Do not push the pace. Play boring bball

[SHAQATTACK]

Anytime with this young group the Celtics give the opponent opportunity to setup their defense .....we usually fail to score or worse turn it over.

Celtics don't have the elite talent  to walk the ball up, stand around and wait for a STAR player create or force a bucket on an inferior player. 

The only way the Celtics can succeed , is push the ball,  wear down the opponent with youth .

When the elite teams SLOW the ball  down ....Celtics fall apart .  And that's what happens every fourth quarter .   They turn the defense UP on the Celtics ....which destroys the pace .....then they use their superior talent to take control. 

Celtics have to shoot extremely hot with NO falloff in percentage to finish games . 

Or Rondo has to develop a two three man game with bigs to score and not go scoreless for just chunks of the 4 quarter.

Not let the other team slow the pace on them

[greece66]

Anytime with this young group the Celtics give the opponent opportunity to setup their defense .....we usually fail to score or worse turn it over.

Celtics don't have the elite talent  to walk the ball up, stand around and wait for a STAR player create or force a bucket on an inferior player. 

The only way the Celtics can succeed , is push the ball,  wear down the opponent with youth .

When the elite teams SLOW the ball  down ....Celtics fall apart .  And that's what happens every fourth quarter .   They turn the defense UP on the Celtics ....which destroys the pace .....then they use their superior talent to take control. 

Celtics have to shot extremely hot with NO falloff in percentage to finish games

So, basically the argument boils down to 'we lack the skill to play half court offense and even when we lead by a large margin our best chance is to keep pushing the pace.' Am I reading this right?

[ViolentGhandi]

Anytime with this young group the Celtics give the opponent opportunity to setup their defense .....we usually fail to score or worse turn it over.

Celtics don't have the elite talent  to walk the ball up, stand around and wait for a STAR player create or force a bucket on an inferior player. 

The only way the Celtics can succeed , is push the ball,  wear down the opponent with youth .

When the elite teams SLOW the ball  down ....Celtics fall apart .  And that's what happens every fourth quarter .   They turn the defense UP on the Celtics ....which destroys the pace .....then they use their superior talent to take control. 

Celtics have to shot extremely hot with NO falloff in percentage to finish games

So, basically the argument boils down to 'we lack the skill to play half court offense and even when we lead by a large margin our best chance is to keep pushing the pace.' Am I reading this right?

yeah thats correct, until the guys have developed their 2-3 moves they can break down a D with. Some never will but some do and once they have grown confident in that they will force they issue down the stretch by just abusing those moves. You can't expect a rookie or 2nd year guy to do that. Very few elite rookies can.

[Beat LA]

Violent Ghandi?  Ahaha, TP for the laugh .

[greece66]

Violent Ghandi?  Ahaha, TP for the laugh .

Classic Zizek
'In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.'

[dreamgreen]

We are a very bad half court team, they should push it all game.

[Chris22]

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

It's worse than that.
Literally four guys stand in place and watch Rondo. I don't understand it. No picks, no cuts, no motion at all in the fourth quarter.
Tommy always says, "Move the ball, move yourself!"

[Beat LA]

Violent Ghandi?  Ahaha, TP for the laugh .

Classic Zizek
'In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.'

.  I'd never heard of him, so I promptly did a google search, and the picture they have of him on the right hand side of the non-image search results looks like he's rocking out on his Walkman from 1999 from the confines of his parents' basement, lol .  Ahaha .  I don't 'do' instagram or twitter, lol, but would such a pic qualify for throwback Thursday, haha ?  Number sign, "who cares?"   God I hate those dumb 'hashtags' and twitter holidays or whatever on the internets....  You crazy kids and your rock and roll . 

Just out of curiosity, btw, why does your username contain the number of the beast, lol?

[greece66]

Violent Ghandi?  Ahaha, TP for the laugh .

Classic Zizek
'In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.'

.  I'd never heard of him, so I promptly did a google search, and the picture they have of him on the right hand side of the non-image search results looks like he's rocking out on his Walkman from 1999 from the confines of his parents' basement, lol .  Ahaha .  I don't 'do' instagram or twitter, lol, but would such a pic qualify for throwback Thursday, haha ?  Number sign, "who cares?"   God I hate those dumb 'hashtags' and twitter holidays or whatever on the internets....  You crazy kids and your rock and roll . 

Just out of curiosity, btw, why does your username contain the number of the beast, lol?

I was a teenager, never liked heavy metal (let alone satanism) wanted to have an email that was easy to memorize. It's much better than having my long Greek surname no one can spell And then I got used to it.
Best story, I often enter a Russian language chatroom, I write to anyone who happens to be online, just for the practice, sthg like 'Hi I am George from Greece, how are you?'- and then there was this super religious guy from Moscow, with a Dostoyevskyan beard in his avatar pic who answered 'Ah, your Royal Highness, nice to meet you, I presume doomsday has arrived at last.'
Zizek is nuts. It's pretty obvious when he speaks. He constantly puts his hand in front of his mouth as if he were collecting his mucus. My fav video is this one (and I m a vegetarian myself)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TqyKsnQD38
'rocking out on his Walkman  from 1999 from the 1999 from the confines of his parents basements' might actually be the best visual description of him I ve read so far!

[greece66]

Back to the original issue.
This is really interesting for me, as it is the aspect of American bball I understand the least- I can tell you most Greeks complain they can't watch NBA bcs these guys keep running up and down pointlessly.
I've got two questions:
-If we make quick attacks, does it not mean that on average we also give more opportunities to the other side to attack? (ie a faster pace for us translates into a faster pace for the other team too)
-What is the deal with the half court attacks? I remember Stevens talking at length about our new offensive philosophy before the season started, and I think we have some legit options: i. Bradley, Thornton take picks to shoot 3s, Sully posting (this is sthg I've been expecting for some time) iii. Rondo penetrating and splitting out for a corner 3. Again, I am not a bball specialist, I am a historian by profession, so by all means do correct if I am talking BS.
Why not go with these instead of constantly pushing the pace? My worry is that we are really predictable (and thus easy to defend) and the 4th quarter meltdown has by now become a near certainty in our games.

[playdream]

Back to the original issue.
This is really interesting for me, as it is the aspect of American bball I understand the least- I can tell you most Greeks complain they can't watch NBA bcs these guys keep running up and down pointlessly.
I've got two questions:
-If we make quick attacks, does it not mean that on average we also give more opportunities to the other side to attack? (ie a faster pace for us translates into a faster pace for the other team too)
-What is the deal with the half court attacks? I remember Stevens talking at length about our new offensive philosophy before the season started, and I think we have some legit options: i. Bradley, Thornton take picks to shoot 3s, Sully posting (this is sthg I've been expecting for some time) iii. Rondo penetrating and splitting out for a corner 3. Again, I am not a bball specialist, I am a historian by profession, so by all means do correct if I am talking BS.
Why not go with these instead of constantly pushing the pace? My worry is that we are really predictable (and thus easy to defend) and the 4th quarter meltdown has by now become a near certainty in our games.

Our team roster is not good at play halfcourt-setplay offense
So we have to play the high pace-motion offense

[Celtics4ever]

Some of our team are not push the pace guys, Sully is a half court guy, as he is not a running type.  The post up and resting while hoisting threes is the style he likes.  Rondo is not really one because he dribbles too much though he has adapted when we had sufficient talent like KG and PP and RA.

Rondo and Zeller are fast and runners.   They are the types who could play running ball.  Running ball takes athletes something we lack in the front court aside from Green and Bass.

[D.o.s.]

Back to the original issue.
This is really interesting for me, as it is the aspect of American bball I understand the least- I can tell you most Greeks complain they can't watch NBA bcs these guys keep running up and down pointlessly.
I've got two questions:
-If we make quick attacks, does it not mean that on average we also give more opportunities to the other side to attack? (ie a faster pace for us translates into a faster pace for the other team too)
-What is the deal with the half court attacks? I remember Stevens talking at length about our new offensive philosophy before the season started, and I think we have some legit options: i. Bradley, Thornton take picks to shoot 3s, Sully posting (this is sthg I've been expecting for some time) iii. Rondo penetrating and splitting out for a corner 3. Again, I am not a bball specialist, I am a historian by profession, so by all means do correct if I am talking BS.
Why not go with these instead of constantly pushing the pace? My worry is that we are really predictable (and thus easy to defend) and the 4th quarter meltdown has by now become a near certainty in our games.

Typically you push the pace because you don't have any confidence in your defense to consistently get stops, so the best way to win basketball games becomes putting up as many shots as possible in the hope that you can net more points than you're allowing. Furthermore, a made basket will allow you to set the defense a little bit -- particularly for the C's, where all of their best defenders are guards.

So: Because our bigs are so atrocious on the defensive end, and because we can't reliably execute much of a half court offense (the caveat here, of course, is that I've got only a few games to go on this season, someone can correct me if I'm wrong), pushing the pace makes a lot of sense.

[Evantime34]

Thoughts on this thread
1. The NBA style is not the American style. High school and college level basketball is stylistically more similar to how you were taught basketball. I think the difference between most levels of basketball and the NBA is athleticism. Elite athletes make a fast break less of an offense opportunity and more of a foregone conclusion,

2. The Celtics have their big leads because of their fast paced style. If they only played in the half court offense they would be down during most of their games instead of just in the fourth quarter. Due to length and athleticism NBA defenses are difficult to score upon in the half court, but since we lack an elite shot blocker we are less difficult to score on in the half court than other teams.

3. Our half court efficiency is 2.131 meaning that we are scoring 2.131 points for every fast break opportunity. While we only score 1.020 points per offensive trip overall. So, the Celtics are a lot more likely to score when they push the pace. Since we don't have the players to play elite defense, our best chance of winning is to play with a style that makes us most likely to score, rather than playing at the pace that makes us most likely to stop the other team from scoring.

4. We are 10th in the NBA in fast break points allowed per game, while 3rd in the NBA in fast break points scored per game. The Celtics are getting more fast break opportunities on average than their opponents which indicates this strategy is sound.

5. Great topic for a thread, it's always great to discuss things like this.

[greece66]

Wondering whether/how the question can be re examined given what we saw by the team against Washington. Do you think we did better at half court offense with Smart?