Recent Posts1
Celtics Talk / Re: Praise for Joe
« Last post by tenn_smoothie on Today at 04:19:14 AM »Agree with Roy, Mazzula deserves strong credit for our play so far. I say that as someone who has been very critical of him at times. Last season was a major failure, especially the playoffs. 3rd quarter of game 1 against the Knicks was straight up coaching malpractice after a successful, balanced first half. It was the most ineffective and idiotic quarter of basketball I've ever seen, employing Joe's rigid 3-point happy philosophy and moving away from what was working. I'll never forget it, and quite frankly I think Joe helped us squander another title run. But I digress. If I'm going to criticize him, I should also praise him when things are going well.
The fact that we're still one of the top defensive teams despite the roster turnover and missing one of our best defenders in Tatum says a lot. 4th in defensive rating as a few games ago IIRC. Always important to be a good defensive team, so I'm glad that's the emphasis. The youngsters are developing well. And the offense has been functioning better than expected while missing Tatum. So props to Joe, for now.
Defense has not been the problem, for the most part, with Mazzulla.
It is his extreme 3-point heavy offensive scheme that is the main problem. Aggravating that is his stubborn, almost immature and insecure persona in regard to trying to justify that offense. SCeltic, you are right on target about last season's Knick series. Both Games 1 & 2 were coaching malpractice. Blowing two 20-point second half leads by recklessly continuing to shoot and miss 3-point shots without stopping play and adjusting the offense to create higher percentage shots was horrible coaching and cost us the series. I continue to be at a loss as to why there has never been alternative offensive strategies added to our schemes.
