Heat (37-31) at Celtics (35-33) Game #69 5/11/21

[86MaxwellSmart]

Refs screwed us bigtime in that 3rd quarter....letting Miami do whatever they wanted, while calling us for every little thing....was a 4 point game....I hate Dragic for always hitting every ridiculous shot against us, but then being hurt in the finals last season against the Lakers....WEAK.

[86MaxwellSmart]

at what point does Tatum force his way to the Lakers?

Dude is always wearing Purple and Gold in his C's uni.

[ozgod]

Thompson with 3 rebs none Offensive, 2 points and couldn't defend anyone and played 28 minutes. It seems like Parker could've played much better than that or Kornet or Tacko or Tatum at the 5.

Kemba had 7 rebounds....

I think u are on to something..."Tatum at the 5." Due to injuries got to look to change things up.

I just don't understand why Brad kept Thompson in for almost the whole 3rd quarter when he was soooooo Bad. Kornet would've been better, Tacko would've been better. Brad goes with what should work but can't seem to just in real-time. Thompson was the worse player on the floor tonight and yes I know Carsen Edwards stunk.

Honestly I don’t think any center on our team can guard Adebayo. I think even Timelord would have had issues ans been forced to foul. He’s too quick off the dribble for Kornet and Tacko and too big for GWill. I get the feeling of wanting to try something, anything but those guys would have been sonned just as Kardashian was being sonned. Our best defender at the 5 was Theis and Bam punked him last year.

Bam is a challenge, but what killed us tonight was our lack of defense on Duncan Robinson, Kendrick Nunn, Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro.

If you look at those shots, while Dragic's in particular were spot up 3s in the face of a defender (usually Edwards), the others were basically because the Celtics were in rotation because they had had to overhelp in the post due to Miami's dribble penetration or were the result of missed switches (mostly involving Fournier). The lack of a reliable big to protect the rim and fact that Fournier is still learning the defensive scheme led to our problems at the perimeter. It's far too easy to get us into rotation. I'm guessing that's why Brad went with his pipsqueak lineup, so that we would be able to rotate quicker, but then Dragic just kept working his mismatch with Edwards.

We missed Rob Williams significantly tonight, much more than we did Jaylen. It really affected us defensively. Kardashian is too small, Kornet too skinny and GWill too short especially against the likes of Bam and Dedmon. If you combined all 3 of them you might come up with one actual decent NBA player.

[Ogaju]

at what point does Tatum force his way to the Lakers?

Dude is always wearing Purple and Gold in his C's uni.

As soon as he can.

[liam]

Thompson with 3 rebs none Offensive, 2 points and couldn't defend anyone and played 28 minutes. It seems like Parker could've played much better than that or Kornet or Tacko or Tatum at the 5.

Kemba had 7 rebounds....

I think u are on to something..."Tatum at the 5." Due to injuries got to look to change things up.

I just don't understand why Brad kept Thompson in for almost the whole 3rd quarter when he was soooooo Bad. Kornet would've been better, Tacko would've been better. Brad goes with what should work but can't seem to just in real-time. Thompson was the worse player on the floor tonight and yes I know Carsen Edwards stunk.

Honestly I don’t think any center on our team can guard Adebayo. I think even Timelord would have had issues ans been forced to foul. He’s too quick off the dribble for Kornet and Tacko and too big for GWill. I get the feeling of wanting to try something, anything but those guys would have been sonned just as Kardashian was being sonned. Our best defender at the 5 was Theis and Bam punked him last year.

You don't really have to guard Bam out there back off of him and play someone with some length. Bam can't shoot.

[Ogaju]

Knicks are pretty good.

[ozgod]

Even Washburn doesn't have the energy to the hapless Cs because of their effort. They're basically just not good enough.

Losses to Heat made it clear: Celtics just aren’t good enough, especially on defense
By Gary Washburn Globe Staff,Updated May 11, 2021, 9 minutes ago

Rather than criticizing their effort or lambasting the Celtics for allowing the Heat to shoot 60 percent yet again, it’s best just to acknowledge that this team just isn’t good enough to compete with quality teams, and it’s been that way for weeks.

Perhaps the Heat were the worst team for the Celtics to run into at this vulnerable point. The Heat are reaching full health. They are well coached and they know the Celtics’ weaknesses. That combination led to a 129-121 Miami win Tuesday night at TD Garden that essentially put the Celtics in the play-in tournament.

The Celtics fought harder than they did in Sunday’s debacle, but they just made too many mistakes that unfortunately for them are not uncharacteristic. The Celtics left too many shooters open, and the Heat feasted on a wobbly and unsound defense all night.

So, this is who the Celtics are. They are now without Jaylen Brown for the rest of the season because of a torn wrist ligament. Robert Williams is out indefinitely with turf toe, and the rest of the players are still trying to figure out how to play cohesively at this late point in the season.

The Heat’s group of pros were just too strong, so much so that this was an unfair matchup. The Celtics don’t have anyone who can adequately defend Bam Adebayo — including Tristan Thompson — and he was nearly flawless.

The Celtics don’t have disciplined enough defenders — or players who have mastered Brad Stevens’s concepts — to offer resistance to the Heat’s elite shooters. What Miami has done over the past few seasons is what Boston has wanted to do but couldn’t.

The Heat acquired talented shooters, got a productive big man with a midrange game and ball-handling skills, and acquired a tough guy as their leader. The Celtics lack many of those elements.

“That team whole, nobody is going to want to play,” Stevens said. “They just have a lot of firepower. We still have a week left before the play-in tournament, but time is running out. We have to see if we can’t find the best version of ourselves.”

Without Brown, the Celtics are relying on Jayson Tatum, who had 33 points but didn’t impact the game as much as he could have, and Kemba Walker contributed a strong offensive game with 36 points. But scoring isn’t the issue. The Celtics averaged 122.5 points in these two losses to the Heat and still weren’t close to winning.

Stevens has to overhaul this defense, perhaps change his “switch everything” style and penalize those players who don’t defend with less playing time.

The Celtics are a bad defensive team, and Stevens is ashamed of that because his trademark for the past eight years has been defense. Bad defense shines brighter than good offense. The Celtics shot 52.3 percent on Tuesday night, made 48.6 of their 3-pointers, and yet were never really close in the fourth quarter.

“It’s a pride thing,” Walker said. “Individually, we just all have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘Are giving it every single thing we have on that end of the floor?’ To be honest, we’re not. Not on every possession. It might be a few (possessions) in a row and then we take a few off, and that’s all of us.

“Got to look in that mirror. If you want to win and take this team to another level, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

There are three games left in the regular season, all winnable, and all important to the Celtics’ psyche. If they are in the play-in tournament, they may as well win and get a chance to play in the real tournament. They can’t be mentally fragile enough to collapse because of Brown’s injury.

They have to keep fighting, and they did on Tuesday, but they just lacked the talent to beat the Heat. For the first few months of this season, the Celtics had a motivation issue. Now they have a talent and motivation issue. A series of poor drafts and questionable free agent decisions ensured the Celtics would never be able to build their roster as the Heat have.

Stevens keeps wanting to say what the real issue with the defense is — he doesn’t have the personnel to play quality defense — but he’ll keep his mouth shut.

It’s not that the Celtics want teams to scorch their defense and splash 3-pointers at an alarming rate, but they can’t stop it either. On too many occasions Tuesday night, Duncan Robinson or Tyler Herro or Goran Dragic was left open, so open they were almost laughing as they released dagger jumper after dagger jumper.

This isn’t supposed to be this easy. The Celtics were supposed to be better than this, but a defensive scheme that doesn’t fit the personnel, a smallish point guard that has trouble getting around screens, and a superstar that plays defense too intermittently because he’s consumed with getting foul calls are the problems.

The Celtics don’t take pride in their defense, not like they have in previous years. Too many opposing players have amassed career nights or season-high games against the Celtics. And it’s too late in the season to change schemes. The Celtics just have to hope they provide enough resistance to stay close in games.

That is what this season has been reduced to, and disappointing is an understatement. A team with championship aspirations will be fighting just to claim the seventh seed, forced to play in a contrived tournament just to get extra TV ratings. The Celtics thought they were above such shenanigans, but here they are.

“I’m sure that everybody is kind of writing us off, especially losing JB and the kind of year that it’s been,” Tatum said. “But myself and everybody in that locker room, we’re still fighting, still believe in one another. I think that’s what’s most important, fight until it’s over.”

Gary Washburn can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GwashburnGlobe.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/11/sports/losses-heat-made-it-clear-celtics-just-arent-good-enough-especially-defense/

[kraidstar]

Even Washburn doesn't have the energy to the hapless Cs because of their effort. They're basically just not good enough.

Losses to Heat made it clear: Celtics just aren’t good enough, especially on defense
By Gary Washburn Globe Staff,Updated May 11, 2021, 9 minutes ago



Stevens keeps wanting to say what the real issue with the defense is — he doesn’t have the personnel to play quality defense — but he’ll keep his mouth shut.

It’s not that the Celtics want teams to scorch their defense and splash 3-pointers at an alarming rate, but they can’t stop it either. On too many occasions Tuesday night, Duncan Robinson or Tyler Herro or Goran Dragic was left open, so open they were almost laughing as they released dagger jumper after dagger jumper.

This isn’t supposed to be this easy. The Celtics were supposed to be better than this, but a defensive scheme that doesn’t fit the personnel, a smallish point guard that has trouble getting around screens, and a superstar that plays defense too intermittently because he’s consumed with getting foul calls are the problems.

The Celtics don’t take pride in their defense, not like they have in previous years. Too many opposing players have amassed career nights or season-high games against the Celtics. And it’s too late in the season to change schemes. The Celtics just have to hope they provide enough resistance to stay close in games.



https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/11/sports/losses-heat-made-it-clear-celtics-just-arent-good-enough-especially-defense/

I think this take by Washburn is borderline delusional. All of a sudden Marcus Smart, Tatum, Thompson etc are all defensive stiffs, right? Our roster is very similar to last year's. And this year Rob Williams broke out, and Nesmith has been solid. Tonight, Fournier was racing around like a maniac, making plays.

And yet we still got gashed, and badly.

There is a lack of leadership, effort, comfort, and morale at that end of the court. Part of it is the injuries/Covid/lack of time together due to the weird format this year. But Tatum, Smart, and Walker have been horrible. Brown too. Thompson, like Tatum and Smart, is easily distracted, and his effort comes and goes.

If the Heat can play solid defense with Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro then we should be passable too. Just like we were with Kelly Olynyk, pre-injury Isaiah Thomas, Jordan Crawford, Jared Sullinger, and Tyler Freaking Zeller.

Tired of the excuses for these players. The problems are between the ears and behind the ribcage. they have plenty of talent. But they are a bunch of lethargic clowns out on the court.

[colincb]

Thompson with 3 rebs none Offensive, 2 points and couldn't defend anyone and played 28 minutes. It seems like Parker could've played much better than that or Kornet or Tacko or Tatum at the 5.

Kemba had 7 rebounds....

I think u are on to something..."Tatum at the 5." Due to injuries got to look to change things up.

I just don't understand why Brad kept Thompson in for almost the whole 3rd quarter when he was soooooo Bad. Kornet would've been better, Tacko would've been better. Brad goes with what should work but can't seem to just in real-time. Thompson was the worse player on the floor tonight and yes I know Carsen Edwards stunk.

Honestly I don’t think any center on our team can guard Adebayo. I think even Timelord would have had issues ans been forced to foul. He’s too quick off the dribble for Kornet and Tacko and too big for GWill. I get the feeling of wanting to try something, anything but those guys would have been sonned just as Kardashian was being sonned. Our best defender at the 5 was Theis and Bam punked him last year.

Bam is a challenge, but what killed us tonight was our lack of defense on Duncan Robinson, Kendrick Nunn, Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro.

If you look at those shots, while Dragic's in particular were spot up 3s in the face of a defender (usually Edwards), the others were basically because the Celtics were in rotation because they had had to overhelp in the post due to Miami's dribble penetration or were the result of missed switches (mostly involving Fournier). The lack of a reliable big to protect the rim and fact that Fournier is still learning the defensive scheme led to our problems at the perimeter. It's far too easy to get us into rotation. I'm guessing that's why Brad went with his pipsqueak lineup, so that we would be able to rotate quicker, but then Dragic just kept working his mismatch with Edwards.

We missed Rob Williams significantly tonight, much more than we did Jaylen. It really affected us defensively. Kardashian is too small, Kornet too skinny and GWill too short especially against the likes of Bam and Dedmon. If you combined all 3 of them you might come up with one actual decent NBA player.

Center's may be the biggest issue for the offseason (assuming we can sign RF) if we're going to contend going forward and I'm not sure that TL's return alone can fix it. His defense is iffy at best at this point and fouling guys that go right at him is a problem, though he certainly has room and the talent to improve. TT's not starting-caliber and GW and LK are 3rd-stringers at best. Also, TL has health issues that aren't fully transparent to us.

Al Horford could be available for MS and TT. Then draft a big. Still thinking we could have kept Theis, but he couldn't stop Embiid or Bam either.

[ozgod]

Thompson with 3 rebs none Offensive, 2 points and couldn't defend anyone and played 28 minutes. It seems like Parker could've played much better than that or Kornet or Tacko or Tatum at the 5.

Kemba had 7 rebounds....

I think u are on to something..."Tatum at the 5." Due to injuries got to look to change things up.

I just don't understand why Brad kept Thompson in for almost the whole 3rd quarter when he was soooooo Bad. Kornet would've been better, Tacko would've been better. Brad goes with what should work but can't seem to just in real-time. Thompson was the worse player on the floor tonight and yes I know Carsen Edwards stunk.

Honestly I don’t think any center on our team can guard Adebayo. I think even Timelord would have had issues ans been forced to foul. He’s too quick off the dribble for Kornet and Tacko and too big for GWill. I get the feeling of wanting to try something, anything but those guys would have been sonned just as Kardashian was being sonned. Our best defender at the 5 was Theis and Bam punked him last year.

Bam is a challenge, but what killed us tonight was our lack of defense on Duncan Robinson, Kendrick Nunn, Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro.

If you look at those shots, while Dragic's in particular were spot up 3s in the face of a defender (usually Edwards), the others were basically because the Celtics were in rotation because they had had to overhelp in the post due to Miami's dribble penetration or were the result of missed switches (mostly involving Fournier). The lack of a reliable big to protect the rim and fact that Fournier is still learning the defensive scheme led to our problems at the perimeter. It's far too easy to get us into rotation. I'm guessing that's why Brad went with his pipsqueak lineup, so that we would be able to rotate quicker, but then Dragic just kept working his mismatch with Edwards.

We missed Rob Williams significantly tonight, much more than we did Jaylen. It really affected us defensively. Kardashian is too small, Kornet too skinny and GWill too short especially against the likes of Bam and Dedmon. If you combined all 3 of them you might come up with one actual decent NBA player.

Center's may be the biggest issue for the offseason (assuming we can sign RF) if we're going to contend going forward and I'm not sure that TL's return alone can fix it. His defense is iffy at best at this point and fouling guys that go right at him is a problem, though he certainly has room and the talent to improve. TT's not starting-caliber and GW and LK are 3rd-stringers at best. Also, TL has health issues that aren't fully transparent to us.

Al Horford could be available for MS and TT. Then draft a big. Still thinking we could have kept Theis, but he couldn't stop Embiid or Bam either.

There's really not that many who can...maybe we should have signed Dwight Howard. He seemed to do a decent job smashing Bam around like a rag doll in the Finals last year. But unfortunately those players don't suit Brad's system at all...he doesn't know what to do with them. Brad is a pace and space guy. He doesn't know how to fit in immobile bigs that can't switch like Kanter, Howard...the type of bigs you need to stop Embiid or Bam.

That said, Bam had Kanter for lunch a few times last year in the ECF as well. Just a hard guy to stop. But I agree that the center role has been an issue for us since Horford left. Because there's very few centers that can stop other elite 5s that actually fit Brad's system and are affordable.

[colincb]

Thompson with 3 rebs none Offensive, 2 points and couldn't defend anyone and played 28 minutes. It seems like Parker could've played much better than that or Kornet or Tacko or Tatum at the 5.

Kemba had 7 rebounds....

I think u are on to something..."Tatum at the 5." Due to injuries got to look to change things up.

I just don't understand why Brad kept Thompson in for almost the whole 3rd quarter when he was soooooo Bad. Kornet would've been better, Tacko would've been better. Brad goes with what should work but can't seem to just in real-time. Thompson was the worse player on the floor tonight and yes I know Carsen Edwards stunk.

Honestly I don’t think any center on our team can guard Adebayo. I think even Timelord would have had issues ans been forced to foul. He’s too quick off the dribble for Kornet and Tacko and too big for GWill. I get the feeling of wanting to try something, anything but those guys would have been sonned just as Kardashian was being sonned. Our best defender at the 5 was Theis and Bam punked him last year.

Bam is a challenge, but what killed us tonight was our lack of defense on Duncan Robinson, Kendrick Nunn, Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro.

If you look at those shots, while Dragic's in particular were spot up 3s in the face of a defender (usually Edwards), the others were basically because the Celtics were in rotation because they had had to overhelp in the post due to Miami's dribble penetration or were the result of missed switches (mostly involving Fournier). The lack of a reliable big to protect the rim and fact that Fournier is still learning the defensive scheme led to our problems at the perimeter. It's far too easy to get us into rotation. I'm guessing that's why Brad went with his pipsqueak lineup, so that we would be able to rotate quicker, but then Dragic just kept working his mismatch with Edwards.

We missed Rob Williams significantly tonight, much more than we did Jaylen. It really affected us defensively. Kardashian is too small, Kornet too skinny and GWill too short especially against the likes of Bam and Dedmon. If you combined all 3 of them you might come up with one actual decent NBA player.

Center's may be the biggest issue for the offseason (assuming we can sign RF) if we're going to contend going forward and I'm not sure that TL's return alone can fix it. His defense is iffy at best at this point and fouling guys that go right at him is a problem, though he certainly has room and the talent to improve. TT's not starting-caliber and GW and LK are 3rd-stringers at best. Also, TL has health issues that aren't fully transparent to us.

Al Horford could be available for MS and TT. Then draft a big. Still thinking we could have kept Theis, but he couldn't stop Embiid or Bam either.

There's really not that many who can...maybe we should have signed Dwight Howard. He seemed to do a decent job smashing Bam around like a rag doll in the Finals last year. But unfortunately those players don't suit Brad's system at all...he doesn't know what to do with them. Brad is a pace and space guy. He doesn't know how to fit in immobile bigs that can't switch like Kanter, Howard...the type of bigs you need to stop Embiid or Bam.

That said, Bam had Kanter for lunch a few times last year in the ECF as well. Just a hard guy to stop. But I agree that the center role has been an issue for us since Horford left. Because there's very few centers that can stop other elite 5s that actually fit Brad's system and are affordable.

Al's affordable, available, and amenable to coming back I would think.

[footey]

silver lining:  Grant Williams is our only big who can guard Bam.  Bam destroyed TT last night, but Grant for some reason frustrates Bam. 

[Celtics2021]

silver lining:  Grant Williams is our only big who can guard Bam.  Bam destroyed TT last night, but Grant for some reason frustrates Bam.

He has since high school.

[A Future of Stevens]

silver lining:  Grant Williams is our only big who can guard Bam.  Bam destroyed TT last night, but Grant for some reason frustrates Bam.

He has since high school.

Just a weird combination of strength and mobility?

[liam]

silver lining:  Grant Williams is our only big who can guard Bam.  Bam destroyed TT last night, but Grant for some reason frustrates Bam.

You should let Brad know that. You'd think he would've caught on in the Bubble but....