Celtics (20-5) at Warriors (12-14) Game #26 12/19/23

[Mahk E Mahk]

i think house makes a good point, but we’ve witnessed offensive stagnation plenty of times from this team, particularly late in games when the C’s are up. anyone who has watched the jays for the past six years saw this coming in the 4Q. the ball stopped moving to the open man and the j’s went into their infuriating iso games. losing basketball.

I'm not really blaming the Jays as a duo for this game, to be honest.  Just one of them.  I'm good with the way Jaylen is playing lately and I'm good with the way he played last night.  When he touched the ball late in the game, it was with the intent to drive.  He missed a couple of easy layups, and he got a dunk blocked by Trayce Jackson-Davis (I'm about 85% convinced that we didn't even have him on the scouting report, because our guys acted like they didn't have the slightest idea what his skillset was).  But guys miss good shots.  It happens.  If they're the right shots, I'm fine with that.

Instead I'm going in on Tatum specifically.  These contested stepback threes have to go.  I read that he's the worst in the league at that particular shot among players who take a lot of them, and I believe it.  His shot selection is ass.  He doesn't move on either end of the court.  He's second only to Embiid in terms of slowest average speed in the entire league.  He rarely moves off ball.  When he's on ball, he stops and squares up his man for several seconds on the catch, so any crisp passing that got the defense into rotation goes right in the toilet because now they've caught up.  Too often, he's an observer on the glass - great at corralling the uncontested ones that anybody can go get, but he doesn't want to get involved if there's any traffic.  When GS was sending their whole team to the offensive glass early in the fourth quarter, Queta was battling alone (and losing, but at least he was battling) but Tatum wouldn't stick his nose in there to help.  And I know he was hurting last night but this is a trend from the last month, so the ankle isn't the only problem here.

I don't know what's going on but I've been getting more and more frustrated with the guy.  He's REALLY GOOD.  But he needs to get back to playing the right way.

very good points and i agree with you. tatum is the C’s main issue and he continues to play poorly with questionable effort. at this point, C’s fans might need to accept that JT’s M.O. is to disappear for long stretches, and play selfishly in crunch time.

as i stated previously, i probably hold jb to a higher standard than he deserves because of the contract. you make that kind of cash, you don’t miss multiple game-winning bunnies in crunch time. furthermore, jb’s defense was awful last night. jb was no better than big al against the curry high pnr, which is an effort or bbiq issue, as jb has the skill set and athleticism to prevent curry from getting to the rim. watching steph get easy layups vs. jb in crunch time was ridiculous.

tldr: jt was the main culprit last night and deserves much of the blame. jb wasn’t in the top five reasons the C’s lost, but his contract forces me to grade him (maybe unfairly) on a curve.

[johnnygreen]

With games like last night, and the eventual playoffs, I can't help but wonder if Brad Stevens should have taken the chance on trading for Lillard. The guy is a true closer, which is something the Celtics simply don't have.

[obnoxiousmime]

I would have laid money Celtics were going to loose this game.  All these west coast teams are laying in wait of pummeling the Celtics.

Could easily go 0-4

Yeah, not that the impressive wins against the top Eastern teams don't count, but I'd like to see how they look against the West. So far their two big tests were GS and MIN on the road and they lost both. Until they actually play more Western teams (it is the deeper conference), I don't think you can just look at the record and claim they're the best or close to the best. The Western teams also have to play each other a lot, meaning their W-L records may look worse compared to the Eastern teams.

They're definitely one of the better teams, but I'm not ready to say they're the favorite or some kind of unstoppable juggernaut until we actually see what they look like against the other half of the league.

[tenn_smoothie]

Always suspected that if Pritchard started getting regular minutes, he would become an asset.
Grant Williams would have remained a solid contributor if Joe had not frozen him on the bench.

[tenn_smoothie]

Get Sabonis off our backs.
(wrong game)

[Mahk E Mahk]

Always suspected that if Pritchard started getting regular minutes, he would become an asset.
Grant Williams would have remained a solid contributor if Joe had not frozen him on the bench.

completely agree. tough to get into a rhythm when one plays so infrequently and gets a quick trigger from joe.

[Goldstar88]

Always suspected that if Pritchard started getting regular minutes, he would become an asset.
Grant Williams would have remained a solid contributor if Joe had not frozen him on the bench.

completely agree. tough to get into a rhythm when one plays so infrequently and gets a quick trigger from joe.

Except for the part where Grant is playing 30mpg for Dallas and giving them 9.6pts and 3.7rebs. He didn’t improve with more minutes.

[Mahk E Mahk]

Always suspected that if Pritchard started getting regular minutes, he would become an asset.
Grant Williams would have remained a solid contributor if Joe had not frozen him on the bench.

completely agree. tough to get into a rhythm when one plays so infrequently and gets a quick trigger from joe.

Except for the part where Grant is playing 30mpg for Dallas and giving them 9.6pts and 3.7rebs. He didn’t improve with more minutes.

yeah, year one on a team with two extremely ball dominant players is decisive and final, but six years of the same play from the jays doesn’t mean anything and they just need more time to mature.   

[Phantom255x]

I was away yesterday so couldn't comment on this game, but honestly, while I do agree that this team should have attacked more, tried to draw Curry's 6th foul AND not "settled" for 58 (!!) three point attempts, the reality is they had a ton of open looks and just missed them. Not great, but in a long season it happens. Believe it or not, even the 73-win Warriors team had a night or two like this during their season.

Obviously the optics didn't look great though with Jaylen doing the "too small" prematurely, Warriors now being 5-1 since Game 3 of the 2022 Finals against the C's, Curry going off when it mattered and Tatum didn't look great most of the night. But not panicking, sometimes these West coast games can just be wacky. I mean look at last night against the Kings, no Tatum and we still blew them out by nearly 30 on the road.

And that Kings team is actually really good, not a scrub team.