Celtics 2022-23 Season Thread

Yeah. While paying Jaylen 20 million. Now he’s about to get $60 million. I’m sorry, let Houston pay him. Jaylen for Jabari Smith, Tari Eason and number 4.

I’ve also suggested Jaylen trades every single offseason, because I just don’t think this team works with two max wings who are no longer good outside shooters and are subpar creators. It’s a problem and has been for years.

Shaq - "they all came out to play hero ball - hit threes and get the crowd into it" - then they start 0 for 12.

Shaq, Kenny, Barkley - all thought that coach Joe deserves to keep his job - but Barkley hated Mazzulla's post game conference answer on shooting 3s.

Joe sucks. But Brad was a great coach, Ime was ok, and the Celtics have had the same flaws through all three. 

They didn’t play hard on defense tonight. Go back and look. A lot of Heat threes without any hand in the face

I think Tatum and Brown are really problematic. Their effort level is inconsistent and you can’t have that from your leaders.

The majority of the Heat threes were hit with no hand up and no hard closeout. As I said, their effort level is inconsistent. As you said, the defense fell off throughout the night. We can blame the Tatum injury but the track record of inconsistent effort speaks for itself.

The thing about their inconsistency is that, while it's frustrating that they don't play at their highest level in key moments, it does mean they're capable of being that elite championship-level team.

They do need to add a defensive-focused assistant coach. So much of defense is just effort and focus and that's where good coaching can really manifest itself.

I imagine I'm stating the obvious here, but I'm pretty sure this is why the majority of the people who are so critical of this team feel the way they do - I don't mean to speak for anyone else but I would guess that there isn't a single person here who is a regular critic of the Celtics who thinks they are legitimately bad or lacking in talent. This iteration of the Celtics absolutely is as good as they choose to be, and they just seem to wish they were champions rather than actually taking their game to that level.

This isn't to say they should be at their best all the time of course, but I don't think that the constant disappearing acts they pull in the biggest moments can still be considered a coincidence or an aberration. People will bring up that most great players don't start winning championships until they've been in the league for a while, and that's definitely fair. But it doesn't seem like this team is getting better, or learning from their mistakes; they are making the same mistakes - arguably more egregious or more often - as they were several years ago. If this iteration of the Celtics was working its way into being a perennial championship contender, I would at least like to see *different* mistakes, signs of growth. Instead it often feels like they are stuck on a single hurdle with many more still to go.

Coaching adjustments might help, but as (I believe, apologies if I'm mistaken) you yourself have pointed out, at some point the same results with different coaching has to reflect on the players. They do need some sort of a change (I'm personally of the mind that Smart is the one to move, despite how disappointed I've been in Brown over the last year+) and I very much believe they need a true veteran leader type - I know that's often a cliche but it really seems like that's something they're lacking, and while I like Horford he just isn't that guy. Frustrating. This was such an exciting team a few years ago but at least for me they have become very unpleasant to watch and follow.

Even so, his minutes have been inexplicably low all season and especially postseason. Spacing is nice, but one of the fairest criticisms against Joe is how much he butchered the big man rotation with both Williamses.

the anti brown sentiment is hard for me to stomach due to how terrible everyone other than rob and white played. tatum was hampered with the ankle but he still acted as a speed bump whenever white was getting going - he had two abominations of a possession in a row in the 3rd - inexcusable.

obviously the team was leaning on brown to do something offensively but brogdon (hurt, ya), smart, and al all refused to go into the paint for the first 24 minutes. al had the ball in the key with his dribble multiple times and froze in fear of bam - this just cant be all on brown.

last - anyone directing all the blame at brown needs to explain to me what exactly our offense is to me. im not sure theres much there - we learned this last year but to win in the playoffs you need to have multiple offensive avenues and for the 3rd or 4th year, we arrived at the postseason with none.