Celtics (5-0) at Timberwolves (3-2) Game #6 11/6/23

[footey]

JB and JT forgot their new teammate, KP, in the OT.  Hero ball = More of the same (i.e. losing ball).

[Atzar]

Pritchard 0-3 in 20min. 3 shots isn't enough for 20min. Pritchard needs to look for his shot more. A shooter needs to shoot more than that.

He has looked dreadful after a very encouraging preseason.  Struggles to create offense when he's playing on ball, no confidence in his shot when he's playing off ball.  I thought he might be pulling out of it after he lit up Indiana, but apparently that was just garbage time noise. 

He's not as much of a liability when White is in the lineup, but on nights when we're missing one of our guards, he simply has to be better than this or we need to find somebody else. 

[mobilija]

For those saying this is a coaching loss, how so?

Good timeouts, timely challenge, no one fouled out despite early foul trouble, made use of the bench, a timely hack-a-gobert success play. I didn't see bad coaching, please explain.

Joe sitting on his hands watching the Twolves go on a huge run the entire OT would do it. He was doing great up until then, but it was like he mentally checked out as the team melted down in OT.

You get two timeouts for OT. I suppose he coulda used 1 in there to call a play, pretty tuff to stop a suddenly on fire Ant. Dude hit tuff shots and our guys didn't. Players got out played at the end. He may have had a finger in the OT failure but no more than JT or Jaylen or Jrue. But mostly Ant just won it.

Guess Joe has to bat thousand or the loss is on him.

[blink]

For those saying this is a coaching loss, how so?

Good timeouts, timely challenge, no one fouled out despite early foul trouble, made use of the bench, a timely hack-a-gobert success play. I didn't see bad coaching, please explain.

Say what now? Questionable no TO at the end of regulation (a 50/50 call, but could've led to a better shot than what we got) and him sitting on his hands during a 9-0 run in OT without any timeouts or play calling or anything is hardly "good timeouts".

Yeah that stretch in overtime where we were up 2 or 3 to being down 7, that really needed a pause in there to get guys focused on mixing things up defensively against Edwards.

[scaryjerry]

Celtics have already been labeled the best team by far blah blah blah. They’re going to get everyones best shot and all the best players in the game best mvp level games, just the way it is

[Yuckabuck33]

These are the games I plan to focus on during the regular season. They already failed the first test. My god was that some selfish basketball.

I don't understand this "selfish" accusation from people who have no idea what players are thinking. The iso ball and hero ball are just what the coach wants. Matchup hunting was the main offense for the 2016 Cavs and the 2023 Celtics too apparently.

[radiohead]

That’s the game. Minny has beaten both Boston and Denver at home. This team is legit. We needed a loss like this to bring us back to earth. The season is long. On to the next.

Other then Miami it’s the only good team we have played and we lost

That’s why we needed a loss like this. For a while there we were feeling “invincible”.

If they thought they were invincible then they’re the same ole Celtics. It was pretty obvious they hadn’t beaten anybody or done anything, they struggled to beat a mid tier Knicks and Miami team and blew out some of the worst teams I’ve seen in years

It’s a disappointing loss I agree. But I still feel good about our chances this year.

[Yuckabuck33]

For those saying this is a coaching loss, how so?

Good timeouts, timely challenge, no one fouled out despite early foul trouble, made use of the bench, a timely hack-a-gobert success play. I didn't see bad coaching, please explain.

Joe sitting on his hands watching the Twolves go on a huge run the entire OT would do it. He was doing great up until then, but it was like he mentally checked out as the team melted down in OT.

You get two timeouts for OT. I suppose he coulda used 1 in there to call a play, pretty tuff to stop a suddenly on fire Ant. Dude hit tuff shots and our guys didn't. Players got out played at the end. He may have had a finger in the OT failure but no more than JT or Jaylen or Jrue. But mostly Ant just won it.

Guess Joe has to bat thousand or the loss is on him.

No, he just has to do what any other self-respecting coach would do- call a timeout and set up a play. He learned nothing from last year's criticism and really does seem to be afraid to coach in crunch time.

[CelticSooner]

These are the games I plan to focus on during the regular season. They already failed the first test. My god was that some selfish basketball.

I don't understand this "selfish" accusation from people who have no idea what players are thinking. The iso ball and hero ball are just what the coach wants. Matchup hunting was the main offense for the 2016 Cavs and the 2023 Celtics too apparently.

Go ahead and matchup hunt when you have one of the greatest basketball players ever that can get to the FT line any time he wants. We’ve seen the J’s try to fade away themselves into a title for years, it is never going to work.

[Muzzy66]

Firstly, this is a very talented Timberwolves team.

Secondly, they probably match up better with us then most NBA teams.  Tatum and Porzingis are likely our two toughest matchups for most teams, and the Wolves are one of the few teams who have a big long/mobile to challenge Porzingis (Gobert) and a scorer skilled and talented enough to go head-to-head with Tatum.

Thirdly, we were missing White, who has been huge for us this year.

When you factor in all of the above, a tightly fought loss in overtime is not a result I'm happy with, but it's a result I can live with.

It also did give us a chance to see what out main boys can do when they do come up against a team that can push them to the limits, and unfortunately Tatum, Brown and Holiday all looked like they gave up on team play and resorted to hero ball more than I would like.  Hopefully a lesson to be learnt here.

[Goldstar88]

C’s shot 39% from the field and 28% from 3PT. Minnesota was 52% from the field and 35% from 3pt That’s why Boston lost. Not because of lack of timeouts.

[Muzzy66]

For those saying this is a coaching loss, how so?

Good timeouts, timely challenge, no one fouled out despite early foul trouble, made use of the bench, a timely hack-a-gobert success play. I didn't see bad coaching, please explain.

Joe sitting on his hands watching the Twolves go on a huge run the entire OT would do it. He was doing great up until then, but it was like he mentally checked out as the team melted down in OT.

You get two timeouts for OT. I suppose he coulda used 1 in there to call a play, pretty tuff to stop a suddenly on fire Ant. Dude hit tuff shots and our guys didn't. Players got out played at the end. He may have had a finger in the OT failure but no more than JT or Jaylen or Jrue. But mostly Ant just won it.

Guess Joe has to bat thousand or the loss is on him.

No, he just has to do what any other self-respecting coach would do- call a timeout and set up a play. He learned nothing from last year's criticism and really does seem to be afraid to coach in crunch time.

It's almost like he's doing it on purpose our of stubbornness - like he wants to PROVE that not calling a timeout is actually the right move and is going to keep on doing it until it goes his way.

[mobilija]

For those saying this is a coaching loss, how so?

Good timeouts, timely challenge, no one fouled out despite early foul trouble, made use of the bench, a timely hack-a-gobert success play. I didn't see bad coaching, please explain.

Say what now? Questionable no TO at the end of regulation (a 50/50 call, but could've led to a better shot than what we got) and him sitting on his hands during a 9-0 run in OT without any timeouts or play calling or anything is hardly "good timeouts".

The full game, talking about the full game. He used plenty of re-focusing and run stopping timeouts. I recognized it at the time but there is no way i can rember/describe the exact circumstance. The end of regulation non-timeout...meh, can go either way. Agree, one durring OT woulda been good. But that hardly makes this a coaching loss.

[ozgod]

When asked if he didn’t call timeout down 5 in OT because he wanted the team to “figure it out” Joe said he didn’t call timeout with a 5 pt game with 2 min to go  because he said he wanted to have 2 timeouts with 40 sec to go take advantage of 2 for 1s to extend the game and stay out of need 3 situations. Says at 2 min to go down 5 there’s no need to call a timeout, you run a set, you get points, there’s plenty of game left

[mobilija]

When asked if he didn’t call timeout down 5 in OT because he wanted the team to “figure it out” Joe said he didn’t call timeout with a 5 pt game with 2 min to go  because he said he wanted to have 2 timeouts with 40 sec to go take advantage of 2 for 1s to extend the game and stay out of need 3 situations. Says at 2 min to go down 5 there’s no need to call a timeout, you run a set, you get points, there’s plenty of game left

Sounds reasonable to me. At least there is a reason.