ITS THE OFFS BABY THE 2023 NBA PLAYOFFS

i feel like the bad vibes started when grant got benched

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 24 May 2023 8:12 AM

grant is not going to die wondering and i respect that

also the celtics are doing some very unusual and bad things on defense to the point that im not sure if the scheme is completely cooked or if the players are deliberately ignoring it

there is some inexplicable stuff on defense for sure, one has to wonder if it stems from mazzulla clearly looking at the team thru an offensive lens. even his big adjustment for game 3 was to take his best defensive player off the floor in order to insert a guy (derrick white) who butler has been repeatedly picking on in iso all series

jimmy has also been victimising williams. there are so many structural issues with the celtics defense though that lineup management is not even that big a part of it

celtics game plan so far: three and a half minutes smart, team basketball, get a 4- or 5-pt lead, then just stop running actual plays.

brogdon was brought in to be a 6th man. the idea was to limit his minutes and keep him healthy because he always wears down/gets hurt. it's worked great.

i do think some of the hand-wringing about wing creation or true point guards or whatever is overblown, this team doesn't have a top-5 player and was always going to win with defense and depth and not having major weaknesses....they still play defense ok but struggle to adjust and take advantage of being able to play different coverages and styles because they're horribly coached on that end.

tatum was a top 5 player this year per RPM type stats for whatever thats worth

he probably looks good in aggregate stats because he plays a ton and contributes in a lot of different categories but he's obv not top-5 on any given night

he was 4th in mvp voting!

the most trustworthy stat as we all know

yeah! totally deserved that MVP placing, i'm just talking about a different criteria

there are overlaps in all these tiers but I think you could def say he’s at the top of the second tier or whatever, if your supporting cast is good enough I think he can be the best player on a title team

he was 13th in EPM this year but third in EPM wins. he’s still young and stays on the court, good combo

i’m a tatum defender but if you go back thru the last two playoffs and ask yourself how many times he was the best player in the series you’ll find that the answer is not very often

haha I was just going to say that I feel the need to gently rib you for referring to tatum as the best/most important player in the league on separate occasions several months apart this year when there’s actually a better version of him on your team

he doesn't score consistently enough in playoff settings yet, i think he can and maybe will in the future but he just gets shut down way too often

He has really great halves though

nice run from boston here

that stat about al horford only having shot three FTs since march 21 was insane

uh oh if Jimmy's gonna start making those shots again...

this is the first time all series the heat’s role players have gotten gunshy

the celtics ending the quarter by purposefully switching butler onto tatum leading to a horrible shot and then a transition dunk for butler was weird

alright I'm gonna have my eyes on Tatum the whole quarter

oh damn that was sick

ok Cs aren't blowing this one

alright let’s go 7 game series plz we deserve it

haha and you have absolutely no self-interest in suggesting that

:)

game 7, baby

prior to the start of the series my main c's-watching friend and i made plans to watch game 5 together, basically because it was the easiest night and i assumed this was going 6 or 7 in a competitive fashion. we don't live super close to each other so i think a conversation will be required about whether this is just a gentleman's sweep or not.

hey you never know the Celtics were up late in both 1 & 2 and maybe 3 was just one of those games, it's still an 8 seed with a ton of injuries. at least that's what I'd be telling myself if I were a fan

i feel like smart typifies the celtics issues so they should probably dump him first. they need a new mindtype

― micah, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 7:13 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

these words arent in the bible

its kinda rough to be getting wrecked by an eighth seed but on the other hand it is in the eastern conference finals a place where the celtics have been a lot, so i wouldnt over react, and i doubt they will

and its not over! the celtics have won a game, which is the thing youre trying to do

btw jimmy in the post game presser was all were gonna do the same stuff we always do after games listen to a lil music drink a lil beer (nice) drink a little wine (wait are they getting fucked up after games is that their secret)

we all know the stat about teams coming back from 3-0 but that is no longer the relevant stat,anyway i’m pretty sure that’s how it works

theyre down 3-1 now baby its gone from impossible to only very unlikely

an 8 seed has never beat a 2 seed so its actually impossible for the heat to win

oh damn that is true

I don’t know anything about gambling but I’m curious, what’re the odds for the Celtics to win the series? The odds are better than what people would assume (my model has the probability of the Celtics winning at 22% and I assume people believe the odds should be 0%).

thing i just googled had celtics at 27%

btw its crazy that now when you google sports betting stuff its traditional news outlets nbc espn when you used to get actual gambling sites at the top of the results, sign o the times

I watched the second half of Cs/Heat G4 and the big difference felt like Boston actually bothered to defend the perimeter. No doubt Spo has an adjustment for this. The rest still felt kind of concerning.. Butler absolutely feasted on RWIII, beating him to the basket again and again. Brown still Mr Potato Hands with the ball, not hitting shots, getting doubled and flustered.. An uncomfortable number of Smart threes.. Horf had a great game on both ends but it's starting to feel like he has one great game in him per series. Not really convinced but if they can play D like they did down the stretch - and that means Horf too - who knows

i haven't looked at twitter film breakdowns but i think it's hard to know if that game was meaningful or if the celtics just played harder & better. gabe vincent not playing tonight is gonna put a lot of strain on the heat's rotation... they're now down three guards & you can only push lowry so hard. he's had a sleeve on his leg recently too so i think he's dealing w/ some minor injury. jimmy & bam are gonna have the ball in their hands a ton... i have to imagine jimmy is gonna push hard for a 40 point game tonight, they're down to a very very minimal amount of ball handlers

my feeling is Boston rolls at home and Game 6 is gonna be the wild one

maybe but the thing about Boston is that they're a deeply frustrating Jekyll and Hyde team for whom home court seems to mean nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But yeah Vincent out is big

Brogdon's apparently got a torn tendon in his shooting hand that he's been playing through, didn't realize that

that does explain why every shot he's taken the last three games has clanged off the rim like he's shooting boulders instead of basketballs

i'd also like to announce that i won't be watching the game tonight bcuz i previously scheduled a birthday party on this night, but i will be telling anyone who asks that abstaining from playoff basketball once every 4-5 games is actually necessary for one's sanity

^

yeah when people complain about how time feels like it moves faster as they get older I always recommend getting really invested in an NBA playoff run. that Bucks title run felt like it lasted 7 months

yeah those days between games DRAG