CelticsStrong
Celtics Basketball => Celtics Talk => Topic started by: Kane3387 on January 25, 2013, 10:36:03 AM
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First we need to come with that effort at least 4 out of every 5 games. I don't think it's realistic to think they will play that hard every game. But we need it for 80% of the remainder of the season.
Secondly this is why we lost last night...
(http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2045/celticsshots.jpg)
Above is our shot chart from last night. We were ice Cold outside of 15+ feet. This won't last. These are professionals and guys like KG, Pierce, Terry, Bass, and Lee won't all remain in slumps. Eventually these shots will go down and if we are playing with the effort that we did last night then we will win a lot of games.
These Celtics live and die with perimeter jumpers and, well, on Thursday night nothing was falling for Boston. From our friends at ESPN Stats and Info:
The Celtics shot a season worst 7 of 32 (21.9 percent) for 17 points on shots at least 15 feet from the basket on Thursday. When the Celtics have won this season, they have averaged more than 40 points per game from such distance.
Exactly how bad was it? Boston shot 21.9 percent overall from 15+ feet -- its worst percentage this season and it's 3-point percentage was 16.7 percent, second worst this year.
Doc on the team:
"Our offense hasn’t been great, but no one’s offense was good [on Thursday]," said Rivers. "This was a hard-played game, this was a playoff-type game. Baskets were hard to come by, guys were flying out at each other. This is the way the playoffs look.
"All you hope is that you make your open shots. And we just didn’t. [Jason Terry is] struggling right now, I thought he had -- 1-for-6 [shooting] and four of them were point-blank, wide-open looks. Paul had a couple. I think Kevin missed a couple right at the basket. That's just the way it goes. It’s a make/miss league; With effort, it’s a make/miss league. If you play with great effort every night, then the game will come down to if you make your open shots."
He definitely sounded different then he did in Detroit. I think the effort will continue to be there and as a result we will start winning more.
http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/celtics/post/_/id/4701573/live-by-the-jumper
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I appreciate your optimism but I cannot see this team being more than a .500 team until it receives more rebouding/interior defense and consistent outside shooting.
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I keep wondering why people keep lumping Lee with the players who are struggling.
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OP is right on the money with the subject line. You can't be mad about the effort last game, which is why I am not bummed about the loss at all. Celtics team that played last night, can beat anybody.
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The thing is, effort is far from this team's biggest problem. I look at games like last night and the most recent bouts with the Bulls, Bucks, and Grizzlies as great examples of games in which the team gave all it could but came up short because they just don't have the pieces to overcome bigger, more balanced opponents.
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Effort is great -- except when you lose. When did effort become the measuring stick for this team? They lost at home again and are now 13-9 there. "Good job, good effort."
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OP is right on the money with the subject line. You can't be mad about the effort last game, which is why I am not bummed about the loss at all. Celtics team that played last night, can beat anybody.
Yup, agree completely. I need to see that kind of performance/play every once in a while to keep my spirits up. I think we may see it again Sunday.
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Effort is great -- except when you lose. When did effort become the measuring stick for this team? They lost at home again and are now 13-9 there. "Good job, good effort."
This has become the season of silver linings and moral victories.
Just sit back and make the most of it Celtics fans! The blow up isn't coming! Just enjoy the future Hall of Famers as they slide into retirement! Take solace in the games in which the team at least gives a good amount of effort! Get excited for Rondo's triple doubles which are more impressive in the box score than they are when you're watching, and don't even result in a win!
And this is different / better than watching a team tank for a lottery pick and finding reasons to cheer for young guys with potential . . . how? Oh, right. You can't hope that this team will get better in the future. That's the key difference.
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I thought it was a disappointing performance. A very winnable game that they gifted away to a short-handed New York Knicks team.
It's not a performance that brings any optimism to me.
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The problem is that I'm not sure guys will start shooting better. The Celtic offense doesn't get guys easy shots, we play at a slow pace with fewer shots to go around and KG and Pierce no longer demand double teams. I just looked it up and Lee and Terry are averaging only 3.2 three point shots combined on 50 minutes a game. By comparison, Randy Foye in Utah is getting 5.1 attempts from 3 in just 27 minutes a game.
The less opportunity you give players to produce, the more pressure there is on them and the harder it becomes.
Mike
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I too was pleased with the effort of last night as I was in the recent Bulls loss (bad refs, bad luck there)'
Optimism about effort is a lot different than optimism of results, Ws and Ls.
I wrote this on another thread last night and thought it might be appropriate for this one:
"What's that old saying? "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice.......", .....so I am cautiously optimistic, but won't be at all, unless we make a significant trade.
These Cs are like the abuser in an abusive relationship where two people truly love each other. We are the abused.
They tell us they love us, they have to do better, that they are sorry, they change for awhile, and we are hooked again, because they have turned it around in the past, and WE TRULY WANT TO BELIEVE IT.
They then fall into that same pattern of behavior, and we are kicking ourselves again for having bought it, and somehow feel worse than we did before.
Effort or no effort last night,this team needs to be shaken to it's core, and I mean that literally and figuratively."
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
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I think the zone clearly killed us and completely took us out of our offense. We looked legitimately lost out there. Indecisive. Pierce passing up open 17 footers to a 30% 3pt shooter.
Playing Bradley 31 minutes against that much zone is ridiculous. The combination of him and Rondo was disastrous. And what was Green doing almost playing the entire 4th quarter at PF? He didn't even take a shot in the second half, and was letting Melo take any shot he wanted in the clutch. And those weren't even the biggest problems. It was Amare destroying Pierce and killing us on the boards.
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
It makes me believe we have the ability to compete and beat anyone when shots fall. If we are peaking as we go into the playoffs and shots are falling then I like our chances.
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
This is basically where I'm at. Of course it's better that they played better last night than they did against Cleveland, but to me it only confirms what has long been a negative for these guys: They play only when they feel like it. They mostly get up for games against good teams, then mostly play horribly against inferior competition.
As far as last night's game, I don't know how anyone can be happy with an effort that included 41% overall shooting, 17% 3pt shooting, and turnovers at the worst time.
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
It makes me believe we have the ability to compete and beat anyone when shots fall. If we are peaking as we go into the playoffs and shots are falling then I like our chances.
Here's the problem, though, with being a jump-shooting team: even if things get turned around—Jet finds his stroke, Pierce does too, and Bass and everyone else who's struggling—what are the odds that they're going to keep shooting well (enough) through four playoff rounds, particularly when they'll have home-court advantage for none of them? Not even OKC was able to do that last season.
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I am not optomistic. This team is basically dead in the water that cannot execute when the chips are on the table. That is when they put out an effort like last night. The team does not bother to show up half the time and gives up to easily when they get busted by younger more athletic temas. So I think it is a lack of talent at this point and I will feel this way until they find wins out there.
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
It makes me believe we have the ability to compete and beat anyone when shots fall. If we are peaking as we go into the playoffs and shots are falling then I like our chances.
Here's the problem, though, with being a jump-shooting team: even if things get turned around—Jet finds his stroke, Pierce does too, and Bass and everyone else who's struggling—what are the odds that they're going to keep shooting well (enough) through four playoff rounds, particularly when they'll have home-court advantage for none of them? Not even OKC was able to do that last season.
Dallas was the year before and our defense is capable of being top notch like last night. This is the story for us the last three years before this season - play inconsistent in the regular season and then flip the switch in the playoffs.
Until we don't flip a switch in the playoffs I will be optimistic bc games like last night show me our potential. That's a blowout last night if we just make our open shots.
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I definitely was happy with the effort the team gave last night, and it was a game the C's could have won if a few plays here or there went differently.
I am not too optimistic we'll see that effort on a nightly basis going forward. The team has way too much history that suggests otherwise.
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As far as last night's game, I don't know how anyone can be happy with an effort that included 41% overall shooting, 17% 3pt shooting, and turnovers at the worst time.
I am happy with it because those things you mentioned don't reflect reflect a lack of effort. They got open shots, they just didn't make them. They played defense. They rebounded. They made mistakes, but mistakes happen.
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As far as last night's game, I don't know how anyone can be happy with an effort that included 41% overall shooting, 17% 3pt shooting, and turnovers at the worst time.
I am happy with it because those things you mentioned don't reflect reflect a lack of effort. They got open shots, they just didn't make them. They played defense. They rebounded. They made mistakes, but mistakes happen.
Yeah, missed shots are not a lack of effort, they are a lack of results.
If the C's gave consistent effort, every night, they'd likely have a far better record, and most people would be viewing last night game completely diferently. Instead of just lumping in last night's loss with all the losses due to lack of effort, it's simply be viewed as a tough loss to a tough opponent. There's no shame in that.
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I am not optomistic. This team is basically dead in the water that cannot execute when the chips are on the table. That is when they put out an effort like last night. The team does not bother to show up half the time and gives up to easily when they get busted by younger more athletic temas. So I think it is a lack of talent at this point and I will feel this way until they find wins out there.
Ever since 2009-2010 we have heard this and then we just go to the ECF or something. I mean unless Wade takes out Rondo.
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As far as last night's game, I don't know how anyone can be happy with an effort that included 41% overall shooting, 17% 3pt shooting, and turnovers at the worst time.
I am happy with it because those things you mentioned don't reflect reflect a lack of effort. They got open shots, they just didn't make them. They played defense. They rebounded. They made mistakes, but mistakes happen.
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "effort." I presume you mean they played hard (physical effort), but I'm wondering about the mental effort. I mean, when a team consistently gets plenty of open looks (the result of good physical effort) but consistently fails to make the shots, that's not a fluke thing, so maybe it's that they're not concentrating, not focusing, not confident, etc., which would be a lack of mental effort.
It just concerns me that, regardless of effort, this team is consistently finding ways to screw up and lose, and it also concerns me that certain fans consistently chalk up these losses to "bad bounces," "oh, it was just an off night," "oh, mistakes happen." Mistakes and missed open shots and missed opportunities happen way too much with this team. They'd be in the playoffs if the season ended today, but I'm not confident they'd last more than 5 games in the first round.
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I agree with Kane3387. I too see some reason for optimism. Firstly, the defense has been pretty solid since getting off to that horrendous start to the season where we seemingly couldn't guard anyone. Surprisingly, even during our 5 game losing streak, our defense has been well above league average.
The problem right now is obviously the offense. I don't buy that we don't have the personnel to play better on that end of the court. Over the course of the last five games, the shooting percentages have been downright ugly: 41% from the field, 26% from three, and even the free throws have been bad at 71%. Now, we can blame the quarterback for not running the show properly and we can blame the coach for running a crappy system, or we can say that our scorers are just too old, but we have been getting pretty much the same looks we normally get, and just missing. We won't continue shooting those percentages. Those are bound to come up to close to normal. Once they do, we won't all of a sudden start leading the league in offensive efficiency with our off-the-ball-screen, half court, jump shooting, no offensive rebounding offense, but if we can keep our D elite, we'll be the team that we all expected us to be to start the season.
I know things seem desperate to many right now, but I definitely see things pointing in the right direction. We'll start hitting some shots soon, and once we do, we'll be a better team.
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Idk why this makes anyone optimistic...it just proves they give no effort against poor teams and magically give effort against better competition but come up short
It makes me believe we have the ability to compete and beat anyone when shots fall. If we are peaking as we go into the playoffs and shots are falling then I like our chances.
I already believe we have the ability to compete with anyone, just not that excited about it being confirmed they don't play hard against inferior competition and fall a little short even when they do give effort against good teams...they're worth the same thing and the Celtics need wins, not false bravado that they're the big bad Celtics who can beat anyone when they feel like it...they need to develop habits against crap teams to pull out the close ones against good teams
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That makes one of us.
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That makes one of us.
Two.
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We need help not more effort.
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First we need to come with that effort at least 4 out of every 5 games. I don't think it's realistic to think they will play that hard every game. But we need it for 80% of the remainder of the season.
Secondly this is why we lost last night...
(http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2045/celticsshots.jpg)
Above is our shot chart from last night. We were ice Cold outside of 15+ feet. This won't last. These are professionals and guys like KG, Pierce, Terry, Bass, and Lee won't all remain in slumps. Eventually these shots will go down and if we are playing with the effort that we did last night then we will win a lot of games.
These Celtics live and die with perimeter jumpers and, well, on Thursday night nothing was falling for Boston. From our friends at ESPN Stats and Info:
The Celtics shot a season worst 7 of 32 (21.9 percent) for 17 points on shots at least 15 feet from the basket on Thursday. When the Celtics have won this season, they have averaged more than 40 points per game from such distance.
Exactly how bad was it? Boston shot 21.9 percent overall from 15+ feet -- its worst percentage this season and it's 3-point percentage was 16.7 percent, second worst this year.
Doc on the team:
"Our offense hasn’t been great, but no one’s offense was good [on Thursday]," said Rivers. "This was a hard-played game, this was a playoff-type game. Baskets were hard to come by, guys were flying out at each other. This is the way the playoffs look.
"All you hope is that you make your open shots. And we just didn’t. [Jason Terry is] struggling right now, I thought he had -- 1-for-6 [shooting] and four of them were point-blank, wide-open looks. Paul had a couple. I think Kevin missed a couple right at the basket. That's just the way it goes. It’s a make/miss league; With effort, it’s a make/miss league. If you play with great effort every night, then the game will come down to if you make your open shots."
He definitely sounded different then he did in Detroit. I think the effort will continue to be there and as a result we will start winning more.
http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/celtics/post/_/id/4701573/live-by-the-jumper
False optimism.
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Effort is great but can it over come old age? I don't think so or lack of talent at some positions. Hustle is great but if shots are not dropping all it does is prolong the loss.
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This thread was just annihilated in less then 24 hours :'(
Whatever happens to this team, they deserve it.
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With you on the premise. After this last loss you have to wonder.
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Good job, good effort
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Good job, good effort
Here's a TP just for the laugh.