Doc's Straw Men

[ZoSo]

Unlike many Celtics fans, I like Doc.

His rotations occasionally cause me to raise an eyebrow, but, for the most part, I'm on board.

However, the article in today's Herald where he addresses his critics doesn't pass the sniff test, at least in part.

Take the Glen Davis reference.

Doc said something like, "I put Glen Davis in, he produces, and immediately everyone says 'I told you so.'" But after the next game, Doc pointed out, his critics remained mum when Davis failed to produce despite significant minutes.

I'll admit I haven't read everything Celtics-related in print or watched everything Celtics-related on TV. But I’ve read and watched my share.

His critics were urging him to play Glen Davis more?

What critics said this?

Everything I read said BBD wasn't ready for prime-time and the general consensus was that everyone wanted more Powe. Personally, I either favor BBD slightly or am willing to alternate the two depending on match-ups and performance, and I wasn't even clamoring for more BBD.

This just sounds like Doc tilting at a straw man.

[Roy Hobbs]

Yeah...  if anything, most of Doc's critics were saying BBD should play *less*, and that the Game 5 performance was fool's gold.  Which it was. 

In that particular game, Doc's hunch paid off, and he was smart to stick with Baby.  That doesn't mean playing BBD was the logical move at the time; it wasn't. 

In Game 6, Doc shouldn't have relied upon him too much (and most fans wouldn't have played him at all), and Doc certainly shouldn't have left him in the game while he was spitting the bit down the stretch.

I also disagree with Doc's justification for the Cassell move.  When something is working well all year, you don't suddenly change it for the playoffs.  When a player is in your top eight players all year, you don't suddenly yank him out of the rotation for the playoffs. 

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

Doc can try the "woe is me" game all he wants, but he's paid $5 million per year to make good decisions.  The fact that we're 97 games into the season and Doc is just now figuring out which players to play consistent minutes is disconcerting.

[ZoSo]

I also disagree with Doc's justification for the Cassell move.  When something is working well all year, you don't suddenly change it for the playoffs.

++

Hopefully, Doc won't be tempted to mess with House's minutes. Cassell should understand that he is an insurance policy at this point, and 0-17 was a problem.

House is a very good bench guy, energy, points, and some D.

[timpiker]

Whenever the C's lose, Doc has critics that always complain that he made the wrong decisions no matter.  Its all over various C's forums.  I was surprised to see Doc even saying anything about it.  Apparently he reads these forums.

[Chris]

Ummm, Doc didn't actually say that stuff, that was said by Bulpett.  Here is the part I am assuming you are referring to:

That’s something about which reasonable basketball people can reasonably disagree. Rivers even accepts this. What he’s not so fond of is the picking apart of each move. To wit: According to the followers, he finally smartened up and played Glen Davis in Game 5 against the Cavaliers. Davis responded with a nice six points in 12 minutes. But when Rivers went back to Davis two nights later in Cleveland and Big Baby wasn’t nearly as efficient, well, the coach simply left him in too long.

“Thank God . . . we played P.J. in Game 7, huh?” Rivers said. “You know?

“My point is, I don’t have to defend myself to anybody, and I’m not. People can say what they want. Anyone can. But the bottom line is that everyone loves the backup quarterback. And as a coach, I understand that.”

That sounds more like Bulpett putting words into his mouth than anything. 

[BudweiserCeltic]

Yeah...  if anything, most of Doc's critics were saying BBD should play *less*, and that the Game 5 performance was fool's gold.  Which it was. 

In that particular game, Doc's hunch paid off, and he was smart to stick with Baby.  That doesn't mean playing BBD was the logical move at the time; it wasn't. 

In Game 6, Doc shouldn't have relied upon him too much (and most fans wouldn't have played him at all), and Doc certainly shouldn't have left him in the game while he was spitting the bit down the stretch.

I also disagree with Doc's justification for the Cassell move.  When something is working well all year, you don't suddenly change it for the playoffs.  When a player is in your top eight players all year, you don't suddenly yank him out of the rotation for the playoffs. 

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

Doc can try the "woe is me" game all he wants, but he's paid $5 million per year to make good decisions.  The fact that we're 97 games into the season and Doc is just now figuring out which players to play consistent minutes is disconcerting.

The problem is that Doc is quite accurate on how some critics responded to Baby's game... that it doesn't apply to you doesn't make it less true.  I know you've always been a Powe guy yourself, but he isn't the logial move either... that's the problem Doc is facing, there's no logical move regarding these two guys. He has shortened his rotations even more as the playoffs have gone along regarding the big men, and that's all due to the emergence of PJ Brown, a player that many here were questioning the amount of minutes he had been getting earlier in the playoffs. Even so, I'm sure Doc would love to keep PJ's minutes down and be able to count on Powe or Davis consistently, but they haven't been consistent.

The Cassell move is a bit more tricky because here you are bringing a guy that has proven himself in the playoffs time and time again, so yeah it's easy to see why you would give him the chance over House.  House, a player that NO COACH has given a legitimate chance in the playoffs. And don't forget, that House was quite shaky finishing up the season, if I remember correctly. And even now, playing as well as he has, is really still not the clear choice mainly because you saw how he was in Detroit, utterly ineffective.  Thank god for the emergance of Pierce as a point forward, something that he hasn't been good at through his career. I'll be the first to admit that the way House has played these playoffs has been better than what I expected, even so the decision is not as clear cut as you guys are making it out to be. It simply isn't. It wasn't long ago where Cassell had that heroic game against Cleveland, and pretty much EVERYONE here felt that Cassell was the man. Three games later Doc took him out of the rotation, that's not an easy thing to do considering the situation.

I'll say this though, he gave Cassell too many chances for my liking, he should've inserted House earlier... but you have to put yourself in his shoes and try to understand why things are the way they are and why things happen the way they do. Cassell was brought in by Ainge and company because they EXPECTED him to be Rondo's back-up over House. It was his position to lose, which he did... not House's regardless of how you feel about the matter.

And as much as I've liked House this year, it "hasn't been working well all year" as you put it. It's completely false because our bench killed us in many games because of House's inability to run an offense, which is fine because he brings a lot of energy and does move the ball, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that he's the clear answer for a back-up PG. He isn't, and you saw why in that first game against Detroit. All year most of the threads in this forum have been about how we needed another back-up PG... that we loved House's energy, but that he really wasn't PG material... so don't make it sound like it was all fine with him. It wasn't.

And I'll also say this, it doesn't help matters when Rondo is playing incosistent himself, and you feel forced to go to your backup PG... which has happened quite a lot. But I'll admit this, earlier in the playoffs he wasn't playing Rondo enough when he was indeed playing good. Doc is sticking with him more as of late when he does play good.

In conclusion, I understand why people weren't happy with the House/Cassell situation, but people also need to understant the circumstances that led to that situation, and I don't see many here willing to aknowledge it. The Powe/Davis situation, I for the most part disagree with your assesment of what you've felt for the most part, that Powe is deserving of big minutes during the playoffs.  My main problem with Doc's complaints is that people are bashing him simply because he's not playing the player you'd like him to play. That's not a good enough reason. I would love to see some of Tony, especially when we were against Cleveland and we weren't penetrating, but I'm not going to sit here typing away how Doc sucks for not playing him because I understand the reasons why he didn't do so. I see little effort from Doc's critics to afford him that curtesy.

[nickagneta]

One quote he made that I think speaks volumes about Boston sports fans especially, but also sports fans in general is this:

"My point is, I don’t have to defend myself to anybody, and I’m not. People can say what they want. Anyone can. But the bottom line is that everyone loves the backup quarterback. And as a coach, I understand that.”

He's right. He's absolutely right. Whenever things start to even smell like they are going to go bad people start yammering for the backup, or in this case, the backups's backup.

There wasn't a ton of people calling for BBD off the bench before that game 5 in Cleveland, but there was a decent amount who were. And that call for BBD was going on from all the way back to the game 3 loss to Atlanta. I'm not going to go back and find every post written here between game 3 Atlanta and game 5 Cleveland, but there was a call for BBD whenever Powe, or Brown or Perk was doing poorly.

I'm not saying it reached the cresendo that was the Sam/Eddie debate, but there were people in all type of Doc complaint threads questioning why BBD wasn't playing more or at all.

So if there was some here I will assume there was some in a lot of other places too.

People here were screaming for adjustments after every loss. Screaming. Doc made one concerning Davis and for one game it paid off. The next game Doc is an idiot for making an adjustment.

I think it's time for people here to realize and admit to themselves that they have an obvious bias against Doc and will only see every move he makes in a negative light and blame him for everything that goes wrong.

Just admit it. You can't look at anything he does objectively because your bias against him is so strong.

And I don't want to hear that mine is too because I'll show you dozens of my posts where I have admitted Doc's mistakes and even said that he should be fired if he did not reach this point in the playoffs. As I have said many times, I don't think Doc is a great coach, good, but not great. And he does a bunch of things that I question and don't like. But I support him. In that I am biased. I support the Celtics and their coaches.

By Doc's comments he knows there is a vast amount of people who don't support him and feel they have to pick apart everything he's done.

But as another coach in this city says "you are what you are". And right now Doc is a coach that has gotten his team a one game lead in the ECF. Does that make him great or perfect. Hell no.

But it makes him a Celtic that knows and now has acknowledged that he feels the wide amount of questioning and criticism and derision and worse that people have towards him. That makes him human and he fired back.

He's human for feeling the stuff thrown his way and he's human for addressing it. Can we now be human enough to acknowledge that he's right?

[wdleehi]

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

That is the part that bothers me the most.  The trying to do the rotation on the fly.  The mixing and matching of bench players to starters that has been going on in the 1st 2 rounds.


I do hope he has finally settled on a rotation.  And, please, don't have him panic when the Pistons win a game and come out the next game with a different rotational pattern. 


One last thing, I think he did a terrible job getting Cassell ready to be part of this team for the playoffs.  During the regular season, the majority of Cassell time came with the entire bench.  Few minutes with the starters.  His role was to be shooter and scorer.  Come playoff time, that's all he was prepared to do even when better options were in. 

You like to hope his experience would have better prepared him, but it didn't. 

[winsomme]

the thing that is fool's gold is the idea of "figuring out the rotation"...

in the playoffs, matchups determine who plays and who does not play and often that is something that is determined as a series plays out...

Doc should have gone to House earlier in the CLE series, but that being said, Sam had key perfomances in the first two games of that series....if Eddie was in there, we don't know if we would have won either of those games....

as usual, there is a ton of revisionist history and wrong-minded thinking going on around here about Doc....

Doc stuck with PJ even when it looked like Father Time had caught up with him, and now the argument of the Doc critics is that he should have figured that out sooner...

there is very little accountability here on the part of these critics. the goalposts move so frequently for them that i don't even think they know what their position is any more.....other than if there is something to criticize, i will figure out a way to blame it on Doc....

[winsomme]

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

That is the part that bothers me the most.  The trying to do the rotation on the fly.  The mixing and matching of bench players to starters that has been going on in the 1st 2 rounds.


I do hope he has finally settled on a rotation.  And, please, don't have him panic when the Pistons win a game and come out the next game with a different rotational pattern. 


One last thing, I think he did a terrible job getting Cassell ready to be part of this team for the playoffs.  During the regular season, the majority of Cassell time came with the entire bench.  Few minutes with the starters.  His role was to be shooter and scorer.  Come playoff time, that's all he was prepared to do even when better options were in. 

You like to hope his experience would have better prepared him, but it didn't. 

so you wanted Cassell playing with the starters over Rondo?

and you are criticizing Doc for in the matter of weeks not reinventing Sam Cassell into a pass first PG when his whole career has been predicated on him working off his ability to score...

[crownsy]

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

That is the part that bothers me the most.  The trying to do the rotation on the fly.  The mixing and matching of bench players to starters that has been going on in the 1st 2 rounds.


I do hope he has finally settled on a rotation.  And, please, don't have him panic when the Pistons win a game and come out the next game with a different rotational pattern. 


One last thing, I think he did a terrible job getting Cassell ready to be part of this team for the playoffs.  During the regular season, the majority of Cassell time came with the entire bench.  Few minutes with the starters.  His role was to be shooter and scorer.  Come playoff time, that's all he was prepared to do even when better options were in. 

You like to hope his experience would have better prepared him, but it didn't. 

so you wanted Cassell playing with the starters over Rondo?

and you are criticizing Doc for in the matter of weeks not reinventing Sam Cassell into a pass first PG when his whole career has been predicated on him working off his ability to score...

in meangless games? sure why not?

that, i was told by doc and the comcast talking heads, was the great advantage of locking up homecourt so early, the ablity to work guys into grooves they might see during the playoffs.

why wouldn't it have been a good idea to put sam out with starters while rondo rested for a half or something? what if tonight rondo gets 2 quick fouls, and eddies ineffective? would have been good thinking to get sam some minutes with the starters in a meangless game then wouldnt it?

Roy's point is, and its justified, that doc had 3 weeks to work on playoff rotations. instead, he played eddie his normal minutes, and played sam short minutes outside a few games. then, come playoff time, its eddie benched and sam in for 15?

why would you not use 5 or 6 of those worthless games at the end of the season to work sam into that role? and why play eddie extended minutes during those sam meangless games and then bench him without even telling him before hand, as he brought up to the globe?

[winsomme]

We had roughly three weeks of garbage time where Doc could have made those adjustments to the rotation to prepare everyone for their role, and he didn't.  That was poor decision making.  Leaving Sam in the rotation when he was roughly 0-for-88 on the road was a poor decision, as well.  Results matter.

That is the part that bothers me the most.  The trying to do the rotation on the fly.  The mixing and matching of bench players to starters that has been going on in the 1st 2 rounds.


I do hope he has finally settled on a rotation.  And, please, don't have him panic when the Pistons win a game and come out the next game with a different rotational pattern. 


One last thing, I think he did a terrible job getting Cassell ready to be part of this team for the playoffs.  During the regular season, the majority of Cassell time came with the entire bench.  Few minutes with the starters.  His role was to be shooter and scorer.  Come playoff time, that's all he was prepared to do even when better options were in. 

You like to hope his experience would have better prepared him, but it didn't. 

so you wanted Cassell playing with the starters over Rondo?

and you are criticizing Doc for in the matter of weeks not reinventing Sam Cassell into a pass first PG when his whole career has been predicated on him working off his ability to score...

in meangless games? sure why not?

that, i was told by doc and the comcast talking heads, was the great advantage of locking up homecourt so early, the ablity to work guys into grooves they might see during the playoffs.

why wouldn't it have been a good idea to put sam out with starters while rondo rested? what if tonight rondo gets 2 quick fouls, and eddies ineffective? would have been good thinkinging to get sam some minutes with the starters in a meangless game then wouldnt it?

i'm talking about the playoffs...wdleehi seems to be complaining that Sam isn't playing with the starters in the playoffs....

and also the nature of the complaint that Doc didn't somehow turn Sam into a pass first PG in the final weeks of the season when he has made a tremendous career of not being that..

[crownsy]

i think his point was that doc didnt prephare sam to play with the starters, he was talking in his post about how doc didn't play sam with the starters to prephare him during the regular season...

[winsomme]

i think his point was that doc didnt prephare sam to play with the starters, he was talking in his post about how doc didn't play sam with the starters to prephare him during the regular season...

if that was his point it still doesn't make sense because the point of playing him with the starters would have been to turn Sam into a pass first PG which is an absurd thing to blame Doc for not doing.

Sam's game is not going to change at this point in his career.

i mean there are so many things wrong with this criticism, i'm not sure which to focus on....

the bottom line is, Sam's struggles in the CLE series have little to do with his PT with the starters in the regular season and more to do with Gibson being a bad matchup for him on the defensive end and Sam's slow down game actually played into CLEs hands on the offensive end.

no amount of PT with the starters was going to make Sam the right matchup in the CLE series...

[BudweiserCeltic]

i think his point was that doc didnt prephare sam to play with the starters, he was talking in his post about how doc didn't play sam with the starters to prephare him during the regular season...

I'd still argue that he played most of his minutes with bench players during the playoffs, so the critique here is not really that relevant. Did he play with more starters more often during the playoffs? Sure, but he still played very limited minutes with our starters, so his struggles with the Celtics has nothing to do with this.

And i'd say this too, when he played with the starters, they looked quite good for the most part together, so I don't agree with the assesment of our offensive struggles due to Cassell not being prepared enough with our starters.

And as winsomme stated, Cassell is what he is.