ESPN Celtics Roundtable

[guava_wrench]

Horford's signing did almost nothing to address the 4 major areas of concern from last years team (in no particular order):

1. Shot blocking
2. Rebounding
3. #1 scoring option
4. consistent/efficient 3 point shooting

You see that is why I've pretty consistently said that while Horford is a significantly better player than Sullinger, I don't see his signing as adding much to win the win column of Boston.  Horford's strengths are already strengths on the team and his weaknesses unfortunately are weaknesses on the team.

A lack of shot-blocking is not a problem for this team (or any other team).  The problem in previous years (especially pre-Amir) has been a lack of defense inside, and not having many blocked shots is just a symptom of that.  We're still not gonna have many blocked shots, but Horford and Amir are very good defensive bigs. Horford won't block many shots, but that doesn't mean we won't fill the huge hole we had inside defensively. The team's much better off with a solid, but not shot-blocking, defensive big inside than a so-so defender that overcommits to pick up a couple of blocks every game (Like Brook Lopez and his 9th place 1.7 blocks per game but horrible interior defense)

And that's without mentioning that Horford blocked 1.5 shots per game last year, good for 18th in the NBA

Those other three issues (especially rebounding) I'd have to agree with, though (although I do think having a legit #2 like Horford will help take some pressure off IT and make us much harder for teams to clamp down on

Some people just fixate on traditional big stuff. I would take the roundtable analysis over big man fixation.

[Big333223]

I was shocked at the comment about Stevens being overhyped.
Who the hell is this chump ? Who of any standing does he talk with? Bizarre.

I wasn't surprised to hear that. Stevens gets a lot of attention and if you're only watching the Celtics from the outside, his resume as a pro coach hasn't caught up to that hype yet. You and I know he's driven all of these Celtic teams to overachieve but someone who doesn't pay as close of attention probably just hears how great Stevens is and then looks at no second round appearances, only 2 playoff games won, never won 50 games, etc. So while I don't agree with it, I'm not surprised.

That said, I'm sick of Amin Elhassen. Every once in a while I'll listen to a TrueHoop podcast when I'm desperate for NBA stuff and he always comes off as a know-it-all prick who doesn't really know anything more than a well informed fan.