Ray Allen wasn't completely healthy last year?

[BballTim]

I put a lot of blame on the poor PG situation, playmaking wise, and on Cleveland's defense. They simply got Ray out of rhythm. Sure, Ray has to own up for his portion, but those two factors really worked against him.

  Ray was out of his rhythm on his own. He'd get the ball wide open, hesitate and reload instead of putting it right up and miss the shot. Cleveland did play good defense but he was just in a slump and he got there on his own.

Without going into many details, 8.7 shot attempts per game during the Cleveland series says you're wrong.

  In what way does the number of shot attempts say that I'm wrong?

It shows exactly what we've been saying. The playmaking was very poor in the Cleveland series, and that the Cleveland defense was trapping Ray as soon as he caught the ball. It means that Ray wasn't getting the shot attempts he's accustumed to. It means that he couldn't get in a rhythm. If you're not getting your hands on the ball and you're not being put in a position to shoot the ball in a normal frequent manner due to those factors, then yes, it means they contributed quite hugely to Ray being out of rhythm.

Then you combine those factors with what you see in the court, with Rondo having awful shot selection, not running the team as he was expected to. His defenders didn't care for him because he was mostly a non-threat to them. He did a poor job in the Cleveland series. Then you factor in Cassell (self explanatory).

  It doesn't mean anything of the sort. He was hesitant to shoot because he was in a slump. Cleveland played good defense, but his slump started in Atlanta (2-13 on threes his last 2 games) and ended late in the Detroit series (3-14 on threes in his first 4 games). He was 16-32 on threes before his slump and 30-56 after it. He was hesitating on his shot when he was wide open. Trying to blame his slump on Rondo is silly. You could just as easily blame Rondo's struggles on the impact Ray's shooting woes had on the offense. And Rondo's shot selection against Cleveland wasn't that bad.

Seems to me that you're focusing too much on one aspect of my post instead of reading the whole message. I never said that Rondo was solely to blame nor did I absolve Ray from blame for his struggles. I just put a lot of blame on Rondo because he simply sucked at giving Ray the touches and you can't close your eyes and say that the Cleveland defense didn't have an impact on his rhythm either with the aggressive way in which they were trapping him. And I haven't even brought up how bad Rondo passes the ball. He has certainly shown a knack to find the open man here and there, but his passes are often badly timed and inaccurate (often to the knees instead of the chest or other areas of prefference). That's one of the things Cassell does well; when he does gives up the ball he passes the ball to where it's supposed to. Rondo doesn't do a good job at hitting people when they come off a screen. And yes, ALL of these are factors that contribute to one's rhythm.

So in conclusion, no, it wasn't ONLY Ray that was responsible for getting out of rhythm. I'd say that he didn't do a good job finding a solution to his problem, but all these factors contributed negatively to him and threw him out of whack.

  Again, while Cleveland played great defense against us and against Ray, he was struggling with his shot before the Cleveland series and continued to struggle after the Cleveland series. In the Cleveland series he was 4-24 from behind the arc. In the last 2 games vs Atlanta and the first 4 vs Detroit he was a combined 5-27. So while Cleveland

  And  Rondo's passing wasn't as bad as you claim. Some of the timing and passing to just where the players want it will come with experience, but he didn't send many passes to player's knees.

[BudweiserCeltic]

He struggled for ONE game before the Cleveland series. The previous game to that one he was having a great game until the fourth quarter when he had to force a couple of shots to try and win us the game. But other than that he was having an awesome series. So let's say that Ray was already struggling, how does limiting Ray's touches in the first game helps matters? He was only able to shoot 4 times in the whole game, come on now. There's a distribution problem and it starts with Rondo. It doesn't help matters, you have to feed your star the ball so he can work himself out of his "struggle". But no, you don't do that. You don't give him the ball, you take away his "rhythm", and if you didn't take it away, you certainly made it worse.

Turning the ball over 8 times during the first two games of the Cleveland series don't help matters. Plus you're only focusing on Ray's 3-pointers... there's more to his game than simply shooting 3's. Using Detroit as an example is meaningless since he had zero rhythm to his game entering the series. He had to regain it during it.

[Mr October]

^ You're both right: Ray got himself into that slump with bad shooting AND the Cleveland defense threw off his rhythm AND the Celtic offense (including Rondo) did not do a good job of getting Ray Allen going. He is clearly the 3rd banana on the team, and often struggled. The team chemistry will grow. Hopefully Ray will have the freedom to freelance a bit more this year.

The Cleveland defense out on the perimeter was really impressive. The sum of the whole was greater than the individual parts.

[BillfromBoston]

I put a lot of blame on the poor PG situation, playmaking wise, and on Cleveland's defense. They simply got Ray out of rhythm. Sure, Ray has to own up for his portion, but those two factors really worked against him.

  Ray was out of his rhythm on his own. He'd get the ball wide open, hesitate and reload instead of putting it right up and miss the shot. Cleveland did play good defense but he was just in a slump and he got there on his own.

Without going into many details, 8.7 shot attempts per game during the Cleveland series says you're wrong.

  In what way does the number of shot attempts say that I'm wrong?

It shows exactly what we've been saying. The playmaking was very poor in the Cleveland series, and that the Cleveland defense was trapping Ray as soon as he caught the ball. It means that Ray wasn't getting the shot attempts he's accustumed to. It means that he couldn't get in a rhythm. If you're not getting your hands on the ball and you're not being put in a position to shoot the ball in a normal frequent manner due to those factors, then yes, it means they contributed quite hugely to Ray being out of rhythm.

Then you combine those factors with what you see in the court, with Rondo having awful shot selection, not running the team as he was expected to. His defenders didn't care for him because he was mostly a non-threat to them. He did a poor job in the Cleveland series. Then you factor in Cassell (self explanatory).

  It doesn't mean anything of the sort. He was hesitant to shoot because he was in a slump. Cleveland played good defense, but his slump started in Atlanta (2-13 on threes his last 2 games) and ended late in the Detroit series (3-14 on threes in his first 4 games). He was 16-32 on threes before his slump and 30-56 after it. He was hesitating on his shot when he was wide open. Trying to blame his slump on Rondo is silly. You could just as easily blame Rondo's struggles on the impact Ray's shooting woes had on the offense. And Rondo's shot selection against Cleveland wasn't that bad.

Seems to me that you're focusing too much on one aspect of my post instead of reading the whole message. I never said that Rondo was solely to blame nor did I absolve Ray from blame for his struggles. I just put a lot of blame on Rondo because he simply sucked at giving Ray the touches and you can't close your eyes and say that the Cleveland defense didn't have an impact on his rhythm either with the aggressive way in which they were trapping him. And I haven't even brought up how bad Rondo passes the ball. He has certainly shown a knack to find the open man here and there, but his passes are often badly timed and inaccurate (often to the knees instead of the chest or other areas of prefference). That's one of the things Cassell does well; when he does gives up the ball he passes the ball to where it's supposed to. Rondo doesn't do a good job at hitting people when they come off a screen. And yes, ALL of these are factors that contribute to one's rhythm.

So in conclusion, no, it wasn't ONLY Ray that was responsible for getting out of rhythm. I'd say that he didn't do a good job finding a solution to his problem, but all these factors contributed negatively to him and threw him out of whack.

  Again, while Cleveland played great defense against us and against Ray, he was struggling with his shot before the Cleveland series and continued to struggle after the Cleveland series. In the Cleveland series he was 4-24 from behind the arc. In the last 2 games vs Atlanta and the first 4 vs Detroit he was a combined 5-27. So while Cleveland

  And  Rondo's passing wasn't as bad as you claim. Some of the timing and passing to just where the players want it will come with experience, but he didn't send many passes to player's knees.

...you keep referencing the 3-point shooting as proof of Ray's slump, but Ray played excellent overall basketball in the ATL series and only had one poor shooting game, (game 2) in the Detroit series. He may not have gotten his 3 ball to go until late in the Detroit series, but he wasn't "slumping" throughout the playoffs until late in the Detroit series.

...and Budweiser is absolutely right, Cleveland targeted Ray Allen as their primary defensive assignment because he had torched them throughout the regular season-they stated this, its not opinion. A simple review of those games shows that they doubled Ray on every catch off both screen and Pick-and-Roll, which forced him to get rid of the ball frequently and cut down on his attempts.

The main culprit in all of this was the lack of involvement in the offense that Ray had leading up to that series. Ray had basically been left to make up his own offense as the 3rd option throughout the season and in the Cleveland series it caught up to them.

After that series, Ray spoke up and said something about it, the team started getting him more involved in the offense, and he went on to have 2 outstanding series to close out the playoffs.

[BballTim]

...you keep referencing the 3-point shooting as proof of Ray's slump, but Ray played excellent overall basketball in the ATL series and only had one poor shooting game, (game 2) in the Detroit series. He may not have gotten his 3 ball to go until late in the Detroit series, but he wasn't "slumping" throughout the playoffs until late in the Detroit series.

  I referenced his 3 point shooting twice because I bothered to add up the numbers. If you check his overall shooting you'll see the same trend. I didn't say that his overall play was poor, I just said he was in a shooting slump. You're trying to re-write history if you say he wasn't, or you're the only person around who didn't notice it. He was hesitant and uncomfortable with his shooting.

  And for the record, in game 2 of the Detroit series he was 9-16 and 2-4 on threes. In games 1, 3 and 4 he was 3-10, 5-16 and 2-8. Those are from the field, not threes btw.

...and Budweiser is absolutely right, Cleveland targeted Ray Allen as their primary defensive assignment because he had torched them throughout the regular season-they stated this, its not opinion. A simple review of those games shows that they doubled Ray on every catch off both screen and Pick-and-Roll, which forced him to get rid of the ball frequently and cut down on his attempts.

  Yet again, I never said that Cleveland didn't play good defense on Ray or on the Celts in general. But it's also true that he was missing wide open shots. A few times he'd get the ball when nobody was near him, start to shoot, stop, re-start his motion and clank it off the rim. He was defended well but he was also missing shots when he wasn't defended well. The Cav's defense wasn't the sole cause of his struggles.

[BballTim]

He struggled for ONE game before the Cleveland series. The previous game to that one he was having a great game until the fourth quarter when he had to force a couple of shots to try and win us the game. But other than that he was having an awesome series. So let's say that Ray was already struggling, how does limiting Ray's touches in the first game helps matters? He was only able to shoot 4 times in the whole game, come on now. There's a distribution problem and it starts with Rondo. It doesn't help matters, you have to feed your star the ball so he can work himself out of his "struggle". But no, you don't do that. You don't give him the ball, you take away his "rhythm", and if you didn't take it away, you certainly made it worse.

  Rondo was still getting assists against Cleveland, just (apparently) not to Allen. You also have to consider that Rondo doesn't dominate the ball like some point guards. Pierce and KG have the ball a lot and they combine for about as many assists as Rondo gets. You'd have to assume that they were as responsible for Ray's struggles as Rondo and were as reluctant to get him the ball as Rajon was.

[BudweiserCeltic]

He struggled for ONE game before the Cleveland series. The previous game to that one he was having a great game until the fourth quarter when he had to force a couple of shots to try and win us the game. But other than that he was having an awesome series. So let's say that Ray was already struggling, how does limiting Ray's touches in the first game helps matters? He was only able to shoot 4 times in the whole game, come on now. There's a distribution problem and it starts with Rondo. It doesn't help matters, you have to feed your star the ball so he can work himself out of his "struggle". But no, you don't do that. You don't give him the ball, you take away his "rhythm", and if you didn't take it away, you certainly made it worse.

  Rondo was still getting assists against Cleveland, just (apparently) not to Allen. You also have to consider that Rondo doesn't dominate the ball like some point guards. Pierce and KG have the ball a lot and they combine for about as many assists as Rondo gets. You'd have to assume that they were as responsible for Ray's struggles as Rondo and were as reluctant to get him the ball as Rajon was.

Sure, some. But as the main scoring options I'm fine with them dominating the ball when the ball gets to them. That's not the case with Rondo. It was one of my main complaints during the playoffs about Doc. If you notice throughout the season, Rondo's responsibility in our offense increased as the season went on. During the playoffs he was running the offense completely for the most part. And again, there are many factors to consider here. How many times did he initiate a pass to Ray? How many times did he miss Ray coming off a screen? How many times did Rondo not push the ball down the floor? How many times didn't Rondo advance the ball with a pass? How many times did Rondo miss Ray in transition for a rhythm 3?

My complaint about Doc was that he gave Rondo a huge amount of responsibility in our offense during the playoffs, with him being as inexperience as he was. The ball wasn't moving as well as it supposed to because of it. That's one of the reasons why our team performed quite well with House in there during the playoffs because he pretty much has zero responsibility of running the offense, he simply keeps the ball moving. That used to be Rondo's role early in the season. It wasn't late in the season and during the playoffs. Rondo was given the key to run our offense, and he failed for the most part (at running the offense) during the playoffs. But as you say, these things come with experience, but that doesn't factor when evaluating current performance; it doesn't right a wrong.

[BballTim]

He struggled for ONE game before the Cleveland series. The previous game to that one he was having a great game until the fourth quarter when he had to force a couple of shots to try and win us the game. But other than that he was having an awesome series. So let's say that Ray was already struggling, how does limiting Ray's touches in the first game helps matters? He was only able to shoot 4 times in the whole game, come on now. There's a distribution problem and it starts with Rondo. It doesn't help matters, you have to feed your star the ball so he can work himself out of his "struggle". But no, you don't do that. You don't give him the ball, you take away his "rhythm", and if you didn't take it away, you certainly made it worse.

  Rondo was still getting assists against Cleveland, just (apparently) not to Allen. You also have to consider that Rondo doesn't dominate the ball like some point guards. Pierce and KG have the ball a lot and they combine for about as many assists as Rondo gets. You'd have to assume that they were as responsible for Ray's struggles as Rondo and were as reluctant to get him the ball as Rajon was.

Sure, some. But as the main scoring options I'm fine with them dominating the ball when the ball gets to them. That's not the case with Rondo.

  The point wasn't whether they should or shouldn't dominate the ball. But Paul and KG are both near the top in the league in passing for players at their position. If Ray's touches are drastically reduced then they're involved in the process as much as Rondo. If nobody's getting Ray his shots then the fault isn't with Rondo, it's a combination of Cleveland's defense, Ray's hesitancy and going to players who are hotter.

It was one of my main complaints during the playoffs about Doc. If you notice throughout the season, Rondo's responsibility in our offense increased as the season went on. During the playoffs he was running the offense completely for the most part. And again, there are many factors to consider here. How many times did he initiate a pass to Ray? How many times did he miss Ray coming off a screen? How many times did Rondo not push the ball down the floor? How many times didn't Rondo advance the ball with a pass? How many times did Rondo miss Ray in transition for a rhythm 3?

  How many times did Ray get the ball and not shoot? How many times did Ray fail to get open when he came off a screen? Why didn't Pierce and Garnett have drastically reduced touches and shots because of Rondo? Why didn't all of these distribution issues Rondo had drastically reduce his assist totals?

  Rondo still got assists, as did PP and KG, just not as often to Allen. You act like his distribution went into the tank against the Cavs but it didn't. Rondo and PP and KG had smallish decreases in productivity against Cleveland but Allen took a nosedive. I just don't buy the argument that Rondo was able to distribute the ball to everyone but Allen.

My complaint about Doc was that he gave Rondo a huge amount of responsibility in our offense during the playoffs, with him being as inexperience as he was. The ball wasn't moving as well as it supposed to because of it. That's one of the reasons why our team performed quite well with House in there during the playoffs because he pretty much has zero responsibility of running the offense, he simply keeps the ball moving. That used to be Rondo's role early in the season. It wasn't late in the season and during the playoffs. Rondo was given the key to run our offense, and he failed for the most part (at running the offense) during the playoffs. But as you say, these things come with experience, but that doesn't factor when evaluating current performance; it doesn't right a wrong.

  Rondo had his ups and downs but overall he did a good job of running the offense. KG, PP and especially RA struggled offensively at various times in the playoffs. That had as much of a negative effect on our offense as Rondo's struggles. If you assign him the blame when he plays poorly as well as a good part of the blame when someone else plays poorly it puts the bar a little high when you evaluate his performance.

[BudweiserCeltic]

You're trying to make this a Rondo vs. Ray thing, when it isn't. As I mentioned before, there were a combination of things. This isn't solely abour Rondo, nor have I solely blamed Rondo. I blamed the PG position, Rondo is simply a part of it. I also blamed the aggressive defense of Cleveland, but you're dismissing the impact.

Then you bring up Ray passing up shots... of course, when that ocurred he was ALREADY out of rhythm and struggling with his confidence. That WASN'T what took him out of rhythm, that was a consequence of it.

And I could care less about Rondo's assists. In fact, on a few of the games in which I praised Rondo during the playoffs, he had a bad shooting night or didn't pile up the assists. I'm only commenting on him on his performance in running the offense in particular. Just because he racks up the assists doesn't mean that he's running the offense at it should. Some of his worst games during the playoffs he had high assists numbers. They don't tell the whole story.

But whatever, no point in keeping arguing this.

[cordobes]

Rondo had some hard times running the offence during the playoffs because opponents frequently put up defensive systems with centerfields and roaming players, crowding the passing lanes. But the reason they were able to do that was Rondo himself.