Nets (1-0) at Celtics (1-0) Game #2 12/25/20

[Walker Wiggle]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

[Uncle_Stingfinger]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

maybe they're doing something different?  anybody know?   i feel like manny sanders in the nfl has been the same and he came back in like 9 months.   it's crazy.

[Atzar]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

That's honestly why I overlooked the Nets as this large of a threat this year.  I thought Durant would look more like Hayward did the year after his injury.  Or Demarcus Cousins.  Uncertain, fighting with his body, skills still there but two steps slow to everything.  Still dangerous, but not back in the conversation for best player in the league just yet. 

Instead it looks like he never missed a day.  Unreal. 

[SparzWizard]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

That's honestly why I overlooked the Nets as this large of a threat this year.  I thought Durant would look more like Hayward did the year after his injury.  Or Demarcus Cousins.  Uncertain, fighting with his body, skills still there but two steps slow to everything.  Still dangerous, but not back in the conversation for best player in the league just yet. 

Instead it looks like he never missed a day.  Unreal.

It just means that Hayward is soft and fragile and his rehab didn't go as well as I thought it did.

[gouki88]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

That's honestly why I overlooked the Nets as this large of a threat this year.  I thought Durant would look more like Hayward did the year after his injury.  Or Demarcus Cousins.  Uncertain, fighting with his body, skills still there but two steps slow to everything.  Still dangerous, but not back in the conversation for best player in the league just yet. 

Instead it looks like he never missed a day.  Unreal.

It just means that Hayward is soft and fragile and his rehab didn't go as well as I thought it did.

Ridiculous thing to say. Have you had your leg snapped in half?

[Atzar]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

That's honestly why I overlooked the Nets as this large of a threat this year.  I thought Durant would look more like Hayward did the year after his injury.  Or Demarcus Cousins.  Uncertain, fighting with his body, skills still there but two steps slow to everything.  Still dangerous, but not back in the conversation for best player in the league just yet. 

Instead it looks like he never missed a day.  Unreal.

It just means that Hayward is soft and fragile and his rehab didn't go as well as I thought it did.

Nah get out of here with that.

I've seen very, very few people who come back looking this good right after a major leg injury.  Adrian Peterson comes to mind.  Nobody else does, really. 

[Somebody]

You guys want to watch harden take 30 shots a night? That's what he would be on this team.

We need a balanced offense not a guy who carries a larger load.

Is there much of a difference when Tatum is doing exactly that with considerably worse results? I'd rather have the guy who can lead elite offences playing that way

[#1P4P]

Imagine the Celtics' talent with a coach who demanded disciplined play and who was not afraid of his players.

Lol where's your source he's scared of his players?
Thin air lol?

My source is that Stevens' players - every season - take bad shots, do not run a disciplined offense and jack 3's with impunity.

What games are you watching or do you have a basic lack of basketball knowledge ?

I thought the Celtics took many more good (open) shots than Brooklyn did. Some of KD/Kyrie's 3s today were ridiculous, as were a lot of Levert's points. Kyrie actually had his career high for made 3's today. On the other hand, the Celtics missed a ton of short floaters/layups and a few open threes. We also had 9 wide-open points (two Tatum layups, a Pritchard 3 and a Pritchard 2) directly taken away by either borderline "illegal screen" calls or Pritchard stepping half an inch out of bounds.

I think the Nets are the more talented team, but imo the margin of victory today was due to more bad luck than awful play. Brooklyn won't shoot above 50% from 3 every game, and the Celtics won'd shoot 38.8% from the field (40.8% from 2) most nights, either.

For what it's worth, I actually thought Brad's game plan today was really solid. On offense, we consistently got Tatum and Brown the ball with mismatches in favorable spots (near the nail or with a half-step at the arc). Brown did a better job than Tatum of taking advantage, but neither was excellent (Brown missed a lot of bunnies, and Tatum seemed to dribble into help rather than away from it at points). They also had Brooklyn scrambling around and often out of position, as evidenced by the C's 20 offensive rebounds. (The Celtics outrebounded Brooklyn by 9 on a night where they shot over 12% worse from the field.) On defense, the team struggled with Jordan's vertical spacing, but a lot of the Nets' scores came later in the shot clock with favorable defensive matchups (ie Durant attacking Tatum,  Kyrie scoring over Smart or Brown, Levert shooting over Brown). Rarely tonight did I see Durant take advantage of a poor/short defender or Kyrie isolate and expose a big.

The straightaway pull-up 3's in a defender's eye by KD and Kyrie (and the mid-rangers by Dinwiddie and Levert) are what make the Nets so difficult to guard, but you can't really control whether those go in or not. What you can do is force teams to make those shots again and again on appropriate length and quickness over the course of a 48-minute game. Unfortunately for the Celtics, the Nets did that pretty consistently tonight.

TP for the excellent observations!

Other than the bright spots you pointed out, I’m encouraged by this season being a test of endurance for KD, Kyrie, Levert, and DJ. It’s a 72 game season+playoffs. The shots that were taken today will be much more difficult in July.

[ozgod]

My primary thought after this one is: how on earth does Durant look this explosive on a reconstructed achilles? This has to be a first.

That's honestly why I overlooked the Nets as this large of a threat this year.  I thought Durant would look more like Hayward did the year after his injury.  Or Demarcus Cousins.  Uncertain, fighting with his body, skills still there but two steps slow to everything.  Still dangerous, but not back in the conversation for best player in the league just yet. 

Instead it looks like he never missed a day.  Unreal.

It just means that Hayward is soft and fragile and his rehab didn't go as well as I thought it did.

We're comparing apples and oranges.

It has been 18 months since Durant tore his Achilles. He was injured June 10 2019. It's now December 26 2020. He was off the court until those preseason games last week. Remember he chose to sit out the remainder of the season in the bubble last season to make sure he was right for this season. He had plenty of time to get ready.

Hayward suffered a compound ankle and tibia fracture October 17 2017 and suffered a complication that required follow up surgery in June 2018 that blocked his progression. He returned to the court October 18 2018. (1 year layoff from initial injury, 4 month layoff from second surgery).

Boogie tore his left Achilles Jan 26 2018 playing for the Pels. He returned to action on Jan 19 2019 (12 month layoff) for the Dubs. Then he was injured again tearing his ACL Aug 15 2019 and returned to action Dec 11 2020 (16 month layoff).

I'm pretty sure Boogie and Gordo would have wanted 18 months to get ready too.

[ozgod]

Too many overreactions. We beat the Bucs and then got steamrolled by the Nets.

Kemba will be back, Brown looks even better and tatum will heat up eventually

Danny needs to pick up someone with that trade exception. We are missing the scoring and playmaking of hayward and kemba

I was just about to post that we miss Haywards floor spacing and scoring threat. Danny definitely needs to use that trade exception to fill the hole in our roster

I don't think the Tristan/Theis combo in the starting lineup will work long term. I think it's a little limiting when one of them isn't a perimeter threat and the other shoots 33% from there. I think it can work with teams that have two bigs, like Milwaukee. Against a team like Brooklyn KD had his way with Tristan in the 2nd half. Now KD is tough to guard at the best of times but offensively I think it limits us. Obviously when Kemba is back one of them will go to the bench and that might improve things offensively at the cost of our defense.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

it must be amazing to have dannys job security.

the most funny part is when brooklyn wins a title before  us.

Lol - they signed KD and Kyrie in the same offseason. The regret about the picks that landed Tatum and Brown is long gone. Unfortunately - due to injuries - Danny's plan A with max FAs and a stellar young core, failed. Luckily we still have that stellar young core to build on. Any other franchise would be back in the basement after what we went through with Hayward and Kyrie.

I'm excited to see the danny 20 year back to a championship plan!

You may not be far off with your time estimate, and that is my big concern.

Lately I've been getting the impression that Danny is in no hurry whatsoever regarding his plan to get the Celtics to title no. 18. Sort of like he feels as though he's crafting some masterpiece that's gonna take a long time to complete, and in the end it'll be a beautiful thing and well worth the wait, like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ... except that it probably won't happen until, like, a dozen or so years after the Nets trade (it's already been 7 years), and the Cs will get only one title out of it, and in the meantime the Lakers will have won, like, 5 more titles, and a couple of other superteams will have formed and won titles as well, but that's all okay with Danny because his "grand plan" of growing a championship team organically will have worked. Sort of.

And I understand that Danny's had to deal with several curveballs, like not getting Durant and not getting Davis, and Hayward's horrible injury, and IT's hip and Kyrie's absurdities, but look at the current team:

• Brown (24) and Tatum (22) are still quite young, and though they're very good and should keep improving, it may still be a couple years (or maybe 3 or 4 or 5) before they're really hitting their full stride.

• The team's starting PG is out for a while, and even when he returns he may never again be fully healthy and may need constant load management (and that's really the best-case scenario), none of which bodes well for the team. He's definitely not going to be Boston's starting PG during the years of Tatum and Brown's prime.

• Literally half the roster is first- and second-year players who may not make an impact for a long time, if ever.

Everything there just screams "Danny's not expecting legit title contention anytime soon." Yes, they've made the Eastern Conference Finals three of the last four years, but that could be more about a weak East than actually having one of the two best teams in the conference. These guys have kind of been overachievers the last few years, which is a credit to Stevens and to the players, but being 0-for-3 in recent conference finals says (to me) that they're really not title material. They're good, but not great. They don't really have a decent shot at winning a championship.

Don't get me wrong: winning a title primarily with homegrown talent is a great idea. But if Danny's approach nets the team (pun intended) only one title every 15 or 20 years, is it really worth it? Wouldn't the team's title odds be much better if Danny cashed in all of his chips for a Durant/Kyrie-like duo? I'm kind of torn. I don't ever want the team to be bad, but being only good enough to continually come up short (as opposed to being good enough to win it all) doesn't really appeal to me either.

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.

[NKY fan]

Why are so many on here so sure that eventually the Tatum Brown duo will deliver a title? You do realize that after the bucks and nets fade there will be a couple néw super teams in the East and then will have to deal with whatever super teams there are in the West.
Given the lack of cap space and lack of trade chips and unwillingness of Danny to trade draft picks chances are that we won’t have a super team. We will have a scrappy team that no one wants to face in the playoffs yes but title contender most likely no... so if Danny keeps the course we most likely won’t win it unless there is a slam dunk trade or we tank one year for a top pick.
There is also the chance that Brown and Tatum decide to leave in a few years.

[scaryjerry]

Why are so many on here so sure that eventually the Tatum Brown duo will deliver a title? You do realize that after the bucks and nets fade there will be a couple néw super teams in the East and then will have to deal with whatever super teams there are in the West.
Given the lack of cap space and lack of trade chips and unwillingness of Danny to trade draft picks chances are that we won’t have a super team. We will have a scrappy team that no one wants to face in the playoffs yes but title contender most likely no... so if Danny keeps the course we most likely won’t win it unless there is a slam dunk trade or we tank one year for a top pick.
There is also the chance that Brown and Tatum decide to leave in a few years.

Sadly don't see them winning anything close to an nba title without big changes...they couldn't even get to the finals in a bubble without travel or fans in an all time weak east

[Rikibellevie]

Durant is impressing coming back so quick at such a high level, but I still wait to see if he can maintain this level with no up and downs, which would be logical. This was just the game 2 of the season. We are 1-1 ag the 2 best teams in the east...  The Nets may be the hottest right now, they want to show of. We attacked the rim good in first half and missed a lot of easy ones in the third, Tatum is not there yet, but like many other supertsars right now, aka Giannis... And even in looking quiet bad he is still at 20/8 at 22 of age...
Kirie made a great game and it was written on the wall. They are with the Bucks the 2 favorite to go in final on east and maybe the only team who can face Lakers or Clippers with confidence. But I have a strong feeling that at one moment something will go wrong for them. And even if the Nets win it all this year at least it won't be Lakers and we still have good chance to get one or more title in the future. Whatever, all perspctives, including mine, are just mindview so early in the season.

[jambr380]

it must be amazing to have dannys job security.

the most funny part is when brooklyn wins a title before  us.

Lol - they signed KD and Kyrie in the same offseason. The regret about the picks that landed Tatum and Brown is long gone. Unfortunately - due to injuries - Danny's plan A with max FAs and a stellar young core, failed. Luckily we still have that stellar young core to build on. Any other franchise would be back in the basement after what we went through with Hayward and Kyrie.

I'm excited to see the danny 20 year back to a championship plan!

Unfortunately, that's just how it works out sometimes. We lost 3 max FAs over the last two years - and all 3 of them signed max/near max contracts with their new respective teams (so they were still considered very valuable). Had our team stayed healthy, it's likely we walk away with at least one title; it's likely we retain Kyrie; and it's entirely possible we have AD playing on our team right now. People underrate just how disastrous the Hayward injury was to the trajectory of this franchise.

Most Title contending teams only get a couple of chances at it and then fall back into a true rebuild phase (aka, your 20 year plan). You are mistaken if you think that we did not go all-in in 2018...in 2017, too, but well, we saw how that went. Luckily we have a new phase to fall right back on to.

I disagree with the 1st part of rnr's assessment above, but agree with the 2nd part. Danny likely doesn't believe this team is a true contender for a couple of years, but at least he has the assets to go for it one more time if/when he thinks we're ready.

People need to stop comparing their team to the Lakers or this year's Nets or the early 00s Heat. Luckily we're not the Jazz or Wolves, but we just aren't that kind of destination. It takes actual work and skill to be the best, and at least we have consistently been among the leaders the past few years, with continued opportunity ahead.