According to Washburn, not a single one of Wade's three-pointers was contested.
A question for Joe's defenders: when a guy is white hot like that, does it make sense to cover him? Or is the "no adjustments" strategy the best one?
I think they just executed bad… Poor rotations, not communicating on defense and leaving him open during transition which is where he made most of his threes. I think it was because they had switched off with 10 minutes ago. They were up by 20 they thought they were gonna coast to victory, And that it’s hard to switch back on when the other team applies pressure and you’re thinking about the nice hot shower you’re going to have in 10 mins 
This result is humiliating and should sting a lot… and if they’re going to take the plaudits for winning by 50 they deserve all the criticism that’s going to come their way over the next couple of days. That a guy like Wade out, scored the entire Celtics lineup, including our starters in the fourth quarter. The only explanation for it is that they had mailed it in before that thinking they were gonna win. Disrespected the game and they got what they deserved.
While it's obviously true that the Celtics were coasting, does the coach have no obligations? Isn't his job to identify what is going wrong on the floor, and to help his team respond to it? If not, why is he there at all?
I guess the answer would depend on the goals - is his goal to win every game? If so then yes he should definitely have called timeout and micromanaged the game when it was obvious his team was floundering. If his goal is to win a championship, and he is allowed to lose games if losing games helps further that goal than winning one, then he might be willing to lose a game to teach his team a lesson that would sink in better if they lost than if they pulled it out of the fire.
Not trying to make excuses for the guy, but I got the feeling it would be like a "lose a battle to win the war" type thing. He's talked before about how he doesn't mind losing if losing serves a teaching purpose, or if he sees his team put under pressure so he can see how they respond and so they can learn to think on the fly because there may be times in the playoffs where they might be out of timeouts (never an issue with him I'm sure) and they have to think on the fly and the only way to deal with pressure is to be exposed to it. Team plays really well for 3 quarters, gets arrogant and overconfident, stops doing what had gotten them to a 20 point lead, a 50 point win against the Dubs the game before, a 28 point win vs Dallas the game before that, and an 18 point win against Philly the game before that. Got lazy, ball stopped moving, they started to take bad shots, missed them, gave the Cavs transition opportunities, were slow to get back and Wade killed them in transition shooting pretty much open 3s as his defender was still not getting back or got lost in the rotation. Then they were in a crunch game and had to "switch on" again when they probably were already thinking of the hot shower they were going to have in 10 mins after another 20 point win.
According to Abby they hadn't really been challenged since Feb 11. I got the feeling that Joe wanted them exposed to that cauldron of pressure, he was going to give them every chance to figure it out even if it meant he had to sacrifice a game. Maybe in the back of his mind he even hoped they would lose, because if we squeaked out a win by 1 point via a bad JT end of game play all the faults would be swept under the carpet.
KP was interviewed after the game and he said the constant winning by huge margins had made them overconfident, they had this feeling like no matter how bad they played they could pull it out of the fire anytime, like "we got this", and that this was a good loss to have (I think he meant it was good to lose sometimes, as opposed to this loss being good, because it was atrocious how they lost) because it showed them they have to still do the right things throughout the whole game.
Of course this requires a few of leaps of faith: 1) that Joe is smart enough to play 4D chess; and 2) the team will actually take this loss to heart and look at themselves in the mirror rather than just brushing it offl and 3) most of the key players on this team, other than KP and Jrue, have been in these situations before, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and they don't appear to have learned, because just as you feel they've finally figured it out they do something like this. If Joe is trying to use these scenarios to teach them things, isn't he banging his head against a brick wall? Isn't that a failing on his part to keep doing something that's not working? Definition of insanity being that you do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and all that.
So that's the vibe I got from watching it, and watching his performance on the sideline, and listening to Scal's musings on the broadcast. It sounded like he was going to let them sink or swim, for better or worse. He didn't seem too upset in the post game presser. If it was a Game 7 or even a playoff game I think he would have acted very differently. But that's just a gut feel of mine, who knows what he will do
So maybe he won't get fired in the morning, but if we go on a losing streak on this road trip the knives will be out for him when we get back, no matter what our record is
Topic: Fire Joe! ... or critique Joe ... or defend Joe... or worry about Joe's coaching (Read 220686 times)