And this was a Cavs team that was without Love, a team that only played Irving 12 minutes, and LeBron only managed to score 15 points. Yet, they beat the Bulls by 21 points.
Losing Love did not hurt their defense, and in all honesty, he did not always play much down the stretch this year for them when games were close.
Behold:
http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2014/12/david_blatt_chose_to_go_withou.html
They have been doing this all season and that is from CLE big paper.
That's fine. Still remains true that you have a Bulls team, lauded in this thread as the right type of team for the playoffs, losing to a team that is more than decimated by injuries, all couched with the argument that the Celtics were "demolished" by Cleveland (at full strength) as proof that our team's play is not conductive to the playoffs game. You know, a Celtics team that pretty much squeezed into the playoffs playing against the hottest / best team in the East.
I don't think you can throw out the whole idea just because the Bulls lost. After all, the injuries to their bigs made it difficult for them to press the advantage they had over the Cavs in the frontcourt, which was the whole point.
Just tallying up another factor to the ones I've already expressed throughout the thread. In the Celtics case, it lost to a vastly more talented team. In the Bulls case, you can actually make the case that the Bulls were actually the team with the most talented group of players in the series, considering how Cleveland had an abundance of injuries AND suspensions, and they still lost... with an actual blowout in the last game with the worst roster the Cavs have fielded in the playoffs so far.
The Celts were demolished. You may chafe at that choice of word, but that's the prevailing opinion. Getting demolished doesn't mean they didn't try. But the Celts, trying as hard as they could, still got run over by a Cavs team that is still figuring out how to best play together.
The best team in the East requiring overplaying its best player, requiring it's all-star PG to be in a frequent Supernova shooting state and winning 3 of the 4 games by single digits I'd hardly say it was demolishing of a team that shouldn't have been in the playoffs in the first place.
In fact, I'd say the performance we had against the Cavs shows the opposite of what you're proposing. That the Cavs didn't have an easier time against us, with that big of a talent gap as they had, validates the style of play the Celtics employed. They simply had lesser players to work with, to say nothing on how unbalanced our roster remains as we keep rebuilding it.
That Cavs team isn't particularly good, by the way. The injuries to the Bulls meant the Cavs could pretty much just have LeBron do all of the heavy lifting and they were able to get by just fine.
You're aware that LeBron shot under .40% for the series correct? The Bulls were lucky to have the Cavs arrive to that series in this roster fashion, with or without Pau they should've won convincingly.
Anyway, the original point with this thread was to raise a point of discussion which I think is interesting and perhaps has some validity to it. I do believe there is a difference between regular season ball and playoff basketball, and it's possible for a team to be built better for one than the other.
We should know that very well after watching the 2010 team, shouldn't we?
I don't disagree that there's a difference between the regular season and the playoffs. The problem is that you're focusing your argument in the wrong factors. I mean, you didn't have to bring the Celtics to this discussion.
You want to make a case for the Hawks? Go at it. Because the Hawks do have the talent and the play style.
The Celtics are severely lacking in the former.
Hawks are still alive, and ahead in their series for whatever that's worth.
And one small factor that hasn't been brought up much, but the Celtics hardly had team that managed to exploit regular season defense. Our offense was pretty much at the bottom in the league.
Topic: Exploiting Regular Season Defense: The Celtics and Hawks and Empty Success (Read 12310 times)