I know it's easy to point to our bigs, but it was our perimeter defense that was really the deciding factor in all of this. They couldn't contain Dallas' 3-point shooting and everyone was being post-upped making our bigs constantly help them with double teams. That was the key difference.
Our starting bigs were outplayed too, why make excuses for them? It won't help them.
Their starting front court scored 52 ours 27. We lost the battle on the boards between starters 20-35. It was more than perimeter D, sorry.
I didn't make excuse for them, I did say they played bad. But you focused on Olynyk and Sullinger (who were quite good when they were on the floor together), and I also used actual facts of the game to account for the reason why Pachulia was so effective on the boards (in addition to his already proficiency at it). If you don't care for the details or the reasons of why certain things play out a certain way, then you're not willing to learn about what works and what doesn't work of the floor dynamic and our rotations.
For all the abusing Pachulia did, Dallas was only +2 in rebounds for the game.
Dallas shot 47% from 3s. It was their posting up of our guards which forced us to double team them throughout the rest of the game. Those are actual facts of what occurred in the game.
We had a very poor start, we were terrible, all 5 of our starters were horrible to begin the game... but what remained after that, even when we made our runs, was our lack of capability to guard their perimeter players effectively and what remained true was that we went small (because it worked) and were doubling on everything pretty much, our bigs (Sullinger and Olynyk) usually the ones with multiple assignments on the defensive end.
If you want to take that to mean excuses, so be it.
Our perimeter D was poor b/c Carlisle took advantage of IT4, it caused everyone else to help him and it broke down everyone else. If everyone had to make sure and help IT4, who does it leave to help someone else? If Dallas didn't do it's job and had all of their main guys hitting the shots then we would have been fine, credit them.
Our guards went ham on rebounding so that was why the boards were close. We didn't shoot that bad from deep either, we shot 40% for the game even after AB missed the last 2 with seconds left. All of our starting perimeter players scored in dbl figures and so did Smart (AB,Smart, IT4 at least 19pts). I mean, we didn't defend them well but it's not as if our perimeter players didn't abuse them as well.
Let's look at it:
Celts
AB 19pts/8rbs/5asts/1stl and no t/o
IT4 20pts/7asts/4rbs only 2 t/o
Jae 12pts/7rb/ast/stl no t/o
Smart 20pts/8rbs/3asts/2stls only 1 t/o
ET 4pts/8asts/3rbs/stl and 3 t/o
Reb "sf" 6pts/rb and no t/o
Mavs
Wes M. 15pts (all in first half then we put AB on him and he was shut out)/2asts/2rbs and 2 t/o
Parsons 16pts/5rbs/3asts/stl and no t/o
DWill 20pts/6asts/5rbs/blk and 3 t/o
Devon 9pts/2asts/rb and no t/o
Felton 14pts/4asts/3rbs and 1 t/o
Barea 4pts/3asts/rb and 2 t/o
Celts vs. Mavs perimeter summary
81-78pts Celts
31-17rbs Celts
24-20asts Celts
5-1stls Celts
6-8 t/o Celts
All that is to say our guards beat theirs in every category and dominated in a few!
You guys are right, we didn't defend them well but what does it say about their perimeter defense when our guards/sf beat them like that?
I know Dirk shot 3s but he did so as the PF, it doesn't count. We had to put Jae on him which was a bad idea b/c Amir had him clamped and Dirk proceeded to abuse Jae as if he wasn't out there.
Have to be a bit careful with the narrative of our guards vs their guards, our bigs vs. their bigs. Each team make up is different, each team has players in different position playing different roles.
So I don't want to insinuate that our guard play for example, was at fault. I do think that the perimeter defense and their perimeter players posting us up, forcing us to constantly use other players to help defend (most often than not it was our bigs helping out) is what ultimately caused us the game... aside from the slow start in which everyone of our starters was a participant in. But that was the root of the problem.
I'll also say though that I credit a lot of what occurred last night to Dallas game-plan and system, and they did hit their fair share of tough shots as it it was. But that's out of our control. We adjusted as best we could, I mean we did go to OT in the end after being down by A LOT. Hot shooting ensued from them. I mean 47% from 3-point is very very tough to overcome.
It's also no surprise that their bigs would outscore ours and that our guards would outscore theirs. Systematically, that's where their and our best scorers reside as it is (Dirk/Thomas).
In the end, a lot was going on to simply point fingers at look at Pachulia 19 rebounds = our bigs caused us the game. I still take my stance that the perimeter and their guards posting us up was the biggest problem, and everything else, or at least a chunk of it, had the foundation on those two issues.
Topic: Celtics (22-19) at Mavericks (23-19) Game #42 1/17/16 (Read 53628 times)