At the end of the day, it’s the 3 point shooting that will make or break their season. Shoot well, defense is better, and it all falls into place. Shoot poorly and every other part of their game falters.
The bolded is true, and frustrating. Sometimes it seems like they miss a bunch of shots and just slide into a deep funk that affects their play all over the floor, instead of trying to take back momentum in the defensive end as they did at the start of the second quarter.
I still can’t get over Joe playing Xavier Tillman in the fourth when they were teetering on the brink of blowout and desperately needed to go on a run. I think Joe is a good coach and much of the criticism of him is overblown, but that was really fucking bad. Starters need to be playing playoff minutes not November minutes.
The double big lineups were hurting the spacing, spacing that looked off the charts good early in the game. Like at one point I was thinking Cavs fans must be so frustrated because everything is so easy for the Celtics. Then, the subbing began.
I like Tillman. I think he’s going to be a very useful rotation piece next year.
But goddamn. If he’s not going to go up and take a layup in that situation then he’s effectively useless and can’t be on the court. Give Kornet his minutes….and no more double big please
He was getting abused off the dribble as well. Nice move by Brad to give him a try, but he shouldn’t see the floor again in these playoffs. His defense isn’t nearly good enough to offset his complete lack of offensive ability.
So here is what happened with Tillman and the Celtics big rotation last night.
Al started the game and played the first 7 minutes, checking out with the Celtics up by 3, 16-13. Kornet came in and Cleveland went on a 17-8 run, ending the quarter up 30-24.
Al and Tillman started the seond quarter and the Celtics played their only really good stretch of basketball in the entire game. Horford, Tillman, Pritchard, Holiday, and Tatum played the first ~5 minutes, during which the Celtics outscored Cleveland by 18-7. Granted this was with Mitchell and Mobley on the bench. At this point Brown and White came in for Tatum and Holiday, and Mobley and Mitchell back in for Cleveland and over the next couple of minutes the play was more even (7-6 Celtics).
Then Kornet, Holiday, and Tatum came in for Pritchard, Horford, and Tillman, and Cleveland cut the lead to 4 over the next 2 minutes. Then Horford came back for Kornet and with all the starters in Cleveland closed the half on a 7-3 run to tie it.
Anyway, Tillman played in the second half because the Celtics had their best stretch of play in the first half with him out there.
For all that, he was less effective in the second half, though he played less then 4 minutes. He was the only non-garbage-time Celtic with a positive +/-, which suggests that him on the floor was probably not the problem.
EDIT: That said, I think it's embarrassing to not give better defensive effort and JB said this after the game, too. The result of losing is probably not embarrassing. Losing by almost 30 when your defensive effort was getting destroyed on the first bounce is. Like your number one job guarding the ball at the point of attack is to make that first bounce east-west not straight downhill and it happened too often tonight against top 10% defenders.
They have been historically good when facing elimination. I think I saw a stat going into game 7 last year v the Heat that Tatum's teams had won more games facing elimination at his age than anyone in NBA history and it wasn't close. But, yes, they are a frustrating bunch. That is real even if people's expectations are out of whack.
EDIT: In the last two years (22 and 23), they are 8-2 in games facing elimination. I get why we wish they'd avoid these altogether. I do as well. But I think we're always trying to measure this team against historically great teams that lose only a handful of playoff games on their way to a title. IDK.
Being historically good when facing elimination is a double-edged sword. Teams that have to fight off elimination as often as the Celtics did over the past couple of years do not win the finals. No one has played as many of these as the Celtics have over the past few years while not winning. We remember the 2008 team as having a grueling playoff run, and it did take them 20 games to get through 3 rounds, but in terms of elimination games all they had was 2 game 7s. Whether elimination games (particularly non game 7 ones) are especially taxing or just an indication of team quality I don't know, probably the latter.
