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Post by jmei on May 23, 2023 18:07:04 GMT -5
So now it is coming out here and there that bubbling under the surface continues to be how the Udoka situation was handled - and this is a factor in why Mazzulla seems to have lost the team. Good grief. Honestly they need to grow up if that’s the case Woj and Ime share an agent. Would not be surprising if there was an agenda to that leak coming out now.
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Post by jmei on May 23, 2023 18:06:17 GMT -5
Tonight we see whether they have any pride left. Zach Lowe made the excellent point on his podcast that, on paper, this is the best possible scenario for a team to come back from a 3-0 deficit given how good the Celtics were in the regular season, how bad the Heat were and the fact that the Celtics have home court advantage. Now, I don’t expect that to happen. But even just winning a couple games before bowing out would really change the tenor of the offseason.
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Post by jmei on May 23, 2023 2:55:28 GMT -5
3rd QB can now be active on game days without burning a roster spot. EDIT- Removing comment about impact to Cunningham. Can't use 3rd QB unless other 2 become unavailable in the game. If they wanted a work-around, Zappe could be #3 & Cunningham the #2 so he could do his gadget package. That doesn’t work unless you’re comfortable with Cunningham as your primary backup. You don’t get to use #3 unless both #1 and #2 go down. So if Mac gets hurt, you’d have to use Cunningham and couldn’t use Zappe unless and until Cunningham gets hurt.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 18:21:07 GMT -5
I think you’re overrating the job Mazzulla did with the offense. The Celtics were on pace to have a historically great offense when they got off to a 21-5 start, which skewed the regular season numbers quite a bit. Those first 26 games certainly count, but they were not nearly as good or efficient for 68% of the season after that. It averaged out to the second best offense in the league. They ranked ninth last year with a largely similar roster. It is a fair criticism that Mazzulla was not a great defensive coach. But he was a pretty good offensive coach, and his poor playoff performance and almost certain firing shouldn't obscure that.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 18:17:42 GMT -5
Jmei please explain that after you said Tatum and Brown don't have good court vision? They don't have good court vision, yet your fine with that offense is a crazy confusing thing to say It also doesn't have to be a PG like some people think, it's a floor general. LeBron and Butler can do it and no one is likely calling them PGs. You just need to be able to run an offense and get into the paint and kick it back out. I don't care one thing about the regular season, we rarely have any big issues in regular season. The playoffs matter more, coaching and game plans matter more. Regular season is more best talent because of so many games you can't game plan around just one team very much. Post season is a different animal and it's about the best teams, not talent. Joe just got lucky because he had maybe the most talent in the league! The minute the playoffs started issues sprung up and have just gotten worse. I just don't know what to say to anyone who criticizes Tatum and Brown for their known short commings, yet then acts like the offense that highlights those is just fine! Yeah Tatum should have the ball and act like a PG sometimes, they do it for all of crunch time! While doing almost nothing to make things easier on them! Ask yourself this, how would the Heats coach use this roster? The notion that you need a ball-dominant player (or someone "being a PG" in your parlance) is 20 years out of date. Many modern NBA offenses have multiple players who can shoot, pass and drive rather than one guy who runs high pick-and-roll over and over again. Even Miami's offense is more multi-pronged than this Butler as "floor general" caricature (it's more off-ball cuts and screens with Bam and Butler as the fulcrums). The Celtics spent most of the season playing more of that style. They just haven't carried it over to the playoffs.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 15:06:57 GMT -5
By the way, I'm not saying Mazzulla has coached well in the playoffs. He clearly hasn't. But I think he's attracting a disproportionate amount of the blame.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 15:03:46 GMT -5
Both Ime and now Joe have put the ball into Tatum and Browns hands in a way Stevens didn't. Stevens was about ball movement and while we got some of that, which frankly you should. The last two coaches want to try and turn those two into LeBron and Butler. If you have iso heavy guys, do you think it's good to basically make them PGs? Compared to a PG setting up an offense that helps maximize their talents? Don't say they can't do it, we've seen it many times before as recently as first half of game one. They can look great when Smart actually plays PG, he's the only one I see telling guys what to do and setting up plays on the regular. He just doesn't have the ability to do it for full time or even every game. Game one 2nd half after maybe his best half of basketball as a PG ever and he comes out looking to score. It's why he's a combo guard and not a true PG. Why don't we run plays and get favorable switches for Tatum and Brown inside the 3 point line? Heck last game it was like PG by committee, whoever had the ball just brought it up and did their thing. It was Brown, then Smart, then White, then Brogdon, then Tatum. Best ball movement offenses I've seen Celtics have in my time watching them, had one thing in common. A clear PG, who you looked to get the ball to after made shots, set up the offense most times down court and had the ability to drive and kick, which opens things up as the D collapses to cutoff the paint. Rondo, Rozier and Walker for half season before he got injured and lost the ability to get into the paint on the regular. Smart can't just drive into the paint whenever he wants. I enjoyed the hell out of that 2018 team, mainly because after Irving went down they played team ball. Now they were young and not ready, Rozier and Brown would go stretches when they couldn't hit the side of a barn. Yet it was good ball movement offense all game long. Look at Kevin Durant averaging 4 TO a game last series because Chris Paul goes down. Compare that to him on Warriors where he was just allowed to play to his strengths. The short stint with Harden doing the creating. Imagine a coach wanting to use Jimmy Butler as a floor spacer and having him taking a ton of 3 point shots. A coach and GM job is to maximize a players talents and try and hide their weaknesses. The Celtics the last two years are asking Tatum and Brown to drive from the 3 point line on the regular. Even when teams go zone and they have to basically go through the whole team. That's crazy, that's not maximizing their talents and trying to hide their weaknesses. Nevermind the offensive crap, you know what we've never seen, outside of Irving crap, is the D fall apart like that. Third time facing Heat, first time a coach was clueless on D! This whole vocabulary of "they need a PG" is pretty antiquated. I'm not sure you want to take the ball away from Tatum and Brown and put it in the hands of a retro Rondo-style ball-dominant guard. As noted above, they emphasized a Warriors-style read-and-react offense that did really, really well in the regular season. I don't think the issue is the system. The issue is that the players have executed it terribly. That's somewhat on the coaching (for not doing more to fix the execution), but it's mostly on the players.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 14:56:41 GMT -5
Mazzulla's getting the lion's share of the blame, but he's just a scapegoat. Offensively, this team has defaulted to iso play in big situations over and over again because, at the end of the day, Tatum is infected with an acute case of Kobe brain and neither he nor Brown has good enough court vision to play otherwise. Defensively, guys like Brown and Smart and White who are supposed to be All-Defensive caliber players keep getting beat off the dribble and losing their man off ball. The gutsiest move would be to keep the team together and give it another go next year. Getting beat like this is embarrassing but this is still one of the best rosters in the league and hopefully the humiliation of going out this way motivates them more next year. I suspect ownership is going to want to shake it up, though. Why even have a coach then? Tatum being too ISO prone or guys getting lost in rotations wouldn't theoretically happen if the team was well coached. I think Mazzulla's impact in the series is not that huge considering Miami is shooting the lights out and would probably win against any team right now. But he has done an HORRENDOUS job for the third series in a row. He's just not ready for this. These are unrealistic expectations about what a coach can and can't do. Joe Mazzulla helmed the the second best offense in the league in the regular season, built on ball movement (fifth-highest assist % in the league) and outside shooting (second-most three point attempts (second-highest percentage of FGA being threes) and sixth-best percentage). Mazzulla's offensive philosophy, as sketched out in this recent Athletic story (excerpted below), is built on a read-and-react philosophy: The entire system is built to give your players freedom to improvise, flow and react based on what the opponent is doing. It was a wholesale success in the regular season. It has failed in this series because the players have made bad choices over and over again. That's on them, not the coaching.
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Post by jmei on May 22, 2023 12:36:45 GMT -5
Mazzulla's getting the lion's share of the blame, but he's just a scapegoat. Offensively, this team has defaulted to iso play in big situations over and over again because, at the end of the day, Tatum is infected with an acute case of Kobe brain and neither he nor Brown has good enough court vision to play otherwise. Defensively, guys like Brown and Smart and White who are supposed to be All-Defensive caliber players keep getting beat off the dribble and losing their man off ball.
The gutsiest move would be to keep the team together and give it another go next year. Getting beat like this is embarrassing but this is still one of the best rosters in the league and hopefully the humiliation of going out this way motivates them more next year. I suspect ownership is going to want to shake it up, though.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 20:20:17 GMT -5
What happened to Derrick White’s defense? He’s been getting blown by all series.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 20:19:29 GMT -5
You’re down 20 points. Stop *****ing and moaning to the refs.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 20:18:34 GMT -5
Rob Williams still making the same mistakes—biting on shot fakes, giving too much room to shooters.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 20:11:01 GMT -5
I’m at a loss for how they keep getting shredded by the same off-ball actions over and over again.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 19:56:33 GMT -5
I hate this team’s tendency to flop around and complain to the refs when times get tough.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 19:49:21 GMT -5
There’s just something about these Heat role players where they seem to get better in the playoffs.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 16:09:33 GMT -5
Bleier has been a big disappointment this year. I had high hopes for him.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2023 15:48:45 GMT -5
The game 2 loss has taken a lot of pressure off the series for me personally. Might just skip the game and catch up on some errands. Sad but true.
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Post by jmei on May 20, 2023 6:44:55 GMT -5
Just as I suspected. You are a nutcase. If I could figure out how to hide your bullshit, I would. I avoid people like you like the plague. And that's why we are all doomed. Edit: And you never adressed any point I made, you ignored it, pushed past it. That is the blueprint of those on the wrong side of reality and what they do to a T. You cannot adress any of the points I made. Reality is we live in a world of corruption that's rampant. Sports is something many of us clung to, (I'm guilty to) becuase we all wanted to believe it's the one true level playing field. We we are taught as children by coaches we cannot blame refs becuase that makes us think like losers. Those coaches are actually right for them and for those participating in the game. But here's the rub it's not true for anyone else especially sports with gambling involved. WAY to many cling to those thought drilled into our clayable thoughts. Well there are several documentaries that PROVE that idea is simply wrong, and wanting to believe different does not make you ignorant but it makes you dumb because once you have been exposed to information you can't claim ignorance no matter how much that thought comforts you and others make you mad. Sorry. Please cut out these tangents. You’ve been warned about this before.
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Post by jmei on May 19, 2023 13:38:13 GMT -5
David Price had a few really good starts in the 2018 playoffs, but the totality of his performance is probably not as good as you remember: 26.0 IP (five starts, one relief appearance), 3.46 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 23/12 BB/K, 4.78 FIP, 4.87 xFIP.
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Post by jmei on May 18, 2023 15:47:38 GMT -5
You can drive yourself crazy trying to beat vermontsox1 in posting roster moves. Better to just not play the game.
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Post by jmei on May 18, 2023 15:45:26 GMT -5
At this point in my life, west coast road trip night games = watching the highlights the next morning.
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Post by jmei on May 18, 2023 4:57:14 GMT -5
Can I ask why we aren’t allowed to swear on this board? We’ve been doing it this way in the 10+ years (!) that I’ve been a mod here.
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Post by jmei on May 17, 2023 21:54:24 GMT -5
The Heat did really just make shots.
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Post by jmei on May 17, 2023 21:45:49 GMT -5
I don’t know how Tatum can look so good one game and so bad the next.
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Post by jmei on May 17, 2023 21:44:53 GMT -5
Just stop doubling Butler at the elbow. Make him hit those shots, don’t give them an open three one pass away.
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