Imo the team should suspend IT4 a game....
If not CBS control/respect from the team may start slipping
Most likely IF Stevens has a problem he will talk to him in private, like he did earlier in the year.
when was this?
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18842098/isaiah-thomas-sounds-boston-celtics-blow-second-straight-double-digit-lead
This is hardly the first time Thomas has quibbled about rotations or minutes. He sounded off back in November after a loss to visiting Golden State in which Stevens pulled him early in the fourth quarter as the Warriors pulled away. Thomas and Stevens talked on the phone that night, and Thomas responded by emerging as maybe the best fourth-quarter scorer in league history since then.
Yeah, but I see that as a problem. This is actually like the third time IT has called out Brad and/or his rotations to the media, but only one of the other times got serious pushback.
I don't think a star as flawed as IT has any justification for calling out the coach (not that I'm sure any star really does - I think the coach is off limits to the media), especially when he's directly responsible for our loss in Phoenix.
That's absurd.
IT missed a FT that by itself would have meant nothing if all other events unfolded the same. And he was on the receiving end of the pass from Jae that Chriss got a hand in which lead to the winning tre by Ulis. Whether that mess up was IT's fault or Jae's (HE's the only one who should have seen Chriss coming in from behind Isaiah) or both is debatable.
But to suggest that Isaiah was 'directly responsible' for the loss ignores the TEN FREE THROWS that Jae, Jaylen, Jonas and Marcus combined to miss in that game.
Those four guys combined to shoot 63% from the line, clanking rim after rim.
If they make just a few of those ten misses drop in, we win the game easy.
Isaiah made 10 of his 11 FTAs.
That's just simply untrue. No loss can ever really be boiled down to one simple play or even a few, but if any loss ever could, it would be this one.
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The part in bold is the only part of your response that is important.
Otherwise, once again, you completely ignored the most important part of my comment and why we lost that game. So I'm going to repeat it, with emphasis so you don't miss it:
... ignores the TEN FREE THROWS that Jae, Jaylen, Jonas and Marcus combined to miss in that game.
That dwarfs by a huge margin the impact of the final play. Was Isaiah "directly responsible" for those ten misses?
We could also make note that an additional 4 quick points were scored on easy layups by Bledsoe, blowing once by Marcus and once by Jae in quick succession. The game is not tied without those two easy scores. Is Isaiah "directly responsible" for those two plays as well?
Aside on your understanding of the turnover: Before one can get into debate over whether IT meant to 'walk the dog' and whether that was a bad idea or not, we have to back it up to the throwing of the pass. That was done by Jae. And of the two players, only Jae could have seen that Chriss was charging into the play. It is HIS responsibility to throw/not throw that pass. This is why the turnover is correctly charged to him by the scorekeeper.
And, once again, you completely ignored the part where I literally addressed this:
And I don't blame IT for missing that free throw. Like you said, he was 10/11. Similarly, you can't really blame Smart going 9-12 either, which is pretty acceptable, though Brown certainly gets some blame going 5-10.
No. You are clearly hand-waiving right on past it. We are talking about a huge chunk of points that were lost through failure to execute one of the most basic skills in basketball.
All the excitement at the end of the game would have been rendered completely moot if just a few of those ten misses had gone in the net.
And the point is: This completely invalidates your absurd assertion that Isaiah was "directly responsible for our loss in Phoenix".
And, once again, that's completely different than a mental mistake, which is what IT had at the end.
Despite being a dubious assertion (since there is plenty of merit to arguments that free throw shooting has a large mental factor) how does an execution failure somehow count less on the scoreboard?
Second, that was the defensive gameplan on Bledsoe with the Smart play. They were down by three, and the whole defensive scheme was to not give them a three, even if it meant giving up a two pointer/layup. They were even explicitly talking about that on the broadcast (I think the Suns broadcast, which was the one I was watching). As for Crowder, it's really hard to blame him for getting caught on a Bledsoe mismatch after IT's missed free throw and getting drove past by one of the most athletic point guards in the league. Again, that's completely different than a mental mistake.
The only mental mistake here is the imaginary distinction you are trying to make. None of us know anything at all about what was going on inside the heads of these players. Whether or not one of them made a 'mental' mistake is irrelevant. Regardless of 'gameplay', they were ALL failures to execute and the scoreboard doesn't give a crap about any dubious distinction you are trying to draw.
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There was absolutely nothing wrong with that pass from Crowder, and there's no way he should've got that TO.
On any in-bounds play, if the passer throws the ball into danger, to a player with a defender in the way or clearly on an intercept, the turnover will be charged to the passer. This is basic. Whatever a bunch of folks on twitter think is irrelevant.