2019-20 Boston Celtics Season

Good point on Tony Allen, I tend to forget how great he was. That being said, Smart is guarding bigs, that should count for something. He's guarding guards and wings as well. He's guarding everyone and doing it better than ever. He needs to be at least in the conversation if the Celtics defense is top 10 in efficiency after the season.

If 39 if the top 40 were bigs that makes me question the viability in the stats more than it makes me thinks bigs are that much more valuable. I find it extremely hard to believe 39 if the 40 best or most important defenders are bigs. But that’s just me and I’m not going to argue it. Really doesn’t matter in grand scheme of things - I think we all agree Smart is very valuable to the team and a great defensive player and I agree he has little to no chance to win DPOY regardless of how good we think he may be.

Ditto!! The metrics are weighed in a manner that leans towards the bigs if 39 out of 40 rank that way, IMO. Must be the shot blocking that skews it a bit.

 "it's clear to me his shot is greatly improved"

Proud of you ripjr

What exactly does that mean? He averaged over 31 minutes in 25 playoff games and had the top defensive box score of all players in last year's playoffs.

UMASS your best example is a Mavs team who had a future HOF in Dirk on the team. Over the past decade-15 years we have seen the Warirors, Heat, Lakers, Celtics, Cavs, Mavs, Spurs all win titles.

All had HOF talent on them. It's about the talent first. The dynasties of the Heat and Warriors were about the talent.

LeBron has mostly lost more than he's won because he likes to play GM while he's playing on the team. It's his show. In a way, he's his worst own enigma.

Kyrie will play a huge part if Durant wins another title or not if he's actually engaged in playing basketball. That's a huge question mark, I'll give you that. If he is though, that team is super scary.

I can see you turning this into a circular argument either way.

If THIS Celtics team wins a title, maybe you have a point, but wake me up when that happens. The Celtics won't be favored to go to the Finals, even if they grab the number one seed this year. They definitely won't be favored in the Finals if one of those LA teams makes it there. Why? Because they have the elite talent and the Celtics don't right now. The Celtics are a good well rounded team. That doesn't usually matter in basketball and it definitely doesn't matter when it comes to playing the odds.

Add- I'll be watching this year because I like to see good team basketball myself. I loved watching the Isaah Thomas Celtic teams, but in the end, we all knew that team had a ceiling. You need elite talent to compete in short 7 game series stretches in 4 different rounds. The NBA format weaves out the pretenders in a lot of ways. That's great if you love watching the best and elite compete against each other in the final round every year (which I also like watching).

You both make and have good points. Yes talent wins and that is obvious but playing good team basketball is becoming more important in todays game.

Yes the Spurs had Duncan but played great team basketball which IMO led to Tony Parker and Manu being better than they actually were.

Golden St has had great players but it was team basketball that made them a great team.

Umass comparing the 17 Celts to the 18 Celts is a perfect example. That 17 team could have won game 7 if Brown and Rozier didn't have terrible nights.

Their is an old saying in sports which they say about BB often. He can beat you with his and he could beat you with yours. That is great coaching. If you have great coaching and a selfless team they can be better than the sum of their parts. Why didn't that Miami team win more like they should have based on the talent?

Kyrie and KD aren't going to win together IMO they won't get past Philly, Bucks or the Celtics. With the trajectory I see happening for the Celtics they are going to be a very very good team going forward, injuries aside. Their top 4 along with Smart and the depth that will be around for a while, they are just scratching the surface right now.

I feel like points are being missed. When someone talks about talent mattering most in the NBA they are referring to winning a title. They aren’t talking about exceeding expectations, winning regular season games or being the best version of themselves. The 2017-18 Celtics ended up being a better team than the 2018-19 Celtics, but the 18-19 Celtics had a chance to win a Title if they played right - the 17-18 Celtics had no chance to win a title regardless of how “right” they played because they weren’t talented enough, once Kyrie went down, to do it day in and day out in the playoffs for 4 rounds against increasingly difficult competition.

I didn't watch the games, but the whole starting lineups were crazy negative and it looks more like offensive problems from the boxscore as they shot 39% and 39.8% in those two games. Mitchell was -20 in the first game, Rubio was -17 and Ingles -16 in the second one. The Celtics biggest issues on D always came when they couldn't score, set up the D and allowed fast break baskets.

If it's so easy to exploit him why does he anchor very good defenses year after year? The Jazz currently have the #2 D. The guy has won back to back defensive player of the year awards and you make him sound like a major liability.

I don't think he's a major liability at all, but he's not a perfect, Draymond Green like defender. He's somewhat exploitable. Don't get me wrong, he's still VERY good and that's why teams don't do it more often. The rest of the defense is also very good and you can't just do the same play for an entire game. I don't mean to knock on Gobert, just pointing out that defensive metrics tend to be a bit biased for big men. Nobody runs a play to get switched to Draymond Green, and yet they do it for Gobert.

I'd say it was the Spurs who beat the Heat in 2014. Duncan was 37, not even an all-star. Leonard was crazy young and averaged 14 points in the playoffs. He wouldn't become an all-star for two more years. They didn't have a dominant take over a game type player. It was depth, great team play on a very well balanced team. They were top ten in offense and defense that year.

The Pistons didn't have an all-star till they got Wallace at the deadline. Guys like Billups would go on to make it years later. I think it's safe to say this Celtics team is a lot more talented. Walker and Hayward are already all-stars and if they keep this up Tatum and Brown have a chance to be ones this year.

Last year no one questioned talent level, almost everyone picked them to go to the finals. Yet this year, it's compare them to maybe the least talented team to ever win a title in recent memory. Walker is an upgrade over Irving and can easily take over games. Irving might be more talented, but his style of play hurts his value. There isn't that great Warriors team anymore, which is huge.