Please remember how significant these injuries are. I'm proud of our guys

[chambers]

Game 5 was the perfect storm of us not hitting shots, and the Hawks catching fire from three.

We are missing AB, Crowder is barely 50-60% of himself, and our #1 bench player is probably having shoulder surgery this off season.

I'm not sure if anyone here has had a dislocated shoulder or a torn shoulder muscle, but having personally suffered a tear playing bball, I can tell you it's one of the most painful things you'll ever experience an takes a long long time to recover.
Kelly would be in serious pain out there every time someone even brushes against it.

This series has shown how much we need another elite scorer to give IT more room to move. It's also shown that we need better three point shooting. Now arguably with a healthy Crowder and Bradley, we'd be hitting more threes and also defending the three better, but it's still a glaring need.

We still alive though and the boys will keep fighting. Unfortunately they just don't have enough scoring options for IT to have a bad game, and they don't have the shooters on the floor to make ATL pay for swarming IT and blitzing him in the pick and roll.

I think Durant will be watching this series and contemplating how amazing our team would be with him and someone like Butler out there consistently making shots.

I just everyone to keep in mind that AB, Crowder and KO are heavy offensive contributors to our strategy and without them healthy this is an amazing effort so far.

[Vox_Populi]

The problem is really who's hurt (obviously). Bradley, Crowder and Olynyk were 2nd, 3rd and 4th in made threes on the season for the team. Zach Lowe pointed out that Atlanta's defense works by squeezing the paint. You take a bad shooting team against this defense and have their next three best shooters hurt and the results should be obvious.

[rollie mass]

TP TP TP TP TP-all those injuries compound exponentially-they held down the all stars horford and millsap-maybe the pressure at the garden will tighten up their supporting cast
i have dislocated ans fractured my shoulder it was clinically frozen from damage that was done
marcus dislocated his knee ,fingers shot .33 as a rookie and everybody thinks he is the worst shot in league
look at crowder and his shooting at the moment ,marcus was a rookie with a very bad high ankle sprain that bothered him all season ,he had little lift and it effected first step-
this year he ripped his fingers out of joint, then his knee-no wonder he shot.25%-now the media has parroted his shot as the worst in league-who are these people did they ever play competitivly
look at curry comes back from ankle to wreck his knee
any injury that effects lift or mechanics wrist, knee, ankle, shoulder hp or back
 can  throw off even best shooter except larry bird
or a huge center but a finesse guy like kelly shooting threes-are all these posters are brain dead-take away the leagues top defensive guard along with the best 3point shooting 7 footer then add crowders shooting woes

[CFAN38]

I agree that this team has to be taken into perspective. The Cs have won 48 reg season games and two home playoff games with a roster whose higher paid player is Amir Johnson with a stating lineup that does not feature a single lottery pick. If at the beginning of the season someone was to tell me the Cs would end up with 48 wins an Allstar player and win two home playoff games vs Atlanta I would be happy with that. Now add to that the two winds coming without Avery Bradley and this really is an achievement.

[GreenWarrior]

yay we can blame injuries...

before AB got injured we weren't all that impressive in game 1 or the previous 2 weeks.

the issues with this team need to be addressed and hopefully they do and hopefully we don't think we're a good team that only lost because they had injuries.

also, jar crowders defensive rotations have been putrid since before his injury.

[jambr380]

yay we can blame injuries...

before AB got injured we weren't all that impressive in game 1 or the previous 2 weeks.

the issues with this team need to be addressed and hopefully they do and hopefully we don't think we're a good team that only lost because they had injuries.

also, jae crowders defensive rotations have been putrid since before his injury.

Luckily he doesn't seem like the type to sit around and chill on the couch all summer. He made vast improvements from last year to this year and he should be able to continue on that trajectory.

As for the injuries, at least the value of our players will likely remain stable. Marcus and JJ may have even bumped up a bit. But, this series is showing just how valuable Avery is and people already know what KO and Crowder can do.

Heck, even if we choose to re-sign Sully, he should now come at a decent discount. I am not sure what people think of Turner anymore.

Hopefully we can eek out a win at home and see what this depleted team is made of in game 7...at least it was better than last year's performance.

[Vermont Green]

It is interesting to compare the current team performance with mid season.  Bradley being out is a clear loss.  Bigger impact than most people realize in my opinion, especially against Atlanta.  Then you add in the decline in performance of Crowder, Olynyk, and Sullinger (for different reasons), and we are a different team.

I don't think the big picture is all that different though.  We are team that over-achieved to get a good slot in the playoffs but then is exposed to some degree in the playoffs.

I love this team but losing Avery Bradley is not like losing Chris Paul and Blake Griffin or Irving and Love.  We have been blown out twice by Atlanta.  The same would probably happen against Miami, Toronto, or Indiana.  We are not out of this series yet so who knows.

[Future Celtics Owner]

Well this goes back to the most basic Celt's fan crossroad in our current rebuild:
1. Did you want a ton of bench players (obv some exceptions) and win more regular season games because we had a great bench and an "equal opportunity" team. Injuries were not suppose to hurt us as much as other teams. But because of the many vets and guys that were only here for a year we over-achived in the regular season (without developing younger players to keep or trade) and got a much worse draft position. Then the we waved goodbye to the short term veteran role-player only to get a couple more.
But we have had success in the regular season, and given this team, it is extremely promising that CBS has done this. He is the best coach in the league IMO and if I had a choice to start a team he would be my 1st pick for coach.
We are also possibly able to add Cousins and sign Durant. I have been talking about this for a couple months/when I got over Myles Turner/Ingram playing himself into the top of the draft. If we get the 1st or 2nd pick, maybe even the 3rd-5th,(with the later picks we would have to add picks, I would say non- BKN, and add player/s)anyways Cousins would be ours. If we get the 1-2nd pick we could trade it striaght up for Cousins and also get a TE(some say trading a top 2 pick in the draft for a worst case scenario of a 2 year rental on a disgruntled Cousins is not worth the pick). Then we sell Durant on Boston and tell him that we can sign Ibaka/Westbrook the following season, which may help sell him on Boston.....Besides us going to the finals every year(and thats w/o Ibaka and Westbrook

2. Sacrifice short-term role players and bench players for developing younger guys and get the correct seeding for the lottery.

[GreenWarrior]

I think AB's loss has not been as bad as it should or could have been. obviously he's another body and he's not rozier or hunter, but he played in a majority of game 1 and we lost anyway. we won 2 games at home without him, AB's loss has not had as big an impact as most are making it out to be.

[Hemingway]

I think we can be proud of our guys, acknowledge the injuries and still think there is something wrong. I'm not really pointing any fingers. Just saying we are better than this. We should still find a way to win.

[SHAQATTACK]

We ve seen when.a Clog is missing how the team can struggle to score even against bad teams .

Too many player not healthy to expect the team to beat the cream of the crop.

I'm amazed at the record .  And most of the games have been very competitive .....win or loose.

[Chief]

I'm proud.  I think the injuries are a key reason for the struggles.

Having said that, I don't want to keep the band together either. Totally healthy we don't have the talent to win the East. I want Danny to go after max players and let average ones walk.

[Celtics4ever]

Some of it, is injuries, we have not exactly beat ATL when healthy this year.

[Rondo9]

I don't think the Celtics overachieved this year.

[chambers]

I think AB's loss has not been as bad as it should or could have been. obviously he's another body and he's not rozier or hunter, but he played in a majority of game 1 and we lost anyway. we won 2 games at home without him, AB's loss has not had as big an impact as most are making it out to be.

We lost him in the crunch of game 2 whilst he was playing well.
It's not just his defense we're missing. We're missing his scoring and 3 point shooting more than anything right now.
Who would of thought we'd ever say we were missing Avery Bradley's scoring 4 years ago.