What we really did wrong last year

[FrDrake]

I think Yahoo's Ball Don't Lie says it all about Lil' Nate... who does his job:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Create-a-Caption-Nate-Robinson-does-his-job?urn=nba-wp3713

[paulcowens]

the trade wasn't necessarily the issue.....but the timing of the trade was.  along with injuries.

i blame danny bc of the timing and falsely banking on the health of shaq

The timing was the most important thing.  Danny tore a gaping whole in our starting unit, AND changed over about a third of the team, with barely a month in the season left.  This wrecked our cohesion,  at the worst possible time, and THAT is why we stumbled down the stretch, and why we looked slow, old and tired against the Heat.  How did we go to that,  from being a team that had the Heat and Chicago and pretty much every other team in the league (but not the Mavs, interestingly) intimidated, 2/3 of the way through the season?   The Trade was the single most important reason.

And I don't think anyone should fool themselves about why The Trade happened.  It had nothing to do with winning.  As Ainge himself admitted (but he didn't have to admit it for us to know it), The Trade happened because of Perkins' contract.  In view of what has transpired since then, with our lovely owners having been revealed as NBA contract hardliners, the real meaning of this is clear:  the Perkins Trade was the first shot fired in the owners/players war.


Please, do not tell yourselves that Ainge really believed that Shaq would be back to save the season.  Come on, people!  Does Ainge also believe in the tooth fairy?  Does he set out milk and cookies for Santa Clause?  Do you all remember Ainge, or his accomplice Doc Rivers, telling us at one point that Shaq was on a new diet that was going to make all the difference?  Come on, folks, this was baby talk.  A diet can make a real difference, but not in a few weeks.  They were laughing at us.  We'd be lucky to have Shaq giving us a few minutes off the bench, and they knew it.

Losing Nate was, in itself, not very important.  Nate's role on the Celtics reminded me of ML Carr's role.  Remember Carr, the enthusiastic bench guy waving a towel back in the eighties?   His importance was mostly symbolic.   Same for Nate's importance this season.   For Ainge to send Nate  away was symbolically significant, in that it reflected Ainge's heedless decision to blow up team cohesion with The Trade and ancillary moves.

We had an excellent chance at a championship until Ainge did that.  He still has not faced the fan anger he deserved.  Instead everyone rips Baby and tries to trade Rondo.  It's all scapegoating.  If you want to blame someone, and you should, then blame the one person who made possibly the most reckless move any team in hot contention has ever made.  My thoughts go back to the Adrian Dantley for Mark Aguirre trade of 1988, but even though that worked out badly for Dallas, it looked like two teams exchanging similar players to somehow boost their chemistry, and it didn't happen as late in the season as the Perkins trade.  And to try to understand the Dantley for Aguirre trade you didn't have to sell yourself crazy ideas, such as that Shaq would find the Fountain of Youth, that Jeff Green was  a superstar just waiting  to bust out, and that team cohesion wasn't nearly as important as the almighty OFFENSIVE SPACING.

!!!

Man, do you all remember that?  Remember how we convinced ourselves that Krstic and Green would give us that magical spacing that would make us forget all about the importance of folks ACTUALLY KNOWING THE PLAYBOOK!!

Let's get real.  The Trade was about Perkins' contract, and it likely blew a championship.  And we should be ticked.  At Danny.  And at the owners.  It was bush league, and that's putting it very nicely.

[dark_lord]

the trade wasn't necessarily the issue.....but the timing of the trade was.  along with injuries.

i blame danny bc of the timing and falsely banking on the health of shaq

The timing was the most important thing.  Danny tore a gaping whole in our starting unit, AND changed over about a third of the team, with barely a month in the season left.  This wrecked our cohesion,  at the worst possible time, and THAT is why we stumbled down the stretch, and why we looked slow, old and tired against the Heat.  How did we go to that,  from being a team that had the Heat and Chicago and pretty much every other team in the league (but not the Mavs, interestingly) intimidated, 2/3 of the way through the season?   The Trade was the single most important reason.

And I don't think anyone should fool themselves about why The Trade happened.  It had nothing to do with winning.  As Ainge himself admitted (but he didn't have to admit it for us to know it), The Trade happened because of Perkins' contract.  In view of what has transpired since then, with our lovely owners having been revealed as NBA contract hardliners, the real meaning of this is clear:  the Perkins Trade was the first shot fired in the owners/players war.


Please, do not tell yourselves that Ainge really believed that Shaq would be back to save the season.  Come on, people!  Does Ainge also believe in the tooth fairy?  Does he set out milk and cookies for Santa Clause?  Do you all remember Ainge, or his accomplice Doc Rivers, telling us at one point that Shaq was on a new diet that was going to make all the difference?  Come on, folks, this was baby talk.  A diet can make a real difference, but not in a few weeks.  They were laughing at us.  We'd be lucky to have Shaq giving us a few minutes off the bench, and they knew it.

Losing Nate was, in itself, not very important.  Nate's role on the Celtics reminded me of ML Carr's role.  Remember Carr, the enthusiastic bench guy waving a towel back in the eighties?   His importance was mostly symbolic.   Same for Nate's importance this season.   For Ainge to send Nate  away was symbolically significant, in that it reflected Ainge's heedless decision to blow up team cohesion with The Trade and ancillary moves.

We had an excellent chance at a championship until Ainge did that.  He still has not faced the fan anger he deserved.  Instead everyone rips Baby and tries to trade Rondo.  It's all scapegoating.  If you want to blame someone, and you should, then blame the one person who made possibly the most reckless move any team in hot contention has ever made.  My thoughts go back to the Adrian Dantley for Mark Aguirre trade of 1988, but even though that worked out badly for Dallas, it looked like two teams exchanging similar players to somehow boost their chemistry, and it didn't happen as late in the season as the Perkins trade.  And to try to understand the Dantley for Aguirre trade you didn't have to sell yourself crazy ideas, such as that Shaq would find the Fountain of Youth, that Jeff Green was  a superstar just waiting  to bust out, and that team cohesion wasn't nearly as important as the almighty OFFENSIVE SPACING.

!!!

Man, do you all remember that?  Remember how we convinced ourselves that Krstic and Green would give us that magical spacing that would make us forget all about the importance of folks ACTUALLY KNOWING THE PLAYBOOK!!

Let's get real.  The Trade was about Perkins' contract, and it likely blew a championship.  And we should be ticked.  At Danny.  And at the owners.  It was bush league, and that's putting it very nicely.

did u quote me to debate me or agree with me?  if it was the latter, great.  if it was to debate me....im confused.  i said the timing, along with injuries and danny falsely banking on shaq was the issue....which u had said.

i agree the reason was perk's contract

[Junkyard Dawg]

We had an excellent chance at a championship until Ainge did that.  He still has not faced the fan anger he deserved.  Instead everyone rips Baby and tries to trade Rondo.  It's all scapegoating.  If you want to blame someone, and you should, then blame the one person who made possibly the most reckless move any team in hot contention has ever made.

Big, fat, TP. 

[gar]

Remains to be seen. The C's needed to get quicker. Green and JaJuan and Rondo could be a good nucleus to build around. We still need a Perk in the middle and it is not clear who that will be. Have no problem with the Perk trade; but found the other trades baffling. Why get rid of Nate and Semih and Harangody. Harangody is better than Murphy and even though Arroyo played well in spirts, Nate would have been a better asset in the playoffs since Arroyo hardly played anyway. At least you would not have gutted the whole team for one player (Green). Now we have all kinds of roster spots and no cap space. What kind of players are going to sign here for one year at the min. salary. for a chance to play with an aging core.  

[gar]

Also, Nate must have p'd off the Big Three or Shaq or Rivers. If he was so important to the chemistry he would not have been traded.

[LilRip]

injuries did us in. and consequently, lack of chemistry. Our team was basically constructed past mid-season. JO came back only in the playoffs, Krstic+Green+Arroyo+Murphy+Pavlovic were all new. Delonte was pretty much injured the whole season too. The only bench player that was consistently there was BBD. And he wasn't a leader. He was out there just trying to get his shots/numbers.

i don't view ripping BBD as scapegoating. I think he played selfishly and without much heart. It doesn't help that his game is so much about outworking his man, which he's shown us he can do. As for trade Rondo scenarios, i dont understand it...unless we're talking about getting CP3.

[ACF]

injuries did us in.

[clover]

Nate peaked for a two-game stretch in the 2010 playoffs.  Doc really wasn't happy with his play before or after that.

[Marcus13]

Mostly, we falsely expected Jeff Green to contribute something positive to our team

[BballTim]

the trade wasn't necessarily the issue.....but the timing of the trade was.  along with injuries.

i blame danny bc of the timing and falsely banking on the health of shaq

The timing was the most important thing.  Danny tore a gaping whole in our starting unit, AND changed over about a third of the team, with barely a month in the season left.  This wrecked our cohesion,  at the worst possible time, and THAT is why we stumbled down the stretch, and why we looked slow, old and tired against the Heat.  How did we go to that,  from being a team that had the Heat and Chicago and pretty much every other team in the league (but not the Mavs, interestingly) intimidated, 2/3 of the way through the season?   The Trade was the single most important reason.

And I don't think anyone should fool themselves about why The Trade happened.  It had nothing to do with winning.  As Ainge himself admitted (but he didn't have to admit it for us to know it), The Trade happened because of Perkins' contract.  In view of what has transpired since then, with our lovely owners having been revealed as NBA contract hardliners, the real meaning of this is clear:  the Perkins Trade was the first shot fired in the owners/players war.


Please, do not tell yourselves that Ainge really believed that Shaq would be back to save the season.  Come on, people!  Does Ainge also believe in the tooth fairy?  Does he set out milk and cookies for Santa Clause?  Do you all remember Ainge, or his accomplice Doc Rivers, telling us at one point that Shaq was on a new diet that was going to make all the difference?  Come on, folks, this was baby talk.  A diet can make a real difference, but not in a few weeks.  They were laughing at us.  We'd be lucky to have Shaq giving us a few minutes off the bench, and they knew it.

Losing Nate was, in itself, not very important.  Nate's role on the Celtics reminded me of ML Carr's role.  Remember Carr, the enthusiastic bench guy waving a towel back in the eighties?   His importance was mostly symbolic.   Same for Nate's importance this season.   For Ainge to send Nate  away was symbolically significant, in that it reflected Ainge's heedless decision to blow up team cohesion with The Trade and ancillary moves.

We had an excellent chance at a championship until Ainge did that.  He still has not faced the fan anger he deserved.  Instead everyone rips Baby and tries to trade Rondo.  It's all scapegoating.  If you want to blame someone, and you should, then blame the one person who made possibly the most reckless move any team in hot contention has ever made.  My thoughts go back to the Adrian Dantley for Mark Aguirre trade of 1988, but even though that worked out badly for Dallas, it looked like two teams exchanging similar players to somehow boost their chemistry, and it didn't happen as late in the season as the Perkins trade.  And to try to understand the Dantley for Aguirre trade you didn't have to sell yourself crazy ideas, such as that Shaq would find the Fountain of Youth, that Jeff Green was  a superstar just waiting  to bust out, and that team cohesion wasn't nearly as important as the almighty OFFENSIVE SPACING.

!!!

Man, do you all remember that?  Remember how we convinced ourselves that Krstic and Green would give us that magical spacing that would make us forget all about the importance of folks ACTUALLY KNOWING THE PLAYBOOK!!

Let's get real.  The Trade was about Perkins' contract, and it likely blew a championship.  And we should be ticked.  At Danny.  And at the owners.  It was bush league, and that's putting it very nicely.

  I think people underestimate the dire straights the team would have been in without the trade. Shaq, JO and Perk were all injured for quite a while (along with Wafer and West) and Baby was hurt for a while in March as well. How would things have looked down the stretch with the starters playing most of the minutes that Green and Krstic had played?

[Celtics18]

Our hopes rest primarily on the health of the big four.  Everyone else who has worn a Celtics jersey since the '07-'08 season has been a role player. 

Role players are more or less interchangeable.

[Assassin70]

Many many things were the cause.

But one thing I think people overlook is...

That last loss to the Heat in the regular season did us in.  We win that I bet our season would have ended better.  That loss started a chain of events I was not happy with.

[Mr October]

injuries wacked the Celtics chances. A busted up Perkins probably wouldn't have changed things much. The reason:

The second biggest factor was Lebron going nuts from the perimeter at the end of almost every game. If he's burying contested 3's in the last 2 minutes of a game, he's probably going to beat you.

If there is a season next year, I absolutely believe that Boston has a shot at the whole thing. The C's just need to be a little smart/lucky with free agency and then they'll be right there.

[tenn_smoothie]

how anyone could have followed this team thru this season and not understand how destructive the Perk trade was has to be blind - the drop-off in performance was directly correlated with the trade.

we keep Perk & Co., replace Marquis with a solid free agent and we keep home court in the East. we then are able to let Miami and Chicago slug it out to play us in the ECF - all off the sudden, that scenario looks much more promising.

btw, it was a surprise to me, but we missed Tony Allen this year and he sure would have been another very tough defensive body to throw at Miami. i also believe Perk wouldn't have allowed Miami to attack the basket with impunity either.