C's should play more selfishly?

[wiley]

Oh and by the way the Lakers had only 18 assists on 37 made baskets.

One of their players had 22 shot attempts. Gee, I wonder who?

Their next 2 "best" players put up 24 shots combined.

I wonder if they were playing team ball or were they just fortunate to win the game?

That's the real irony here. You criticize the Lakers for having selfish players yet their offense outplayed ours. Is it so unfathomable to you that it's possible selfish offenses can occasionally be more efficient?

of course when you have a guy like Kobe or Jordan you have to be reasonable with the concept of team play.....I mean it would be pretty dumb to avoid those guys in the offense.  I think we all agree on that.....But Ballin, who would you like to designate as our Kobe or Jordan going into game 2?  Pierce?  Ray?  Rondo?  Do you want to go into the game feeding one of those guys and sticking to that plan no matter what?  Or would you rather do what Thirsty Boots said, which is to play team ball and then feed whichever player gets hot at whichever point of the game?  I think you're ignoring a few of things in your support for selfish ball.  1.  The number of games in which the Celtics kick butt and have numerous players in double figures.  2.  The number of games in which they ride a different player at different points in the game.  3.  The number of games the celtics win when no player gets particularly hot (in other words, maybe Rondo has a "hot" game feeding EVERYONE.

I guess what your'e saying, however, is that the Celtics were turning down open shots in game 1.  The answer to that is not to purposely play selfish ball.....the answer is to not turn down open shots, which isn't selfish, it's common sense (like giving the ball to Kobe and Jordan is common sense).  So maybe we just have different definitions of selfish.....yours is not overpassing and mine is ball hogging.......

[Bahku]

No. Certain players step up at certain times, and they know when it's required of them, but "unselfish" play is what got them this far, and it's what the core of this team is built around.

[pearljammer10]

This thread is absurd. The Celtics play their best basketball when they are moving the ball. Its a thing of beauty when they are working together making the extra pass to the open man or slasher... This team is not very good when they fall into their selfish isolation crap. It really is just painful to watch when they play selfish basketball.

[nickagneta]

This flies in the face of everything the Celtics do and Doc actually said in interviews since the loss that the reason the Celtics offense was bad was because they weren't trusting each other, weren't making the extra pass and where playing too much one on one ball.

Sorry ballin, you are just completely and utterly wrong here. The Celtics are at their best when their assist to FGM ratio is very high which means the ball is moving ahead of the defense and the Celtics are finding the best shot available.

The Lakers have a good defense and without a superduperstar caliber offensive presence, the Celtics won't beat that defense going one on one.

Yea, I am not buying we did not play team ball in Game 1.

I am not buying we played 1 on 1 and didn't trust each other.

A Celtic would have had 20+ FGA if we weren't playing team ball. Only one player had more than 15 shot attempts and that was KG, who said he wasn't aggressive in Game 1.

If there was a sign that there was a player who was trying to play "hero ball" it would show up in the turnovers. Not one Celtic approached 5 turnovers in Game 1.

Only one Celtic had more than 2....Pierce who had 3.

If Pierce was playing "hero ball"...I would just go ahead and fire the offensive assistant coach right now.


We had 29 FGM......29.

We had 19 Assists on 29 FGM.


ECF: 20.2 assists on 32.7 FGM

ECS: 23 assists on 37.2 FGM

Looks to me we were playing team ball on offense.

The problem was defensive rebounding. I believe the Lakers had 16 second chance points to the Celtics 0. The Lakers had 12 offensive rebounds to the Celtics 8.

Lakers also had 48 points in the paint to the C's 30.

Well had we done our jobs on the glass you can theoretically take off 16 second chance points and possibly 16 points from the Laker's paint points.

32 to 30 isn't that much of an advantage.

Back to the C's offense.

Total Team FGA for Game 1: 67

Last 2 series Team FGA per game: 76.5

Where did those 9.5 FGA go to?

I am just repeating what Doc Rivers was saying during timeouts the entire game. The Celtics played their style of offense really well for about 3-4 minutes to start the 4th quarter. And that's it.

You don't have to have one player have 20+ shots for the team as a whole to not play selfless, Celtics style ball. The extra passes were not being made.

A team doesn't have to have a lot of turnovers to prove that they are not playing "make the extra pass and find the open man" basketball. A team actually can take good care of the ball and still be playing a more individual style of basketball.

And just because the team ha a good assist to FGM ratio doesn't mean that they weren't shooting earlier than they should have trying to make something happen that wasn't there.

The coach of the team was complaining of this. On national television. Don't want to buy it, fine.

You are right though that defense and rebounding is what lost the game. Had they rebounded better and played better defense they would have gotten more fast break opportunities and created better offense for themselves and probably won the game.

The key is not to play more selfish offensively to get better It's to play better defense and rebound better. That will be the key to winning basketball and making you offense more effective.

[LB3533]

Seriously, who do you pass the ball too when you want to play unselfishly?

Who do you pass the ball to when Rondo and KG are tentative?

When Ray Allen is on the bench in foul trouble?

When Pierce doesn't want to play "hero ball"?

Doc can say what he wants, it's an easy excuse to say a team didn't play like a team on offense when the players are not getting the job done.

It's easy to say when the players are getting the job done that they are playing like a team.

I felt the only area where we didn't play like a team was on defense.

- Our guards/wings didn't handle ball penetrate well.

- Our bigs didn't get enough rebounds...for whatever reason.

PP was the only Celtic, I felt, that played like a "team player" on both sides of the ball.

He didn't take over the game on offense, instead took what the defense gave him and made plays for his teammates & he tried his best to help his mates on the boards.

PP got to the line whenever he wanted, but he did miss open 3 pointers, which won't happen the rest of the series.

[LB3533]

Half-time of Game 2.

One guy is hot.

Other than setting screens for this one guy, we are not playing team ball.

One pass, one made shot. (Very little ball movement).

Rinse, repeat.