You are really cherry-picking from your former posts and even from the critical responses it garnered to formulate a narrative in which you claim true victimhood & oppression.
It is self evident that attitude & belief are intertwined in almost all human activities. So I don't think you should pat yourself on the back for this win, especially since one could make the case that you are still wrong:
Part of your theory for us upsetting the Cavs/making it a real series, was based on the Cavs not having an answer for IT. You said they had no one that could stop IT. IT was a huge part of your claim that we would compete for the series. Some pointed out that the Cavs would have a higher chance of exploiting IT, both defensively and offensively, than the Wiz and that IT was a great offensive player but his game was some type of enigma and could be taken advantage of in a 7 game series vs the Cavs...well that really made a lot of people angry. Now we have no IT but we also do not have the enigma of his game and can actually put a very tough defensive backcourt together for an entire game......WE WIN!
What say I now:
Your hypothesis was wrong. We can only analyze the results from game 3 and on, but because we won game 3 your hypothesis is wrong. One can now POSSIBLY conclude IT was a net-negative on this team. The offense that he provided, which was at an NBA high in both production & efficiency, was offset by his tragically incapable defense. The fact that it took only one game ( against the Cavs) to garner the evidence for a half-baked conclusion tells a lot.
The new question to formulate a new hypothesis......
Are you ready to renounce IT. Obviously we did not have the necessary "attitude" in both games he played against the Cavs..... but we did in the only game he has not played in and did not even travel with the team and wasn't even in the building. That is even more evidence that IT could in actuality be a vampire sucking the "attitude" from this team. Will you shine sunlight on him and cast him out? He may not even be "the little guy" that could be an illusion created by his/her ( vamp's can be female too you sexist) dark magic. Wow, I just realized that almost all the games are played.....at night. That gives me even more evidence that he/she is a vampire projecting the illusion of a 5'7'' African American male in the National Basketball Association.... we are dealing with a very committed vamp.
You wrote the post and the words. I expect you to follow through and condemn this vamp and his/her/zhe? trickery. I think we can all agree on this point.
Cherry picking? No, I'm quite aware of the points I've made. I think I made my points pretty clear.
I said that Boston matches up better with Cleveland then the do with Washington. I stand by that statement 100%. I stand by that statement while IT is playing, and I still stand by that statement while IT is not playing.
Boston is at their greatest disadvantage when when they play against a team with a great two-way PG and a great offensive SG. This creates a major mismatch for Boston because against backcourt that has an offense-only PG (like Kyrie) and a non-factor SG (like JR Smith) Boston can minimise the defensive liability of Thomas by playing Avery Bradley on the PG, and playing Thomas on the SG. Then at the same time you don't have to worry about a guy like Kyrie stopping Thomas on defence, because he's almost as poor a defender as Thomas is - hence if you play you cards right, you are at a major advantage in the backcourt.
That's not possible against a team like Washington, because it doesn't matter if you put IT on Wall or on Beal - either player is equally capable of dominating him and taking advantage of his defensive limitations. Then on the other end of the court, Wall is one of the best defensive PG's in the NBA, and quite capable of making things hard for Thomas. If your PG can slow Thomas down defensively without needing help, and both of your back-court players are capable enough offensively to exploit Thomas' defence, then Boston is at a major disadvantage. We saw that constantly in the Washington series - both Beal and Wall were constantly taking advantage of Thomas on offence, and in the moments where we didn't play at our best (the start of game 1, and both game 2 and 3) the Wizards were absolutely destroying us. Our bench was extremely effective against Washington because once Smart and Rozier stepped in, we were more capable of matching up with Beal and Wall defensively, and they didn't find it quite so easy to exploit us.
The other time Boston is at a major disadvantage is against teams that have a big and highly skilled front-court. It's no secret that Boston his horribly weak at the PF position, so if we find ourselves matched up against a team with a PF who is highly talented offensively, then we are in trouble. We saw that on numerous occasions against Washington, as Morris was giving us frequent trouble. Then to add to that, at the other big position we have Al Horford. Horford is a skilled player, but he has historically struggled against size on both ends of the court. Give him a smaller 6'9" or so PF and he can usually shoot over them and slow them down on the other end. But throw a 6'11" guy at him and he often tends to disappear on offence and get killed on defence. Again, we saw this numerous times as Gortat was killing us in the paint and on the boards. Cleveland has a small frontcourt, and while Love is very skilled, he lacks the size to give Horford a huge amount of trouble inside on either end of the court. Tristan Thompson is an undersized big who has no real talent beyond rebounding, so if you can limit his rebounding you can basically make him a non factor.
Those to points combined explain why Boston matches up better with Cleveland then they do with Washington.
After game 1 and game 2, people were claiming that Boston was no match for Cleveland. That Boston is INCAPABLE of beating Cleveland. That the Cavs are just too good, too talented. That getting blown out in embarrassing fashion was a result of the variation in talent between the two squads.
That's not true at all. Cleveland is not 40 PPG more talented the Boston is. We already know that because we played them four times in the regular season, and three of those four were decided by 6 points or less. Boston is perfectly capable of COMPETING against Cleveland, and as long as you can compete against a team, you can beat a team. Not saying you will, and not saying you should, but I'm saying you can.
This team in games 1 and 2 gave up on themselves, and sadly in the process the vast majority of fans here on CB gave up on them too. Allowed themselves to give in to the belief that Boston is truly incapable of beating the Cavs. I told everybody that if Boston competes, they can win - they did both.
Now, beating Cleveland is probably going to be a lot harder without a healthy Isaiah Thomas. With Thomas, it's extremely important that guys like Bradley, Crowder and Horford step up and play well. Without Thomas, it's absolutely CRITICAL that those guys play well. The margin of error is naturally much smaller. There's no doubt that the odds are stacked against us.
But last year when Golden State went up 3-1 against the Cavs, the odds were stacked similarly against the Cavs. Nobody believed they had a chance to come back from that hole and win three straight games, and they did. Just like nobody belived we would come back after dropping two to Chicago. But we did.
If Boston plays with heart, with energy and with aggression, then they can make game 4 competitive. If they do all that and also play well (i.e. make shots) then they can win. Some teams have the talent to probably play with a lazy effort and still take a win. Boston isn't that kind of team. If Boston plays with lazy effort, against a great team like this, then we will get what we got in game 1 and game 2 - a blowout.
I also deny that IT is a net negative on this team, at least on an overall basis. As long as he is scoring his 28 - 29 PPG, his offence more than makes up for his lack of defence. But on those nights when he has 12 points - 15 points then yes, in those cases I do believe he's a net negative. In those cases we need other guys to step up and make shots - and the games we've been blown out by so far have generally been games where IT has struggled, and the other support guys (Bradley, Crowder, Smart, etc) have also struggled to make shots. That's also a big reason why I've been pushing so hard for us to acquire another big time shot maker who can carry the load when Thomas is having an off-game - because even the greats have an off game sometimes.
And no, I don't blame IT in any way for the Celtics lack of energy in game 1 or game 2. I blame the entire team for that. I blame the coach for it. I blame everybody on the roster for it except for the handful of guys (Brown, Bradley, Smart) who actually did come out and play hard. Thomas was playing hurt and has been for some time, we all know that. He's also had more then enough inspiring games thus far where he has carried this team to victory. He's a huge reason why this team had such a strong regular season run, and he's a huge reason why we are where we are. But as long as this teams is configured as it is (being so reliant on Thomas as our only real shot creator) we are exposing his weaknesses. We are making it easy for teams to take advantage of his size and defensive limitations.
Today I felt we may have played better without Thomas, simply because it makes us less predictable - no team has really played us before without Thomas, and so it makes it a little more difficult to predict how we are going to play. Building a gameplan around the idea of exploiting that size, only to suddenly come out facing two bigger, more defensively capable guards can suddenly throw a monkey wrench in your whole plan. Maybe this helps us today, and maybe it give us an edge for a couple of more games before Clevleand are able to make an adjustment. The harder (and better) our other guys play, the harder it's going to be for Clevleand to adapt to that.
I also don't really understand waht exactly out strategy was in the first two games.
For example, Cleveland doesn't have much in the way of interior defence, and yet we've made precious few attempts to take advantage of that by posting up buys like Horford, Zeller and Olynyk in the post. The biggest guy on the Miami roster is Kevin Love, and he's no interior defender. I don't get why we haven't taken advantage of that, but today we were going to it, and lo and behold - it was working. They were struggling to stop us in the paint. But thats another argument for another day.
Topic: I told everybody - it's all about attitude... (Read 2488 times)