Three Highs and Three Lows

[PhoSita]

Back when I was in college I was an RA.  One thing that an Resident Director (boss) of mine liked to do at staff meetings was "highs and lows."

Basically, you talk about some things that make you happy and/or that are going well, and you talk about some things that make you sad / annoyed and/or that are going badly.


This seems like a good way to process the end of the season.

What are three highs of this season / playoff run for you?  What are three lows?


I'll start.


Highs:

- Tatum's ascension.  From that run earlier this year, to the moments during the playoffs when he took over the game.  The biggest thing giving me hope for the future of this franchise is Tatum looking in year 3 like a future MVP candidate.  During the playoffs he put up something like 26 pts 10 reb and 5 ast on 57% True Shooting.  Those are the numbers of a guy who can lead a team to a title.

- Marcus Smart doing Marcus Smart things.  Remember how he hit 5 threes in a quarter against Philly?  Remember that out of nowhere steal of Embiid's pass?  Smart is a treasure.  Keep him on my team forever.

- Grant Williams being a brick wall.  He'll never score like Tyler Herro.  We could have used some more offensive juice in the playoffs.  But Grant is an uncanny combination of being burly as a man-sized sack of potatoes yet also having the ability to stay in front of guys.  He reminds me a lot of Al Horford, except he's only 6'6''.  I like Grant and I'm glad he's on the team.  He should be a useful piece in the battles of the years to come.



Lows:

- The collapse against Miami.  I don't need to belabor this.  It was bad.  As much as I loved this team and this season, the way it ended was both very hard to swallow and also extremely fitting.

- Hayward's health.  This isn't his fault, but this was yet another season when he was unavailable or recovering from injury more often than he was ready to make a major impact.  It's a bummer, plain and simple.

- Hard to exactly articulate it, and I don't want this to overlap with the first one, but I felt like it has been a flaw of this team for a few years now that they kind of lack a focus on getting it inside and forcing the issue when things get tight.  I don't feel like the team, whether it's the players or Brad, showed much in the way of fixing that or coming up with new ideas.  So I guess I would call that lack of innovation.  I wanted to see some more wrinkles added to the gameplan to address some notable shortcomings in years past.  I'm sure there were some but not as many as I would have hoped, and none that showed up when it all came down to it.

[0003323344]

They won in games 3 and 5 because they went relentlessly into the paint and softened the middle of that zone. So what did they do in games 4 and 6? That's right they went back to chucking 3's. That's got to be at least partially on Stevens and he should have been in their ear all night. He is a collegiate coach and will never get this team to the finals unless he changes his ways. They were in every game in this series but just couldn't pull them out when it counted.

[Eric_Suede]

They won in games 3 and 5 because they went relentlessly into the paint and softened the middle of that zone. So what did they do in games 4 and 6? That's right they went back to chucking 3's. That's got to be at least partially on Stevens and he should have been in their ear all night. He is a collegiate coach and will never get this team to the finals unless he changes his ways. They were in every game in this series but just couldn't pull them out when it counted.

I'm Eric_Suede and I approve this above post.

[PhoSita]

I should have had one of my highs be that we beat Philly.

Defeating The Process was very satisfying and was definitely one of the highs of the season for me.  Schadenfreude to the max.

[Who]

Highs

#1 - Same. Tatum's ascension. I have wobbled back and forth on him in the past and was worried by his early season play but he came alive as the season went on and showed he is an All-NBA player.

#2 - Jaylen Brown's continued progression. A clear cut All-Star who is still improving and none of us can doubt the man's work-ethic. Great signs of more to come.

#3 - Kemba Walker fitting in so well. Giving other scorers / offensive players room to explore their games. Allowing that growth of Tatum and Jaylen. Giving them that freedom. While still performing at a high level himself (at least prior to the bubble then more of a drop to a solid level - by his standards - likely due to injury).

Lows

#1 - Untimely injuries. Hayward missing most of the postseason and struggling through injury after he returned. Kemba with that knee issue throughout the covid-period. I don't think he was ever fully healthy in the bubble.

#2 - the disappointing youth. Rob Williams did not take as big of a step forward as I hoped this year. Semi stagnated. Langford did not contribute much largely due to injuries. None of the other bench youth did much of note either. Lot of roster spots on bench youth that were lackluster. Grant Williams is the only one who gave a good account of himself. They will all need to do more next year to stick around long term.

#3 - Poirier. I thought he could be depended on for 20mpg this year. Lot of Euro experience. Big body. But he couldn't make the grade to NBA ball. It was costly. Money, roster spot, stopped us from getting someone else.

[GreenCoffeeBean]

They won in games 3 and 5 because they went relentlessly into the paint and softened the middle of that zone. So what did they do in games 4 and 6? That's right they went back to chucking 3's. That's got to be at least partially on Stevens and he should have been in their ear all night. He is a collegiate coach and will never get this team to the finals unless he changes his ways. They were in every game in this series but just couldn't pull them out when it counted.

1000 times this. Unless you have Curry and Klay on your team you shouldn’t be shooting 30 threes a game. Don’t even get me started on shooting 40+ from 3. Ridiculous. This shows that Brad needs to mature as a PLAYOFFS coach where you’re playing a best of seven and it’s about strengths and weaknesses.

We could have every layup, dunk, and bunny we ever dreamed of against Miami, but instead we decided it would be better to shoot 30-38% chance threes.

[Atzar]

Highs:

- Tatum.  The light turned on for him, and he looks like a superstar in the making.  His ability to facilitate for others in the playoffs was very encouraging.  He still has a lot of improvements to make, and I thought it was clear that he wasn't quite ready to close against playoff teams loaded up to stop him.  But he's on his way. 

- Brown.  Probably our most consistent player in the playoffs.  He appears to have embraced his role as a secondary scorer and transition menace.  I took great pleasure in watching him shut Siakam down.

- Theis.  We had no reason to expect this guy to give us as much as he did this year.  Just last season, he looked like a mediocre bench piece.  This year, he did a passable imitation of a starter.  I still want to upgrade the center position, but it could have been much worse than it was. 

Lows:

- Ainge.  Maybe this is unfair.  Maybe a team that loses Irving, Horford, Morris, Baynes, and Rozier - most of it for nothing - is just doomed to have depth problems the next season, and there's nothing even the most brilliant GM can do about it with our tight cap situation.  But our depth was our undoing.  We relied on projects and journeymen to try to cobble together a rotation, and predictably, it didn't go particularly well. 

- Injuries.  Hayward's injury is the most recent and most impactful, but we dealt with a number of them this year.  Kemba struggled with a bad knee.  Langford can't stay on the court.  Robert Williams missed valuable time.  For a team as thin as ours, we sorely needed our best players to stay healthy and our projects to get those development reps. 

Those two items encompass my negative thoughts.  I don't feel the need to invent a third.  I have issues with players' games that I want them to improve at, but that's not a 'low' really.  Probably more appropriate in a different thread.

[slamtheking]

Highs:
1. the noticeable improvements in everyone on the roster retained from last year.  Tatum, Brown, Theis, Smart, Timelord, Hayward (pretty much basically health related for him), Wanamaker. 
2. The noticeably improved locker room/team harmony with the subtraction of Kyrie and addition of Kemba.
3. GWill looks like a really good pick and Romeo looks like a solid pick in his limited minutes.

Lows:
1. the team's love affair with continuing to chuck 3's instead of diversifying their offense so that they can still score when outside shots aren't falling.
2. Team health is yet again an issue -- both prior to and during the playoffs. 
3. Carson Edwards couldn't get it going to be that instant offense off the bench.  looked as futile as RJ Hunter out there. 
4. During the playoff crunch time, our 2 big time FAs came up pretty flat.  some of that's injury apparently but I expected better, particularly from Kemba.  Kemba was more unplayable than IT due to defensive matchups but at least IT could generate offense almost at will when healthy.