The Celtics biggest weakness

[Hawkeye199]

The Celtics biggest weakness is not out current guard depth or lack of experience. Unfortunately, it's our big men. Al Horford is a great center for us but he struggles at rebounding the ball. The bigger problem is when the other team goes big. Al Horford and Aaron Baynes do not play well together.

This is an exerpt taken from a ringer article "The Celtics look an awful lot like the warriors" by Jonathan Tjarks.

The two big men have a net rating of minus-4.6 in 128 minutes together in the playoffs, the second worst of any Boston pairing that has received over 100 minutes. Horford is more effective on offense when he has a speed edge at the 5 as opposed to a size edge at the 4, and Baynes is one of their only rotation players who doesn’t have to be guarded on the perimeter, even though he is shooting 9-of-19 from 3 in the postseason. The Celtics are just much less versatile on both sides of the ball with both in.


This is a weakness the Cavs will try in the series. This will be a pervasive problem for the Celtics unless they get a versatile center to compliment Horford. In my opinion, this means the Celtics need to draft or sign strong young big man in the near future to be truly competitive. By the way, this is also the Golden state warriors weakness. If we were to get a second big then we could use it on the warriors hopefully next year.



Thoughts? Opinions?

[Fafnir]

The C's weakness is their offense overall. It gets very stale and we struggle to get good shots, the reason Baynes has been a negative this playoffs is that our offense relies on Horford to create space for the team at the 5.

That's why it was so huge for Baynes to hit those 3s against the 76ers.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

I like the Cs bigs (Horford, Baynes, Morris, and Monroe) better than the Cavs bigs (Thompson, Love, Green, Nance Jr.).

[liam]

Injuries.

[Green-18]

The C's weakness is their offense overall. It gets very stale and we struggle to get good shots, the reason Baynes has been a negative this playoffs is that our offense relies on Horford to create space for the team at the 5.

That's why it was so huge for Baynes to hit those 3s against the 76ers.

This.  The Celtics need to work incredibly hard to generate offense against lengthy and athletic teams.  Deviation from Brad's gameplan usually leads to UGLY results.  This is part of the reason for our road struggles. 

The return of Kyrie and Hayward will fix these problems next season.  We have the opportunity to field a team without a single significant weakness.  Only Golden State can make the same claim.

[hwangjini_1]

on horford and rebounding. CBS does not want horford playing like a traditional center, under the basket. his job is to be at the top of the key, facilitate the offense, and draw our the other teams' centers.

it follows that he will not have a large number of rebounds since the game plan has him play far from under the basket.

plus, CBS likes his crew to get back on defense after a shot.

the more important stat is team rebounding. during the regular season the celtics were 8th in total rebounds. during the playoffs they are 8th as well. so not bad at all really.

[colincb]

We average more rebounds per game than the rest of the playoff survivors. My concern with the bigs is Baynes being left on an island in a PnR.

However, our current biggest weakness is our injuries followed by the inexperience of the non-injured.