Clippers (17-17) at Celtics (16-18) Game #36 12/29/21

[Kiorrik]

Well, the Clippers were all moving without the ball--as the C's stood around most of the game. Brown playing hero ball didn't work, Tatum is a little better at it. Pritchard finally gets his chance to start and lays a massive turd colored egg.

Criticising Brown for hero ball in a game where we're starting Pritchard and Langford.

This ain't it.

Was not criticising Brown (although 13 for 36, 1-13 from 3 point land with ZERO assists is kinda weird IE-Hero Ball).--the entire C's offensive scheme stinks, Clippers moved the ball and players much better, deserved to win. Pritchard sucked all game, maybe Brown would have at least ONE assist if anyone on this team could shoot.

For sure. Brown tied this season's highest number of potential assists ( for a player that had 0 assists.

It's not as much hero ball as it was just being the only decent player on the floor, yet still having an off night.

Think about it. Off night, 8 rebounds, 30 points. Ooft.

Fun fact; if we'd scored our average .340 from 3? We'd won by 20.

[Celtics2021]

Well, the Clippers were all moving without the ball--as the C's stood around most of the game. Brown playing hero ball didn't work, Tatum is a little better at it. Pritchard finally gets his chance to start and lays a massive turd colored egg.

Criticising Brown for hero ball in a game where we're starting Pritchard and Langford.

This ain't it.

Not to mention his putrid 36% FG% was actually the second best on the team, behind only TL, who gets a very different type of shot.  I don't think more shots from Horford or Richardson (combined 6-25, 0-12 from 3) were a better answer.

And I get the frustration.

I just don't think the solution is a change in ownership, gm, coach or top 2 or 3 players.

I think you gotta look at your roleplayers and ask yourself why they aren't stepping up. Like, at all.

Romeo has been disgustingly bad on offense. Pritch had 1 good game and people were all like "OMG HE SHOULD START". Well here's your starter.

Richardson just got back from covid protocols, struggled.

Man, we played Brodric Thomas 14 minuntes.

This games was cooked from the word go.

I like Romeo.  I kind of look at him like Grant on offense last year -- he's not bad when he's in a limited role, but when he's asked to do more than stand in his corner and occasionally crash for an offensive rebound if he's left alone, it's not good.  He also doesn't mesh well with TL.  Since teams ignore him on offense, it makes the spacing difficult, and when TL is in the paint, it creates even more traffic at the rim, since a driving player has to contend with his own defender, Romeo's helper, and TL's defender.

[ozgod]

So, I'ma disagree with literally everyone and say I liked everything I saw tonight except the 3pt%.

I agree with you, there was some pretty good runs of play by Timelord, Horford and Brown.  I don't get why we jacked up so many 3's. They must be coached to do that.

But I don't get the complaining about the assists either.  We only hit 35% from the field, we aren't going to have 30-35 assists.

Under no circumstances will you ever tell your team to "not take an open 3".

Telling your players that is just bad basketball imo.

You need the 3. Nothing else to it.

It's supposed to be the most efficient shot in Basketball.

... just maybe not when you're the 23rd place team in 3pt%. (And this might drop, after this game)

If you are open you can also drive the ball.

Errr

no?

Because being open at the 3 generally means your man went under the screen to protect a drive or your man is still inside the 3 trying to recover.

Yeah, if your open you can drive the ball. Maybe not all the way to the hoop but in. The Celtics were open by like 10 feet. There is a reason the defense is giving you that shot.

Agree to disagree.

I'ma stick to my point; 9% is not gonna win you a championship, a series, or even a single game in this league. Ever.

Agree with this point. They lost because they shot 4-42 from 3. At this level that's really inexcusable, especially given how many were open. Here's the stats on our shooting vs closest defender vs the Clips:



Basically 36 of our 42 3s were open - defined as the closest defender being 4 or more feet away from the shooter. We made 4 of 36 of those open shots, which translates to 11.1%. And obviously the ones that were more closely defended (less than 4 feet) we were 0 of 6. But it's telling that we had so many open shots, so either or both of the following points are true: 1) they worked hard to create good, open shot opportunities; or 2) the Clippers didn't (or didn't want to) defend the perimeter well. It's unfortunate that they couldn't take advantage of it, but it's really inexcusable to miss that many open shots at this level.

But we just aren't that good at hitting open 3s...we're 28th in the league in 3FG% for wide open 3s (closest defender 6+ feet away). We were 25th in the league last time I posted this, on another game thread...obviously last night's performance caused us to drop another couple of places. Our shooters are just too inconsistent. You can see below...yes you probably can't read the font, it was the only way I could fit the Celtics on to the screenshot, but you can see our position 



And here are the culprits, sorted by 3FGA attempts over the season, again for wide open 3s.



It's a problem...as you say this is 3 point league these days. So many basketball plays these days focus on getting perimeter shooters open...pick and pop, drive and kick, high screens, horns, elevator screens...players at this level have to be able to make those shots. That's ultimately what they are getting paid to do.

[Who]

And here are the culprits, sorted by 3FGA attempts over the season, again for wide open 3s.

Way to go Marcus Smart = 36% on wide open 3s

Unfortunately they are only about half of his three point attempts. Some of that is bad decision making but most of it is being asked to play too large an offensive role as a starting PG where teams will just stop defending him altogether if he doesn't take some now and then.

[Who]

And here are the culprits, sorted by 3FGA attempts over the season, again for wide open 3s.

On another note this is a pretty good example of Horford's offensive weaknesses as a forward in a two big lineup. The league is full of guys who were SFs playing PF who are all far better ball-handlers, slashers, spot up shooters, shooters off the dribble, passers off the dribble than Horford is. He is a well below average offensive PF in today's NBA.

His inability to make open 3s at an adequate rate -- while taking the most on the team at 3.5 attempts per game I might add -- is a good example of this weakness.

Horford needs to move to the bench as the backup C.

Boston needs more shooters on the floor. They need more ball-handlers on the floor. They need more guard-play. They gotta play smaller, faster with more skillful players.

[Celtics2021]

So, I'ma disagree with literally everyone and say I liked everything I saw tonight except the 3pt%.

I agree with you, there was some pretty good runs of play by Timelord, Horford and Brown.  I don't get why we jacked up so many 3's. They must be coached to do that.

But I don't get the complaining about the assists either.  We only hit 35% from the field, we aren't going to have 30-35 assists.

Were they good looks from 3 or their typical contested shots?

A lot of them were open shots and decent looks, but there was a portion that were bad shots.  We got a lot of off rebounds from our bad 3 point shooting.  I have seen us take more bad 3s in a game.  I have never seen us shoot so poorly from 3 though.

Yeah, I'm going to check the tracking stats tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if 25-30 of those misses were considered open or wide open.  I don't remember many contested ones, and a majority were off the catch as well.  I think our guys are gassed -- they all either just had Covid or have played a ton of minutes recently because they were the only ones who didn't get it.  The hustle was there, but strength and explosiveness were not.

4-24 on wide open 3s and 0-12 on open 3s, so 32 misses on open or wide open attempts — I understated the problem even.  Furthermore, 39 of the 42 attempts were off the catch.  4-39 from off the catch 3s.  1-14 from the corners.  The looks were good.  The shots were not.

[Celtics2021]

So, I'ma disagree with literally everyone and say I liked everything I saw tonight except the 3pt%.

I agree with you, there was some pretty good runs of play by Timelord, Horford and Brown.  I don't get why we jacked up so many 3's. They must be coached to do that.

But I don't get the complaining about the assists either.  We only hit 35% from the field, we aren't going to have 30-35 assists.

Under no circumstances will you ever tell your team to "not take an open 3".

Telling your players that is just bad basketball imo.

You need the 3. Nothing else to it.

It's supposed to be the most efficient shot in Basketball.

... just maybe not when you're the 23rd place team in 3pt%. (And this might drop, after this game)

If you are open you can also drive the ball.

Errr

no?

Because being open at the 3 generally means your man went under the screen to protect a drive or your man is still inside the 3 trying to recover.

Yeah, if your open you can drive the ball. Maybe not all the way to the hoop but in. The Celtics were open by like 10 feet. There is a reason the defense is giving you that shot. There was basketball before the 3 point shot.

Sure, the C’s could have taken some more mid-range shots, but they were a collective 4-15 from that distance.  They were okay in the paint (9-20 away from the room), and of course efficient at the rim, but when you can’t make a shot from anywhere else even when wide open, as the C’s were all night, the Clippers could pack the paint liberally.  By the 4th quarter they gave the Celtics pretty much any shot they wanted outside of 12 feet, because they knew there would be no penalty for doing so.

[Phantom255x]

This was posted on Celtics Reddit and I am howling with laughter LOL 

https://www.reddit.com/r/bostonceltics/comments/rrrdk9/jfk_rn_if_it_was_one_of_the_20212022_boston/

[Somebody]

Alright, the points I'm trying to make about our offense:

 - I think coaching wasn't the issue (coach's schemes got us wide open shots)
 - I think player IQ wasn't the issue (individual decisions made were generally fine)
 - I think the number of shots from 3 wasn't necessarily the issue (it was high, but that happens, especially with this many 2nd chance shots)
 - I think the problem here was that we couldn't hit.

In this league, you NEED to hit more. You NEED to hit 35%+ to fall.

No amount of coaching or decision-making is going to make up for you missing every, single, shot.

Who says the drives would've gotten us more points? Because that's a higher percentage? Who says we would've hit THOSE? They're generally MORE contested. Harder shots.

You play the numbers; law of averages. Sometimes, outlier games mean that doesn't work. Today was such a day.

What this all means to me is very simple; WE DID NOT DESERVE THE WIN, because we couldn't hit wide open shots.

Alright, time to start talking about why this is another example of Udoka being a poor coach (in general, not this game - 9% is untenable shooting). Generating wide open threes sounds great - but it only is great when you're generating them for capable three point shooters. We currently have Al Horford, Marcus Smart and Dennis Schroeder taking 13.7 threes per game combined (almost 40% of our threes!) when two of them are sub-30% shooters this season while the third one is below 33% (Tatum is also shooting below 33%, but his numbers are dragged down from a horrific start to the season). Generating open threes for them and calling their bricks good shots is equivalent to encouraging Charles Barkley to spam threes in the 90s whenever he's open and defending yourself when others point out that it's bringing crap results by saying that they were good shots that Sir Charles should never be discouraged from taking.

The excuse of 'my players aren't hitting good shots' is probably the best thing Udoka has done all season to make himself look good when opposing defences are likely celebrating when the players who shoot the bulk of the team's three point attempts heave up a brick behind the arc. There are ways to have poor three point shooters contribute to an offence: for example, we can have Horford shoot midrange shots off the PnP and C&S because he's shooting 57.1% on shots from 10-16 feet and 41.7% on shots from 16 feet to the three point line this year (FWIW he's a career mid-40s guy from both ranges). The analytical approach would tell you to have him shoot midrange shots instead of threes as the average PPP from a halfcourt possession is 0.93, which is the equivalent of shooting 46.5% from midrange - right in Horford's wheelhouse! It obviously isn't ideal, but it's still much better than telling Horford to continue shooting threes as a 29.2% three point shooter right now.

Our schemes result in wide open threes not because they're good, but because our opponents have realised that our coach is a hack who designs plays for the Barkleys of the world to chuck bricks all over the court while giving minimal playing time/designing very few plays to the few capable shooters we have (Romeo's shot admittedly fooled me, but Grant had a full season of good shooting last year and is still posting strong numbers this year - I'm pretty confident that his shot is real, yet he only played 21 minutes last night when he went 2 out of 3 from three!). But instead of adapting his schemes to his players, our coach has opted to blame players that he's misusing while neglecting the ones who can fill in the roles he's asking of the ones under fire right now.

[Redz]

I had a dream this morning that Celtics had just lost their umpteenth game like last night and brawl broke out on their bench.  Like actual guys throwing punches.  It was an indiscriminate group of G-Leaguers.  There were no discernable players on the team, just some vets who had already walked off the floor, a couple of older replacement players sitting on the bench making no effort to break up the fight (just sitting there), no coaches...just a bunch of young guys beating the crap out of each other at the end of the bench.  No officials or police. 

The only distinct person I could make out was Mike Gorman just saying "Um" and "Oh" in a really sad voice.

Obviously, things aren't that bad yet, but I feel like something disgraceful is coming if these guys can't step up their effort.  They just don't seem to care or know what to do.

I still would like to see what they are capable of when they have they're whole team together, but other teams have figured out how to trudge through all of the ins and outs and work with what they have. 

The disarray was the general gist of the dream I think.  I hope this is rock bottom, but I'm not so sure.

[SHAQATTACK]

Glade I missed this .