Knicks (1-4) at Celtics (3-1) Game #5 11/1/19

[gouki88]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

LOL I love these talks about "clutchness". There's a reason why the Celtics are paying Jaylen like a superstar fam.

If Ainge and the Celts think Brown is a superstar, Brown would've gotten the max, just like Siakam.

Brown is an All-Star caliber player, not a superstar.

If we're differentiating stars like that then sure, his realistic ceiling is more like an All-Star. I do think that he has a shot at reaching superstardom though, his feel for the game has improved significantly this season.

True.

Right now Tatum has clearly made the leap.

Jayson Tatum is really starting to become Paul Pierce 2.0.

I'm really happy that the Celts didn't give Brown the max.
So it's a good compromise.

If Brown can make 70% of his FTs, he's going to be an All-Star.

In this game we saw how the Celts won the game at the FT line.

Celts gave up 16 offensive rebounds to the Knicks.
If this was last season, Celts would've lost this game.
But the Celts made up for the lack of rebounding by going 27-29 from the FT line, 93%!

I love Pierce but we'll need Tatum to become a better player than peak Pierce. I don't see us winning a title with an All-NBA player as our cornerstone, we need someone with an MVP calibre peak.

Celts don't need an MVP caliber player.
There's enough star power in Kemba, Tatum, Hayward, Brown and Smart.

All the Celts need is a quality big man that can rebound and protect the paint.
RWill can be that guy.
But right now the Celts need someone who's playoff ready.
My money is on Tristan Thompson.

How do you acquire Thompson? buyout?

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Out of those 6 players only Langford is available to trade. A six for one all in trade for a year of Thompson?

Some of the players can be traded in December and Theis can be traded on January.

4 among the 6 can be traded for Tristan.

Ainge can do it in December or January.

It's not just 1 year of Tristan because the Celts will own his Bird rights.

The deal breaker will be what draft pick the Celts are willing to give the Cavs as incentive to give up Tristan.

When was the last time you saw a 4-for-1 trade involving a bunch of middling role-players? TT is not nearly worth giving up any combination of those 4. Kanter and Langford alone are of similar value to our team.

[liam]

Free-throws just cost the Mavs a win against the Lakers.

Mavs leading by 2 points, with 6 seconds remaining, and Powell went to the FT line.
Powell missed the first and made the second.
Down 3 Lebron found an open Danny Green in the corner for the game tying 3.
Seth Curry was responsible for covering Green.

Dwight was holding Curry. He could not get anywhere....

[ETNCeltics]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

LOL I love these talks about "clutchness". There's a reason why the Celtics are paying Jaylen like a superstar fam.

If Ainge and the Celts think Brown is a superstar, Brown would've gotten the max, just like Siakam.

Brown is an All-Star caliber player, not a superstar.

If we're differentiating stars like that then sure, his realistic ceiling is more like an All-Star. I do think that he has a shot at reaching superstardom though, his feel for the game has improved significantly this season.

True.

Right now Tatum has clearly made the leap.

Jayson Tatum is really starting to become Paul Pierce 2.0.

I'm really happy that the Celts didn't give Brown the max.
So it's a good compromise.

If Brown can make 70% of his FTs, he's going to be an All-Star.

In this game we saw how the Celts won the game at the FT line.

Celts gave up 16 offensive rebounds to the Knicks.
If this was last season, Celts would've lost this game.
But the Celts made up for the lack of rebounding by going 27-29 from the FT line, 93%!

I love Pierce but we'll need Tatum to become a better player than peak Pierce. I don't see us winning a title with an All-NBA player as our cornerstone, we need someone with an MVP calibre peak.

Celts don't need an MVP caliber player.
There's enough star power in Kemba, Tatum, Hayward, Brown and Smart.

All the Celts need is a quality big man that can rebound and protect the paint.
RWill can be that guy.
But right now the Celts need someone who's playoff ready.
My money is on Tristan Thompson.

How do you acquire Thompson? buyout?

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Out of those 6 players only Langford is available to trade. A six for one all in trade for a year of Thompson?

Some of the players can be traded in December and Theis can be traded on January.

4 among the 6 can be traded for Tristan.

Ainge can do it in December or January.

It's not just 1 year of Tristan because the Celts will own his Bird rights.

The deal breaker will be what draft pick the Celts are willing to give the Cavs as incentive to give up Tristan.

It's likely one year, Bird rights or not. Smart teams don't go deep into the luxury tax to sign Tristan Thompson-caliber players. That's what desperate organizations and teams that let Lebron manage their roster do.

Theis played well tonight. He appears to have that explosiveness back we saw his first year. We got killed on the boards when he wasn't in, especially with the Semi/Grant big man combination. The difference wasn't huge when he was in there. IMO, getting Kanter back with Theis along with an improving Robert Williams will give us as much as TT would.

I think you're right in one regard, Ainge will probably find another big man later this season, but I doubt we'll see a big trade, he isn't giving up one of our valuable assets, unless something unexpected like the Kyrie trade comes open.

[liam]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

LOL I love these talks about "clutchness". There's a reason why the Celtics are paying Jaylen like a superstar fam.

If Ainge and the Celts think Brown is a superstar, Brown would've gotten the max, just like Siakam.

Brown is an All-Star caliber player, not a superstar.

If we're differentiating stars like that then sure, his realistic ceiling is more like an All-Star. I do think that he has a shot at reaching superstardom though, his feel for the game has improved significantly this season.

True.

Right now Tatum has clearly made the leap.

Jayson Tatum is really starting to become Paul Pierce 2.0.

I'm really happy that the Celts didn't give Brown the max.
So it's a good compromise.

If Brown can make 70% of his FTs, he's going to be an All-Star.

In this game we saw how the Celts won the game at the FT line.

Celts gave up 16 offensive rebounds to the Knicks.
If this was last season, Celts would've lost this game.
But the Celts made up for the lack of rebounding by going 27-29 from the FT line, 93%!

I love Pierce but we'll need Tatum to become a better player than peak Pierce. I don't see us winning a title with an All-NBA player as our cornerstone, we need someone with an MVP calibre peak.

Celts don't need an MVP caliber player.
There's enough star power in Kemba, Tatum, Hayward, Brown and Smart.

All the Celts need is a quality big man that can rebound and protect the paint.
RWill can be that guy.
But right now the Celts need someone who's playoff ready.
My money is on Tristan Thompson.

How do you acquire Thompson? buyout?

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Out of those 6 players only Langford is available to trade. A six for one all in trade for a year of Thompson?

Some of the players can be traded in December and Theis can be traded on January.

4 among the 6 can be traded for Tristan.

Ainge can do it in December or January.

It's not just 1 year of Tristan because the Celts will own his Bird rights.

The deal breaker will be what draft pick the Celts are willing to give the Cavs as incentive to give up Tristan.

Tristan is only 6'9" not really any kind of big defensive center and I'm sure the Cavs would be happy to get Langford back for Thompson. Langford has more future value than Thompson.  I just don't see a trade there if you goal is to have a large center to match up with the Embiid's of the league.

[seancally]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

LOL I love these talks about "clutchness". There's a reason why the Celtics are paying Jaylen like a superstar fam.

If Ainge and the Celts think Brown is a superstar, Brown would've gotten the max, just like Siakam.

Brown is an All-Star caliber player, not a superstar.

If we're differentiating stars like that then sure, his realistic ceiling is more like an All-Star. I do think that he has a shot at reaching superstardom though, his feel for the game has improved significantly this season.

True.

Right now Tatum has clearly made the leap.

Jayson Tatum is really starting to become Paul Pierce 2.0.

I'm really happy that the Celts didn't give Brown the max.
So it's a good compromise.

If Brown can make 70% of his FTs, he's going to be an All-Star.

In this game we saw how the Celts won the game at the FT line.

Celts gave up 16 offensive rebounds to the Knicks.
If this was last season, Celts would've lost this game.
But the Celts made up for the lack of rebounding by going 27-29 from the FT line, 93%!

I love Pierce but we'll need Tatum to become a better player than peak Pierce. I don't see us winning a title with an All-NBA player as our cornerstone, we need someone with an MVP calibre peak.

Celts don't need an MVP caliber player.
There's enough star power in Kemba, Tatum, Hayward, Brown and Smart.

All the Celts need is a quality big man that can rebound and protect the paint.
RWill can be that guy.
But right now the Celts need someone who's playoff ready.
My money is on Tristan Thompson.

How do you acquire Thompson? buyout?

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Out of those 6 players only Langford is available to trade. A six for one all in trade for a year of Thompson?

Some of the players can be traded in December and Theis can be traded on January.

4 among the 6 can be traded for Tristan.

Ainge can do it in December or January.

It's not just 1 year of Tristan because the Celts will own his Bird rights.

The deal breaker will be what draft pick the Celts are willing to give the Cavs as incentive to give up Tristan.

I mean we could also see what Kanter gives us beyond the one game against the best Center in the East / league (possibly).

This is Kanter's 9th season.

He's a proven commodity.

Kanter's excellent on offense and rebounding.
But he's bad defensively.
That's why he keeps getting traded.

Well we’re 4-1 with quality wins over two likely top-4 teams in the conference. So I’d still like to see what it looks like when we’ve got our ostensible starting big in the lineup before we propose 5-for-1 trades for 1 season of Tristan Thompson. It’s unlikely we win it all this season (sorry) so then we’d have traded a nice handful of assets for a guy who we’d probably not be able to resign.

[keevsnick]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

LOL I love these talks about "clutchness". There's a reason why the Celtics are paying Jaylen like a superstar fam.

If Ainge and the Celts think Brown is a superstar, Brown would've gotten the max, just like Siakam.

Brown is an All-Star caliber player, not a superstar.

This is just nonsensical. The Celtics are in the business of paying a given player as little as they can. They can belive he's a superstar and give him this contract, it just means they'd believe thye got an amzing deal.

[keevsnick]

Celtics have the worst Center rotation in the NBA. Totally ruined on the boards almost cost them this game.

Seriously? You have 2 rotation guys at that position injured, both of whom are two of their best rebounders. You lot keep on finding stupid things to complain about.

They just gave up 16 offensive rebounds and got 3. On this night, in this game, under these circumstances their Center rotation is terribly weak. It almost cost them this game.

But the Celts made up for it by going 27-29 from the FT line.

That's why I keep saying, Celts still need an upgrade.

Ainge will make a move in a couple of months.

It will be interesting to see how the Center position plays out.  I'm not getting my hopes up for a trade.  My gut tells me that Ainge will end up waiting for the buyout market.

The buyout market will not be good enough.

Last season the Raptors would not have gone to the finals if they didn't trade for Marc Gasol.

Ainge will be in a position to do the same thing.

Celts still have lots of assets to use in a trade.

Next game for the Celts is against the Cavs.
We'll be seeing Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson.
I think the Celts and Cavs can be trade partners.

Who would you ship out to match a salary of a top center?

Kanter, Theis, Poirier, Semi, Wanamaker, and Langford are available.

That's around 18.65m right there.

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players I listed.

This sint gonna happen, for reasons that have been amply covered in other threads. 4/1 trade mid seasons almost never happen unless the guy coming back is a superstar.

[keevsnick]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

I could not disagree with this statement more. I think Jaylen has about as perfect a mentality as you can expect if you're hooping for a guy to be a superstar. He is confident, wants to be great, steps up against good teams, and works hard. If Jayson ends up a superstar and not Jaylen it wont be because of some nebulous thing like "personality."

[GreenFaith1819]

Yikes.

Fell asleep before the end of the 1st half and was expecting us to LOSE this game. You can tell I still have 2018-19 on my mind.

I think last year we WOULD have lost this game - especially after achieving a BIG win against MIL. We were up and down like that.

A win is a win - GREAT job, C's!!

[Surferdad]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

I could not disagree with this statement more. I think Jaylen has about as perfect a mentality as you can expect if you're hooping for a guy to be a superstar. He is confident, wants to be great, steps up against good teams, and works hard. If Jayson ends up a superstar and not Jaylen it wont be because of some nebulous thing like "personality."

Although I think Jaylen is unlikely to become a superstar (as Tatum might), it has nothing to do with mentality, it's simply talent that makes it more likely for Tatum.  Folks are over-thinking this.

[Celtics4ever]

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Here is the main reason not to do it, he does not make us better. He is on a bad team putting up numbers way outside his normal averages.   He could not even come close to 17 PPG on our team.   He would be back to him 10 PPG or worse real quick.  The guy can rebound but he can't help us against Embiid and was a weak point for the CAVS in the playoffs not to mention all the drama with the Kardashians.   You would be locking us in the a bad contract as well.

Ainge does not want drama so go ahead and have your fantasy trade proposa. I am pretty sure the C's are happy with what they have now as we are winning and they are doing it with small ball.  Which means your scenario has zero chance of happening.

[KGs Knee]

It was nice to watch the Celtics without Jaylen Brown.  He just gets in the way far too often, IMO.

It's also nice to see Gordon Hayward start to consistently assert himself more and more, and it's obvious to me he's our best playmaker.  Eventually, I'd like to see Hayward take over as the lead offensive facilitator on a more full-time basis.

Kemba is a gunner, just like Kyrie before him, and IT before him.  None-the-less I'm glad to have him.  It was a good 'save' by Ainge to be able to quickly pivot to Kemba when he found out Kyrie was leaving.  I'm sure he'll have some more big moments like last night.

And Marcus Smart.....favorite Celtics player.....easily.  All heart and determination.  Love that guy!

The frontcourt though...it's going to be this team's undoing.  I hope Ainge can remedy the situation but I'm not optimistic, at least not for this season.

[cman88]

Jayson Tatum just has the mentality of a superstar player.

Marcus Smart has the same mentality, but Smart doesn't have the shot-making abilities of Tatum.

That's the difference between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, Tatum has the mentality of a star player, Brown doesn't.

I could not disagree with this statement more. I think Jaylen has about as perfect a mentality as you can expect if you're hooping for a guy to be a superstar. He is confident, wants to be great, steps up against good teams, and works hard. If Jayson ends up a superstar and not Jaylen it wont be because of some nebulous thing like "personality."

Although I think Jaylen is unlikely to become a superstar (as Tatum might), it has nothing to do with mentality, it's simply talent that makes it more likely for Tatum.  Folks are over-thinking this.

Pretty much this. and if we are talking about superstar potential for tatum. we are talking about All-star potential for Jaylen. so its not like he has just JAG potential

[GreenCoffeeBean]

These comments that we somehow played better without Jaylen Brown “getting in the way” are baffling. I thought last night was sloppy.

[Fierce1]

Tristan Thompson's salary is 18.5m.

Celts have 6 players they can trade for him.

Kanter - 4.7m
Theis - 5m
Langford - 3.45m
Poirier - 2.5m
Semi - 1.6m
Wanamaker - 1.4m

Total - 18.65m

Celts can trade 4 among the 6 players to make the trade for Tristan work.

Here is the main reason not to do it, he does not make us better. He is on a bad team putting up numbers way outside his normal averages.   He could not even come close to 17 PPG on our team.   He would be back to him 10 PPG or worse real quick.  The guy can rebound but he can't help us against Embiid and was a weak point for the CAVS in the playoffs not to mention all the drama with the Kardashians.   You would be locking us in the a bad contract as well.

Ainge does not want drama so go ahead and have your fantasy trade proposa. I am pretty sure the C's are happy with what they have now as we are winning and they are doing it with small ball.  Which means your scenario has zero chance of happening.

What are you talking about?

Tristan has an expiring contract.

If it doesn't work out then the Celts just let him go after the season.
Celts will get an 18.5m cap relief.

Unless you're Danny Ainge or Mike Zarren, you can not say that my scenario has zero chance of happening.