

but let me ask you this, what do you think Bill Belichick would say to your assertion that game planning is an unimportant part of preparing a team for a game?

you may think that my point about showing other teams different looks is comical, but it has been supported by a lot of basketball people in recent days....including JVG. They also talked about it on BSs podcast with Stein and Bucher. and i stand by it.

anyway, my point about Posey wasn't that DA should care about public reaction in deciding what moves to make...my point is that hindsight is an awfully powerful factor in knowing what should and should not have been done...

Posey was the best option out there. he gambled, placed too high an importance on the 4th year and got burned. doesn't mean that he should have targeted different players. it means, like i said earlier that he should have been more willing to go the 4th year..

I never said anything about game planning.

I am not looking at this in hindsight I have been saying the same thing since the end of last season. Check my posts. He should have just gone and got veteran players that fit the style that he said they played best. That would have meant walking away from Posey from the get go.

i don't understand the distinction you making.....how do you game plan for another team without worrying about what they are doing?

as for Pose, my impression was that you wanted Pose back but not for the 4 years. not that you didn't want him at all...

when i talk about hindsight, i'm referring to "knowing that Pose was going to sign elsewhere"...that is a  hindsight argument.....NO giving Pose 4 years at full MLE (or close to it) was a surprise....claiming that Danny should have known that was going to happen is hindsight IMO..

[winsomme]

Your whole one-dimensional comments are comical. Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches in organized sports, when asked about what he was going to do about a certain opponent used to answer that he never worried about what his opponent was going to do. He figured that you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over. And as long as you did the things you had to do correctly, no one would beat you.

It's a philosophy that has transcended sports. Red Auerbach used a very similar philosophy. The Celtics have a bunch of plays within their normal size set and is diverse enough to succeed wildly in this league. The league just didn't somehow figure out how to beat the Celtics after the Celtics dominated the league for one and a quarter years. The Celtics are not one dimensional as they have as many as 5 players on any given night that can completely dominate his individual opponent in every aspect of the game. Most teams don't have three such players.

The Celtics have been playing tired, listless basketball. The individual players have noticed this and to a man the team is over playing out of the team concept to try to get an advantage that they can take advantage of. So players are playing the passing lanes and leaving the perimeter open. Players are going for the steal and poke away instead of just keeping their man in front of them. Players are playing defense looking for the block and steal rather than denying position and guiding drivers into help. The entire defense has regressed out of the efficient machine that it was because everyone is trying to be the hero instead of the cog.

And it's no different on offense especially late in games. The Celtics AST/FGA ratio, the second highest in the league at the end of the winning streak was 30.1. That means this team was recording an assist for 30 percent of every shot attempted. It can only be assumed that on their missed FGs that they are passing as much. During the losses that number is down to 22%. It proves that this team is just not passing as much, ball movement is down, the extra pass has stopped and isos and dribble drives have become the way of things.

Lastly, regarding your comment on Ainge getting killed publicly if he didn't get after Posey, again I don't think that's even close to the case. Because if Ainge runs this club based on public opinion and not based on his basketball beliefs, he should be fired right now.

What you are saying is that Danny let this team get worse because he was afraid of some public backlash for not persuing Posey.

The man that gave Doc Rivers an extension after having an 18 game losing streak and recording the second worst record in Celtic history would be afraid of public backlash because he chose not to persue a back up?

Come on, you're kidding right!!!

Danny hoped he could get Posey for a certain contract and played the waiting game. He lost. His Plan B was resigning Allen and House and Cassell, keeping as much continuity as possible. It was a bad plan. His misread the market on Posey and cost this team a bench. If he just realized from the beginning that the market was too high for Posey and went elsewhere he would have had a chance at some of those other productive veterans. Instead after criticizing the way the team played when they played small he resigned a bunch of undersized players.

WTG Danny.

I'm not going to get into the meat of this debate, I just want to contest what you're saying about Lombardi and the "don't worry about your opponents" philosophy. I don't think that this is a good way to defend your argument. Yes, the legendary Red Auerbach and Vince Lombardi may have operated using this philosophy, but Doc Rivers does not. Of course, Doc is far from being a legendary coach, but that's besides the point. Doc clearly prefers to play different lineups depending on his opponent. It's no coincidence that whenever the Celtics play against a lineup with 2 undersized guards (e.g., the Knicks with Duhon and Robinson) Doc puts in Eddie and Rondo at the same time, when he rarely does so otherwise. This is just one obvious example, and there are plenty of others. Again, without picking a side in this argument, I just wanted to point out that Doc almost always bases his lineup upon his opponent's lineup.

In that case then he's not really being one dimensional like winsomme says he is.


This team is far from one dimensional and as you said depending on the matchups Doc uses his bench differently. Opposing teams aren't jumping plays because they know what's happening. Most of the Celtics turnovers are self inflicted and not due to some one dimensional giving away everything offense. You don't have to have the components to play small ball to be multi-dimensional. Simply run when you have the chance, search out the open man with ball movement and play with a fire and you can succeed.

i'm not talking about the Cs being one dimensional in terms of talent. clearly we have three of the best players in the NBA on our team...

what i'm talking about is being able to show other teams different looks in a positional sense.

we do not have an effective small ball lineup this year (without Pose) and i think it has made our offense more predictable.

i think small ball got a bad rap last year, and i think it is a tool that Doc is now missing having at his disposal.