yet another example of Doc's inability to make mid game adjustments

[317]

well tonight was another reminder that Doc is just plain bad at in game changes. i admit that he is good at keeping the players happy and that he is good at drawing the occasional offensive play, but he fails at making mid game changes.

tonight he failed to make several changes.

1. he didn't tell PP and Sheed to stop shooting, they were having bad shooting nights and there not "shooters". when your off you don't keep shooting unless your a "shooter" ie ray allen.

2. Atlanta wanted it more, but that doesn't mean you just stop trying. there is no excuse for getting beat on the boards that bad. if someone isn't hustling pull them out and put in someone else.

i will take scal over anyone if they are not giving there all. i expect the Nets to fire there coach and if we can grab him that would be a outright steal. sorry but there is no excuse for not giving it your all on the court.

[Steve Weinman]

well tonight was another reminder that Doc is just plain bad at in game changes. i admit that he is good at keeping the players happy and that he is good at drawing the occasional offensive play, but he fails at making mid game changes.

tonight he failed to make several changes.

1. he didn't tell PP and Sheed to stop shooting, they were having bad shooting nights and there not "shooters". when your off you don't keep shooting unless your a "shooter" ie ray allen.

2. Atlanta wanted it more, but that doesn't mean you just stop trying. there is no excuse for getting beat on the boards that bad. if someone isn't hustling pull them out and put in someone else.

i will take scal over anyone if they are not giving there all. i expect the Nets to fire there coach and if we can grab him that would be a outright steal. sorry but there is no excuse for not giving it your all on the court.

Am I interpreting the last part of your OP right in that you would like to see Lawrence Frank replace Doc Rivers?  Or just that you want him on the staff in some capacity?  And if so (on either account, really), why?

I would also register that Pierce put up 24 points on 55.8 percent true shooting.  While that's not great in general and certainly a bit below what we've come to expect from him in recent years, it's not exactly a "bad shooting night" either.  I'll take that and live with it.

Box out, hit foul shots, get rear ends back to the basket to defend in transition, and this game is a different story.  Not sure there's much beyond that.

-sw

[317]

long term i plain don't like Doc but i was just talking bring him onto the staff, they need someone who can make mid game offensive changes.

as for PP he missed to many free throws, also he settled for jumpers to much. need to drive to the lane. do you happen to have his 4th quarter FG stats?

yeah, lack of effort is just lack of effort. but not giving someone else a chance to show effort falls on the coach. he needs to recognize it and make changes and Doc just seems almost afraid of benching his "stars"

[QuinielaBox]

Truth be told - I think Steve is right here.

Paul was not the problem tonight. It was our lack of attention to details that gave us this undesired result.

I do not think we are there as a basketball team yet. We need to address rebounding and ball movement before we obtain the next level.

Once again, Doc is not the problem here.

[Jaycelt]

Too many offensive rebounds leading to too many second chance points.
That's the entire story.
Paul shot just fine and there is not a coach in the land that would tell him to stop shooting even if he hadn't.

[317]

Truth be told - I think Steve is right here.

Paul was not the problem tonight. It was our lack of attention to details that gave us this undesired result.

I do not think we are there as a basketball team yet. We need to address rebounding and ball movement before we obtain the next level.

Once again, Doc is not the problem here.

in the 4th quarter PP had 2 turnovers, was called for a defensive 3 seconds, shot 2-4 from the field, 2-5 from the free throw line, and 0-1 from 3. not saying he should stop shooting just that he should stop taking jump shots and drive to the basket.

so yeah, he had his usual 4th quarter free throw issues and well he shot a decent % from the field he didn't attack the basket enough. and im picking on him in particular as he is the captain and is supposed to be the leader. if you want i can point out how poorly sheed, house and williams played in detail too.

rebounding is a direct result of effort. lack of effort is fixed by removing the person(s) who are lacking and trying other people. that is the coaches job.

[Steve Weinman]

long term i plain don't like Doc but i was just talking bring him onto the staff, they need someone who can make mid game offensive changes.

as for PP he missed to many free throws, also he settled for jumpers to much. need to drive to the lane. do you happen to have his 4th quarter FG stats?

He was 2-5 on FGs in the fourth quarter, though I'll note that one of those shots was a 30-foot desperation heave in the final minute with game for all intents and purposes over.

Yes, three misses in 11 attempts is too many for an FT shooter of Pierce's caliber, no disputing that here.  But he also earned 11 of the Celtics 19 FTAs for the game, which is especially crucial on a night when the Celtics couldn't throw the ball in the ocean from the outside.  Further, eight of his 16 FGAs came from in the paint, and another two were just outside the lane.  As I've already illustrated, his overall efficiency for the night wasn't great, but it was far from horrific either.

The conclusion, again, is that Pierce was not the problem tonight.  Calling Doc out for not telling him to stop shooting has the ring of someone grasping for a reason to call out the coach rather than a viable criticism of either the team or the coach's performance tonight.

Further, you concede to not liking Doc, but I'm still unclear - what exactly is your problem with him?

Like every other coach, Doc has strengths and weaknesses - and at times, even during the last two years, I've been at the front of the parade haranguing him for those weaknesses.  But on the whole, I have no problem with him being the coach of this team and find the semi-call for his head at this juncture a bit unfounded...

-sw

[Steve Weinman]

Truth be told - I think Steve is right here.

Paul was not the problem tonight. It was our lack of attention to details that gave us this undesired result.

I do not think we are there as a basketball team yet. We need to address rebounding and ball movement before we obtain the next level.

Once again, Doc is not the problem here.

in the 4th quarter PP ... 2-5 from the free throw line

False.  He was 2-3 in the fourth on FTs.  Hate to nitpick, but that's a significant difference for such a small sample size.

so yeah, he had his usual 4th quarter free throw issues and well he shot a decent % from the field he didn't attack the basket enough.

Please see my post above about shot location distribution - and again, the shot chart doesn't fully reflect the 11 FTAs.  How would you say those came about?

-sw

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

I didn't realize until reading on here tonight that the C's are 28th in total rebounds and LAST in offensive rebounds. How is this possible? KJ, Perk, Sheed, Shelden ... it seems the latter is the only one meeting or exceeding expectations in this regard. The kind of (lackadaisical) effort shown vs. the Hawks is atrocious, and will get us nowhere fast.

[Steve Weinman]

I didn't realize until reading on here tonight that the C's are 28th in total rebounds and LAST in offensive rebounds. How is this possible? KJ, Perk, Sheed, Shelden ... it seems the latter is the only one meeting or exceeding expectations in this regard. The kind of (lackadaisical) effort shown vs. the Hawks is atrocious, and will get us nowhere fast.

"This" is possible because the statistics you cited are deceiving because of their inability to account for pace.  The Celtics went into last night's game at 27th in the league in pace, which means their games have fewer possessions than most, which consequently means fewer opportunities to obtain rebounds.  Further, the Celtics entered Friday's game as the only team in the NBA making more than 50 percent of its shots from the field - and the more shots that go in the basket, the fewer offensive-rebound opportunities there are.

Team rebound rate provides a more accurate depiction of the Celtics' boardwork this year because it measures what percentage of total available rebounds the Celtics' obtain rather than just simply a total number.  Your offensive rebounds stat isn't all that far off, as the Celtics have not been good in that department (though not dead last either), as they are 27th in the league in offensive rebound rate.  I don't have a particularly good explanation for why that is at this point.

But as far as your overall rebounding concerns, team rebound rate shows a different picture than your counting stats.  Before last night, the Celtics sat right in the middle of the pack at 13th in rebound rate (50.6 percent) and were in the top ten in protecting the defensive glass, obtaining 75.1 percent of available defensive rebounds.

In short, the offensive rebounding needs to improve, and given this team's front-line personnel to which you alluded, it would be nice for the rebound ranks to be better than they are across the board.  But cleaning the glass is still far from being as significant an issue as those counting stats paint it.

-sw

[Atzar]

Team rebound rate provides a more accurate depiction of the Celtics' boardwork this year because it measures what percentage of total available rebounds the Celtics' obtain rather than just simply a total number.  Your offensive rebounds stat isn't all that far off, as the Celtics have not been good in that department (though not dead last either), as they are 27th in the league in offensive rebound rate.  I don't have a particularly good explanation for why that is at this point.

I can offer a possible explanation for our lack of offensive rebounding:  the fact that we spread the floor as much as we do.  Having your big man wandering around the three point line means that he's not underneath battling for position.  This may just be a flaw with our offense that we'll have to tolerate, but Sheed needs to start hitting threes again so the positives of the system outweigh the negatives. 

As for the original post, this one's not really on Doc - the team just didn't show up with any fire tonight.  The only player whose effort I was somewhat impressed with tonight was Marquis Daniels.  The only thing to adjust in this game was effort level, and that's something that only the players can adjust.  Benching guys in favor of players who will put in the effort sounds nice in theory, but a lineup of Hudson/Daniels/Giddens/Walker/Scalabrine is an outright joke, and the blunt truth is that nobody else showed up tonight.  It was the team as a group, not Doc as an individual, who lost this one.

[Bahku]

Haven't seen the second half yet, but I think Doc gets a lot of blame he's not due ... very often it's not so much his inability to make proper mid-game adjustments, as it is the team's inability to execute those adjustments, (which Doc gets the ultimate blame for). To this point in the game, I think Doc has made the proper rotations.

[Tai]

Our offense seems like it's resulting in easy shots around the hoop as opposed to having to hoist up long range jumpers.

No, our problem is the defensive rebounding. We're allowing the Hawks to get offensive rebounds, and it's resulting in 3s. Have to change that against the Pacers.

[Bahku]

This one was not on Doc ... not at all. The rotation and adjustments were fine, the team just failed to follow through, or generate any energy. If anything, I would have played Quis and Shelden a bit more, as they were very effective against this young Hawks team.

[PosImpos]

Our team is relying too much on the 3; both this game and the Phoenix game are examples of times when we died by the 3.  We were ice-cold from outside, and they weren't; especially in the Phoenix game that killed us.

We need to be able to adjust our offense when the 3 isn't falling (our bench becomes pretty anemic offensively when Sheed and Eddie aren't hitting shots), and we need to find a way to compete on the boards and down low with these young athletic teams.