Do not push the pace. Play boring bball

[greece66]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

[Chris22]

Don't stand around and watch Rondo.

[greece66]

Don't stand around and watch Rondo.

I sure agree with that. Make cuts, picks, move the ball.
But I hate these risky fast break passes when we are winning and there is little time left. Play it safe.

[GratefulCs]

Don't stand around and watch Rondo.

I sure agree with that. Make cuts, picks, move the ball.
But I hate these risky fast break passes when we are winning and there is little time left. Play it safe.

It's tough to play it safe when we don't have a 'go to' move in the half court

I'd like to see more post up plays late in the game though

In the future, to be a good team, we'll need to be good in the half court too when the game slows down

To me it felt good that WE dictated the pace the whole game. We ran and we won. Tommy's been waiting for this kind of ball for a while

At the very least we'll be able to boost everyone's value (stats) by running the whole time

[Tr1boy]

Don't stand around and watch Rondo.

+1. I rather see the team push the pace from start to the end, regardless if that will mean some ugly turnovers will result.   Thats what happened today, and we won.  I bet if things slowed down in the 4th , especially with less than 5 min, we would of lost. They would of kept scoring but we would not be able to score the 24 we did

[Beat LA]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

I absolutely disagree with you on that point.  You NEVER play to the clock and/or score, because you'll find yourself slowing down, waiting for the clock to run out.  First quarter leads mean nothing, halftime leads mean nothing, and especially third quarter leads mean nothing (not to mention the fourth quarter).  This isn't the pre-shot clock era, where you can just dribble out a 3 point lead for 5 minutes.  You have to stay aggressive, because time is never on your side, imo.

[Rodan45]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

I absolutely disagree with you on that point.  You NEVER play to the clock and/or score, because you'll find yourself slowing down, waiting for the clock to run out.  First quarter leads mean nothing, halftime leads mean nothing, and especially third quarter leads mean nothing (not to mention the fourth quarter).  This isn't the pre-shot clock era, where you can just dribble out a 3 point lead for 5 minutes.  You have to stay aggressive, because time is never on your side, imo.

Tommy would emphatically agree with you! And so do I!

[GreenWarrior]

uhh...every time we lose the lead it's because we're playing slow down ball.

[Tr1boy]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

I absolutely disagree with you on that point.  You NEVER play to the clock and/or score, because you'll find yourself slowing down, waiting for the clock to run out.  First quarter leads mean nothing, halftime leads mean nothing, and especially third quarter leads mean nothing (not to mention the fourth quarter).  This isn't the pre-shot clock era, where you can just dribble out a 3 point lead for 5 minutes.  You have to stay aggressive, because time is never on your side, imo.

Tommy would emphatically agree with you! And so do I!

Tommy is a happy man these days

[fairweatherfan]

It's very, very hard to "run clock" against an NBA team for any substantial amount of time.  They're too good at scoring, the shot clock's too short, and it's too easy to get bogged down when the team is standing around.  With a 12-15 point lead, you really don't want to start deliberately stalling until there's under 3 minutes left, probably closer to 2.

I really liked our aggression at the end of the 4th.  We still made some dumb mistakes but continuing to attack is one of the things that separated this win from all the 4th quarter leads we've blown.

[BballTim]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

  I think your "solution" is the cause of about 75% of the team's losses over the last 5 years or so.

[Tr1boy]

It's very, very hard to "run clock" against an NBA team for any substantial amount of time.  They're too good at scoring, the shot clock's too short, and it's too easy to get bogged down when the team is standing around.  With a 12-15 point lead, you really don't want to start deliberately stalling until there's under 3 minutes left, probably closer to 2.

I really liked our aggression at the end of the 4th.  We still made some dumb mistakes but continuing to attack is one of the things that separated this win from all the 4th quarter leads we've blown.

exactly. This team is built to run. Even our bigs like Zeller and KO are good at getting up and down the court.  The only guy that can't is Sully but thats ok, he helps the team in other ways

[greece66]

You have a two digit in the last quarter. My euro education in bball suggests:
You don't gamble.
You play slow.
No fast breaks.
You do not allow easy baskets.
Time works in your favour and is your greatest asset. Force your opponent to gamble and allow you to score easy baskets.
Going back to the old continent wisdom. It's 1994 in Athens. European Champions Final. The super talented Treviso led by Tony Kukoc (playing as PG) against the untalented, boring and cheap Limoges. Limoges won by ... 55-59 in a truly awful game. Despite the Greek commentary, it is worth watching the last 5 min (starting around 17:00) a testament of how an inferior team can win games with stubbornness, cold blood  and effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgLVjKtFvo

  I think your "solution" is the cause of about 75% of the team's losses over the last 5 years or so.

How exactly did you come up with this number again?
Also, if this is happening so often (I don't see it happening, but let's assume it for the sake of the argument) why do you think they do it if it is so obviously wrong?
Honest questions, love to hear the answers.

[greece66]

Anyway, thanks for sharing these interesting thoughts.
Europe is certainly a different world, over here when a team gets a 20 point lead we pretty much consider the game is over (and the clock is also at 24 sec).
I have to give some more thought to this, watch again final minutes of some of our games.

[ViolentGhandi]

yay the last slow pace celtics team was with the big 3 in the champ season. They played their half court sets from the beginning to the end avg. around 80 shots total if I remember right. Nearly every offence sequence was marked by execution in razor sharp precission. You can't do that with todays team since when the game goes to slowmo and the opponent can set up his D there is hardly ever a really good matchup to abuse thruout the game. This way we lose more offence ability to score than we lose to 5-10 turnover per game. I thing its hard to get numbers to compare the effects to the scoring from the stats. Best indication for it is are the 4th quater collapses from this season. Slower pace is only half the thruth to it but sure is a factor.