Charlie Rosen: "If the Celtics can't repeat, it's their own fault"

[BballTim]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

  Your argument doesn't hold up in the least. You have no trouble crediting Cassell with being instrumental in some of our wins (including blowout wins) but then you say it's grossly unfair to blame him when he played poorly in close games that we lost. Surely you must see how one-sided that position is. He helped lose as many games as he helped win.

[brownbagger]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

and you don't know for a fact that Eddie would not have played better.
 Doc decisions were not solely made on Eddie's poor performance before  playoff time.He just didn't utilize

his rotations in the right way for a couple of series.Once Doc figured it out things changed.If he was basing

playing Eddie on a bad pre-playoff month, i saw a few other players sucking during that time,but the playoffs

is the playoffs and if you remember there wasn't any clearcut rotations being used,or did you forget that?

[ManUp]

The Bad news is that our bench is all question marks with the exception of Eddie House. The good news is that the problems concerning this team seem to be coming from question marks about the bench. It's a strenght and a weakness I guess.

In my opinion, If our bench can play the same type of defense that last seasons bench did we'll be all right. The success of the 07-08 team's bench (and team as a whole) was based on their ability to defend as a team. The difference between the starting lineup and the bench is that the bench is just there to buy time for the starters. In my opinon, the bench only needs to worry about playing defense, and keep things manageable for the starters. The starters are the ones who will go out and win the games for us.

I think as long as this team can get the players to buy into the system everything will work out.

[nickagneta]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

  Your argument doesn't hold up in the least. You have no trouble crediting Cassell with being instrumental in some of our wins (including blowout wins) but then you say it's grossly unfair to blame him when he played poorly in close games that we lost. Surely you must see how one-sided that position is. He helped lose as many games as he helped win.

Your statements are easy to make yet hard to prove.

Game 3 in Atlanta where the Celtics lost by 9 when early in the second half the starters fell behind by 10 and the team never recovered. The game that Pierce and Ray Allen went 10 for 27 with 4 turnovers is a game you want to say Cassell helped lose even though he shot only 1 for 4 and 3 rebounds and 2 assists in 16 minutes?

Game 4 in Atlanta where the Celtics loss 97-92 and Pierce and Garnett went 13 for 34 with 6 turnovers in 78 minutes is a loss you want to say Sam was responsible for when he played seven minutes?

Game 6 in Atlanta where the Celtic loss a tight game when they couldn't stop the Atlanta front court from running roughshod over them in the second half and where Rondo, KG, and Ray Allen shot a combined 20 for 50 is a game to blame on Cassell when he had the best +/- on the team and took only 1 shot in the second half is his fault?

Game 3 in Cleveland, a 24 point loss must have been all Cassell's fault?

Game 4 in Cleveland an 88-77 loss where the team shot 38% from the field and 20% from 3 and where the only player that played anywhere near as good as they usually did was Rondo was Cassell's fault? He was only one of many.

Game 6 in Cleveland where the Celtics loss 74-69 and Sam Cassell didn't even play must definitely be his fault.

From that point forward Sam barely played ringing up 3 DNP-CDs in the final 12 games while averaging less than 10 minutes per game in the games he did play.

There's my proof to the statement that Sam's performance really wasn't responsible for the losses?

Does my statement hold up now?

[incoherent]

The only difference in liking this offseason and not liking it so far comes down to whether or not you liked the Posey 4 year deal because that is the only thing that has happened.

When you win a championship you normally don't blow your team up the next year with lots of trades and moves...

Sorry but this just is not true.

I happen to like the fact that they didn't sign Posey to what he wanted. And I also happen to think the best thing for this team would have been to let Allen and possibly House walk and use the money to entice a quality big like Kurt Thomas, a player in the mold of Roger Mason or Janero Pargo, and then a defensive SF in the mold of Matt Barnes or Mickael Pietrus.

I don't think adding three veterans of that caliber would be anymore upsetting to the overall chemistry of this team as adding POB, Miles, House and Allen would have. I think it would have given this team a much better blend of veterans and youth and also would have easily narrowed down Doc's options for a rotation and helped to develop the rookies and Pruitt at a better pace than baptism by fire that will occur this year when Doc is moving players in out and around the rotations trying to figure out who is going tobe the most effective 8-12 men on the bench.

And I know I'm no the only one that feels this way. Dissatisfaction with this season goes a lot further than just James Posey and, at least in my case, really has very little to nothing to do with Posey.

You are disappointing because you wanted players we can not afford.

Mickael Pietrus $5,200,000
Kurt Thomas $4,200,000
Janero Pargo $3,200,000


House, Allen, POB, and Miles combined signed for $7,500,000 combined. (5 mil of it is House + Allen)

I think you try and do the best you can with the real amount of money you actually have to spend. 


Be honest, had we let Eddie House walk and not pay him 2.5mil for this yea and next (which is a really good deal) then we would all be at Danny's throat.  Why is no one mentioning this signing? This was a great move. No one mentions it.


Now I'll be honest and say if Kurt Thomas would ever come here which he wouldn't and we could have gotten him for 2 years at 9 mil instead of signing Tony Allen, Darius Miles and POB then I say we are making a pretty risky move.  It could definitely work, Thomas is a great player and would fit in great with our other vets. ----- But it is with out a doubt very risky due to his age and the money we'd be spending v. the potential talent and youth we'd give up. 

We already did that, last year, we gave up the youth we wanted for the veterans we wanted.  We have really amazing HOF veterans.. we honestly need to overpay for a a slew of more veterans?

I say, let our future HOFers HELP the youth we are developing.  Use them to your advantage.  Take advantage of the winning environment and work ethic of your all stars to improve your youth.

Look at how fast BBD and Powe came along... Pruitt didn't see time but he dominated the few days he spent in D-League because he spent all camp practicing with a championship team.

We are set up for developing youth, Clifford Ray is amazing.  Why not use him?? Why not sign POB dirt cheap and hope for the best. Chances are something good will come from it. 


I just think maybe, nick, you want too much.  And you haven't considered the possibility of us finding another great player in our youth like we have consistently each season.

[incoherent]

You can analyze Sam Cassell all you want.  The bottom line is he is a jacker and is the last thing we need on this team.

Of course someone who is a jacker is going to eventually get hot and win you a game... the downside of being a jacker is what Sam showed us about 75% of the time.

Stop pretending Cassell was a good move, it clearly was not. And it was smart to quickly say 'bye bye' and resign Eddie House as he's a much better player.

[BballTim]

You ignored 5 of the 14 picks? 



Can't do that.

Davis, Powe and Gomes didn't play a lot of their rookie season.  (Powe had long stretches where he didn't play in his 2nd season)




Last year, Rondo and Perkins were starting caliber players.  They just had to prove it.  Both had had some past success.


Posey was better last year then anyone on this years bench.





The Celtics are still the best team in the East.  But they did not help themselves out this offseason.  They created a bench with to many question marks, and no past history of being OK.

Ahhhh. But think of the potential wd, think of the potential.

Of course, 40 cents and potential can't even buy you an issue of the Boston Globe.

  It's a little early in the season to buy the argument that we'll get little if any contribution from any of the young players.

That's not the argument.

The argument is did the Celtics put themselves in a good position not having enough guys on the bench you know will contribute right away?

  It's not the stated argument. It's the argument that has to be assumed that everyone's unwilling to state. You (and others) throw around statements like "Do they have a track record that says they can?" to force people who are defending the bench to do so without assuming any contribution from the younger players without your actually stating that we won't get any production from them.

  Maybe it's just me, but don't the statements that "Ainge has lessened our chances of winning the title" and "this year's bench won't perform nearly as well as last year's bench" go hand in hand? There's only a big hole in our roster at backup sf if you assume that Giddens and Walker and a combo of both Allens at sg/sf or even Miles are all incapable of backing up Pierce.

[BballTim]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

  Your argument doesn't hold up in the least. You have no trouble crediting Cassell with being instrumental in some of our wins (including blowout wins) but then you say it's grossly unfair to blame him when he played poorly in close games that we lost. Surely you must see how one-sided that position is. He helped lose as many games as he helped win.

Your statements are easy to make yet hard to prove.

Game 3 in Atlanta where the Celtics lost by 9 when early in the second half the starters fell behind by 10 and the team never recovered. The game that Pierce and Ray Allen went 10 for 27 with 4 turnovers is a game you want to say Cassell helped lose even though he shot only 1 for 4 and 3 rebounds and 2 assists in 16 minutes?

Game 4 in Atlanta where the Celtics loss 97-92 and Pierce and Garnett went 13 for 34 with 6 turnovers in 78 minutes is a loss you want to say Sam was responsible for when he played seven minutes?

Game 6 in Atlanta where the Celtic loss a tight game when they couldn't stop the Atlanta front court from running roughshod over them in the second half and where Rondo, KG, and Ray Allen shot a combined 20 for 50 is a game to blame on Cassell when he had the best +/- on the team and took only 1 shot in the second half is his fault?

Game 3 in Cleveland, a 24 point loss must have been all Cassell's fault?

Game 4 in Cleveland an 88-77 loss where the team shot 38% from the field and 20% from 3 and where the only player that played anywhere near as good as they usually did was Rondo was Cassell's fault? He was only one of many.

Game 6 in Cleveland where the Celtics loss 74-69 and Sam Cassell didn't even play must definitely be his fault.

From that point forward Sam barely played ringing up 3 DNP-CDs in the final 12 games while averaging less than 10 minutes per game in the games he did play.

There's my proof to the statement that Sam's performance really wasn't responsible for the losses?

Does my statement hold up now?

  You're simply applying different standards to "good Sam" and "bad Sam". Obviously none of the losses were completely Sam's fault. But which of the wins were solely because of Sam? If you're going so far as to credit Sam with wins when he plays well in a blowout win you also have to credit him with a loss when he plays poorly and the Celts lose.

  And do you really need to resort to statements like "Game 6 in Cleveland where the Celtics loss 74-69 and Sam Cassell didn't even play must definitely be his fault."? Because I could probably be just as ridiculous.

[nickagneta]

You can analyze Sam Cassell all you want.  The bottom line is he is a jacker and is the last thing we need on this team.

Of course someone who is a jacker is going to eventually get hot and win you a game... the downside of being a jacker is what Sam showed us about 75% of the time.

Stop pretending Cassell was a good move, it clearly was not. And it was smart to quickly say 'bye bye' and resign Eddie House as he's a much better player.

Perhaps, just perhaps, you might want to actually take a minute or two and read my posts before trying to say that I am saying things that I am not saying. If you took the time to actually read my posts you will see that I never said once ever that Sam Cassell was a good move, quite the opposite I have used the words Awful, Pathetic and Sucked to describe his overall; play as a Celtic.

I also said if you actually took the time to read my posts, that I would never want him back here. I like Eddie House and think he got a bit of a shaft toward the end of the year and i the playoffs.

But unlike you, I can be objective about speaking about how he was playing at the time and what Cassell did for us in the 3-4 games he did play well. Eddie was instrumental in getting us to where we were last year and had an overall very good season. I'm glad to see him back, that and the Walker signing are two of the additions to this years team I really don't have too much of a problem with. But I am not blind and can see a slump and bad play when I see it and Eddie wasn't playing well at the end of the season.

Also, you are correct the salaries those players I mentioned got was more than we could afford. But I still would have tried for those players and for players of their type and change the style of play to a style this team played much better in last year. We could have afford two of them and then got a vet minimum elsewhere. I wouldn't have taken on projects and hopefuls and near cripples on the small chance one might turn into something when I could have had a known commodity.

[nickagneta]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

  Your argument doesn't hold up in the least. You have no trouble crediting Cassell with being instrumental in some of our wins (including blowout wins) but then you say it's grossly unfair to blame him when he played poorly in close games that we lost. Surely you must see how one-sided that position is. He helped lose as many games as he helped win.

Then show me how ridiculous I am being. Describe the games where I said Sam was important and responsible in those wins and prove me wrong.

You are making blanket statements without backing up anything you are claiming. You claimed that Sam was responsible for losses. I showed that he either wasn't or his contribution to the loss was mearly insignificant when compared to other players. At worst he was only as responsible as everyone else.

I mentioned 4 games where Sam's contributions were important, one of the more important ones on the team. Show me where I'm wrong instead of these blanket statements you keep making BBall. I respect where you are coming from but you aren't backing up a thing you are saying where I am after you all but called my opinion slighted, selective, and crazy.

[incoherent]

You can analyze Sam Cassell all you want.  The bottom line is he is a jacker and is the last thing we need on this team.

Of course someone who is a jacker is going to eventually get hot and win you a game... the downside of being a jacker is what Sam showed us about 75% of the time.

Stop pretending Cassell was a good move, it clearly was not. And it was smart to quickly say 'bye bye' and resign Eddie House as he's a much better player.

Perhaps, just perhaps, you might want to actually take a minute or two and read my posts before trying to say that I am saying things that I am not saying. If you took the time to actually read my posts you will see that I never said once ever that Sam Cassell was a good move, quite the opposite I have used the words Awful, Pathetic and Sucked to describe his overall; play as a Celtic.

I also said if you actually took the time to read my posts, that I would never want him back here. I like Eddie House and think he got a bit of a shaft toward the end of the year and i the playoffs.

But unlike you, I can be objective about speaking about how he was playing at the time and what Cassell did for us in the 3-4 games he did play well. Eddie was instrumental in getting us to where we were last year and had an overall very good season. I'm glad to see him back, that and the Walker signing are two of the additions to this years team I really don't have too much of a problem with. But I am not blind and can see a slump and bad play when I see it and Eddie wasn't playing well at the end of the season.

Also, you are correct the salaries those players I mentioned got was more than we could afford. But I still would have tried for those players and for players of their type and change the style of play to a style this team played much better in last year. We could have afford two of them and then got a vet minimum elsewhere. I wouldn't have taken on projects and hopefuls and near cripples on the small chance one might turn into something when I could have had a known commodity.

Sorry that post you quoted of mine is not directed at you. I was just ranting.

[BballTim]

First off I want to discuss this misconception so many have about a young player coming back and being even better than they were the year before. Apparently none of you have ever heard the expression "the sophomore jinx". That's when a player in their second year who had success as a rookie takes a step back and plays worse the next year.

Oh, you have heard of it. I thought you might have.

There's a reason for the expression and it's because it is a very common phenomenon. It happens all the time. And not to just 2nd year players. Sometimes players that have a good couple of years then have a bad one or even a couple of bad years before rebounding back strong.

Remember Al Jefferson's second year. Not quite a thing of beauty. Remember the roller coaster that was Chauncey Billups his first few years. Look how promising Marcus Williams was thought of after his first year in Jersey. He came back with an awful year last year.

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here but let's not jump to what ifs about some older players but all but guarantee that our younger players will come back better simply because they are a year older. It doesn't work that way with young guys all the time. 5+ year veterans are always more consistent.

Also, Sam Cassell sucked in his time as a Celtic. But he was brought in to win playoff games and he was instrumental in the outcome of five victories early on in Atlanta and Cleveland.

His first two games versus Atlanta he was one of the only players off the bench that could put the ball in the hoop and was needed desperately in both games when Rondo went sour fast.

Game 1 Cleveland he scored 13 huge points to help win that game. Without Sam coming in in the first quarter of Game 2 of that series and hitting some shots and steadying the troops and running the offense, the Celtics get blown away early. He helped turn a rout into a lopsided affair in the other direction when that game was looking to be getting out of hand early.

Sam was pretty awful to down right pathetic after that but he helped this team win games they had to win in two seven game series.

Don't let your memory fail you simply because you want to make a point. Sam sucked but he did win and was absolutely necessary for us to win 4-5 games early on in the playoffs. Without him there was no Detroit and LA.

  Your memory is pretty selective as well. Didn't Sam play in most of our losses to Atl and Clev? I seem to recall his playing pretty poorly in those games. Maybe if he skips the playoffs altogether we still win, we just win other games.

  And Al Jefferson's second season was marred by injury. Being a 5 year vet doesn't make you immune to that.

I never heard any fans yelling Sam,Sam,Sam but i heard from the crowd at times Eddie,Eddie.Almost beg

ing Doc to put Eddie in to "right the ship"when Sam was doing more screwing up than contributing in a good way

please,give me a break.I find when some try to tagteam one poster they will go to no lengths to do so.Face it

dudes Sam had more sucky playing time than positive in the time he was with the team.Im sure we could have

won the championship without his contribution.We probably lost a few games because of his shot happy butt.

I think in this statement you are being grossly unfair.

Sam Cassell without a doubt helped to win some early games for this team in the playoffs. It might be able to be said he was one of the two most significant contributors in two games versus Cleveland.

But to place blame for the losses solely on Sam's perfermances thereafter is just not fair. In those losses on the road in Cleveland and Atlanta, just about every loss was the result of an overall lack of poor play from everyone on the roster. In many of those games it was the starters that put the team in a hole that it just couldn't drag itself out of.

Those losses I blame on the team as a whole including Doc for poor between game preparation. They were not ready to come out and play during most of those 6 losses.

The games they lost to LA and Detroit there was really no culprit involved. Detroit and LA just outplayed the Celtics those games.

Listen, I am no fan of Cassell and am glad he is gone. I think he was god awful for most of his time here. But to make a statement that I am being selective in my memories of what he brought to the table or what he contributed or was responsible for isn't fair.

Cassell did help this team to win a few games. The team as a unit pretty much was bad during the road losses in Atlanta and Cleveland and blaming any of those losses on Cassell would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

And for all the rah rah over House and his accomplishments during the LA series, he was not playing well or shooting well for almost two months. There was a reason Doc felt the need to go with Sam and part of it was House's contributions to this team over the last couple of months of the season. His shooting went from 41% from 3's to 36% over the final two months. His April was awful when he had a truly disgusting 1-1.3 Assist to Turnover ratio. He wasn't playing well and I just don't feel confident in saying that Eddie would have performed as well or better than Sam in those early playoff games because he probably couldn't do it at that time.

That doesn't reflect poorly on Eddie, people have slumps. But give Cassell a little respect for the few games he did help us.

  Your argument doesn't hold up in the least. You have no trouble crediting Cassell with being instrumental in some of our wins (including blowout wins) but then you say it's grossly unfair to blame him when he played poorly in close games that we lost. Surely you must see how one-sided that position is. He helped lose as many games as he helped win.

Then show me how ridiculous I am being. Describe the games where I said Sam was important and responsible in those wins and prove me wrong.

  There wasn't a single win vs Atlanta that wouldn't have happened without Cassell. Many people here were ridiculing him before the series ended because he shot so much and passed so little. We were ahead when he came in in the first half in those first couple of wins and the games weren't in doubt when he came in in the 2nd half. We won them by over 20 points.

You are making blanket statements without backing up anything you are claiming. You claimed that Sam was responsible for losses. I showed that he either wasn't or his contribution to the loss was mearly insignificant when compared to other players. At worst he was only as responsible as everyone else.

  I never said that Sam was responsible for any losses. In fact, I've probably denied that more than once in this discussion. You claim that Cassell was important and responsible when he (along with many others) played well in blowouts. Are you trying to say that he outplayed most of the other Celts in those games? If not, "At worst he was only as responsible as everyone else" counts the same way in the other direction.

   He contributed to wins and he contributed to losses. That's all I've been saying. Cassell played poorly in our losses. I don't see why it's impossible to believe that someone playing better than Cassell in those games might have affected the outcomes. Especially while you're claiming that he affected blowout wins in the same conversation.

I mentioned 4 games where Sam's contributions were important, one of the more important ones on the team. Show me where I'm wrong instead of these blanket statements you keep making BBall. I respect where you are coming from but you aren't backing up a thing you are saying where I am after you all but called my opinion slighted, selective, and crazy.

  I certainly didn't call your opinion crazy, and I think the only time I said ridiculous was in response to your claim that I was holding Sam responsible for losses in games he didn't play in. I just don't think it's a foregone conclusion that we wouldn't have won the title without Sam. We probably wouldn't have won game 2 vs Cleveland without him, but if we replaced him with House or another pg in the games we lost we might have won one of them. It's also possible that House could have also hit some shots in that game 2 to get us going.

[Greenback]

House and Sam were called upon, and bailed us out at various times when Rondo slumped very badly in the playoffs.   It was difficult for the two vets to be consistent with spotty minutes.

Doc stubbornly insisted on Rondo playing major minutes even though he didn’t deserve it.  That is one of the reasons we didn’t sweep anybody in the playoffs, and nearly lost a couple of series. 

I don’t understand the infatuation with Rondo, but that’s the way it is here in Celtic land.  The bottom line is that our point guard situation is still a weakness going into this year.

Posey played three positions, was our 4th best player, was a clutch 3 point shooter, took charges, and he personified Ubuntu.   In the playoffs, PJ was an invaluable defender.    You can downplay these things but without those two guys, we would not have made in to the finals.

We are younger and more athletic but talent wise, pretty much the only difference between the ’08-‘09 Celtics and the ’06-’07 Celtics is Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett.

[incoherent]

Am I alone in thinking the deals we made this summer were actually really smart, and really well done?

I don't think I am.

I know some of you are really disappointed, maybe thinking all the FA's would be lured to Boston for cheap. Getting your hopes up after the first FA we heard about was Corey Maggette (completely unrealistic) and everything aftewards seemed not nearly as good from there.

It seems unfair, that almost all stars didn't flock to us, doesn't it? I mean we are the world champs.. who wouldn't want to play for us.. for almost no money!??

Well apparently a lot of players do not want to play for us for next to nothing.

So we did what we could. And I like it.

-drafted smart
-signed 7 foot young guy for dirt cheap
-resigned Eddie House dirt cheap
-resigned TA cheap
-did not trade anyone really good(BBD, Powe, Any Starter)

You don't mess up a really good world championship team right? Instead you sign cheap young players with potential.

[Birdbrain]

No it looks like Hollinger agrees with a portion of what you say.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=SummerWrap-080909

" Take Patrick O'Bryant, for instance. He hardly saw the light of day in two years with Golden State, but Boston thought enough of his potential to give him a two-year, $2 million deal. I thought this was an extremely clever move with almost no risk and a fairly high upside, as I suspect O'Bryant might be quite a bit better than he showed with the Warriors. "

Now don't get me wrong he knows about as much as anyone else in regards to how POB will end up playing.