Season has tipped off. One game already postponed. Here’s hoping they get to the scheduled July Finals without any major hiccups.
Phoenix is 5-1 as of today and lead the west. So far, trading for CP3 looks brilliant.. Steph Curry getting a dose of NBA reality finally having to play with an inexperienced and undermanned team. Clippers lost to the Mave by 51 without Kawhi and relying almost solely on Paul Georg, and as we know, that’s not exactly a reliable plan. The Lakers gave up some defense and height to get younger and better from behind the arc. As of right now they’re the number 1 or 2 best 3 point shooting team in the league and also a top 5 overall offense. Weird. Rob Pelinka is the goat. Nets were looking unbeatable there for a minute. Not Sure what is going on with the Bucks. Celtics look the same or worse than last season. Sixers have Doc so no matter what happens, if it’s bad, they’ll have all the excuses they’ll need. But, it’s still early.
Celtics are doing better than expected with injuries and lineup players cause JT and JB are playing so well. But now for a week or two we will have practically no players because of injuries and COVID protocols. The starting lineup tonight could easily be something like Marcus Smart, Daniel Theis, Payton Pritchard, Jeff Teague, Aaron Nesmith.
The playoffs in earnest start shortly; after the conclusion of the inaugural "play-in" tournament. Celtics secured the #7 seed by beating Washington, and will now face the #2 Nets. Wizards have one final chance against the Pacers to determine #8 and a series vs the 76ers. Tonight: Spurs @ Grizzlies for the right to play for the #8 seed - while the Lakers and Warriors scrap it out for the right to meet the #2 Suns.
Full bracket is set and the playoffs start tonight. East 8) Wizards @ 1) Sixers 5) Hawks @ 4) Knicks 6) Heat @ 3) Bucks 7) Celtics @ 2) Nets West 8) Grizzlies @ 1) Jazz 5) Mavericks @ 4) Clippers 6) Blazers @ 3) Nuggets 7) Lakers @ 2) Suns What's interesting this year is that there's no clear favourite - usually there'd be a team you'd strongly favour to go all the way. I guess the Jazz, Nets and 76ers are the most dangerous, but there's a bunch of teams I can see making some noise.
As a Celtics fan I just hope someone beats the Nets. Be great if it were the 76ers or the Bucks, even better if it were us but much more unlikely. Not only a bought superteam, a bought superteam with the narcissistic locker room cancer who tanked us a couple years ago. I'd even root for the freaking Lakers against the Nets.
Well, as I have always said, the first game of a 7 game series is the least important. Game 2 is the first “important” game. Game 2 determines if the home team takes a commanding 2-0 lead, or drops into the oblivion of a 0-2 hole, or the road team gets even and takes HCA. Good news for my Lakers and several others, with possible, and I do say “possible,”exception of the Clippers. They’re playing a team that appears to have a vendetta against them. However, Mavs are likely to have to win 2 in LA, and that may be too much. Nets are an indignant to me, too. I still get the impression that if you D them up hard, they’ll revert to iso ball, especially Kyrie and Harden. Philly and maybe Niani are the only tams in the east who might be able to present a real defensive challenge in the playoffs. Might be some serious drama going on in Utah, where I’v read that the team may be fractured with dome favoring Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. The Jazz have a franchise that I generally despise, I really hope this is true. Anyway, go Lakers, go Mavs (and I really don’t like the Mavs either)
I feel really frustrated watching Celtics getting their doors blown off right now. The whole Irving and Hayward fiascos have just torpedoed a very promising rebuild so that now we're stuck as Celtics fans in the awful middle. .. too good to get any decent draft pics, and not nearly good enough to really compete for anything. (16th pick... again... yay...) It's been just painfully obvious they aren't on the same level as the Nets or the 76ers all year long. Yeah, they had the absurd string of injuries, not even counting the final nail in the coffin with Brown's wrist, and COVID protocol issues, but there's nobody that can step up when that stuff happened. A team deep enough for a championship should have been able to hold it together and keep their head above water during all of this and not stumble to basically a .500 record. They had their chance in the bubble last year to make it to the finals and frittered it away in a maddening series they had the talent to win. They'll probably go down in a sweep, 5 games if they're insanely lucky, and all I think Ainge and co. can do is build toward another shot maybe 2 or 3 years from now. Wonder if Trader Danny is still lovin' those draft picks he hoarded, while watching his stars walk away for basically no return whatsoever...
They have Tatum and Brown locked in for 3 or 4 years. I think if they actually stay healthy they’re still in that annoying ‘One piece away’ category they’ve been in forever. They don’t need to fully rebuild, just rebuild around them and be more willing to trade players like Smart if that’s what it takes. With Tatum hurting his eye it’ll be a sweep. With him I’d still have picked them to split the home games.
I think the Celt’s biggest problem continues to be Ainge. They need Celts really need to make a hard push for Masai Ujiri. I think his contract will soon be up.There is a huge talent gap cetween the Nets, Sixers, Bucks, Heat, and the Celtics. I think Danny has shown that he is not the guy to fill that gap. I don’t see Tatum or Brown as No. 1’s on a championship team. They need a veteran superstar with the J’s as sidekicks. I’d give serious thought to trading one or both of them, not because they can’t play, but because they’ll bring back some tangible assets. You could stick with them and run the risk of staying the same, or losing both to free agency or make a move that gets you closer to a ring. Danny’s biggest issue is that he seems to be playing to not get fired instead of making the bold moves that lead to championships. Clippers, clippering their asses off.
I wouldn’t count out Tatum becoming that guy, after he was done dealing with long COVID he started throwing down 50. For Brown to be on the trade table it would have to be for a championship caliber guy who isn’t a one year rental. Celtics might be in a position to pull a Raptors but I don’t think it’s worth torpedoing the future for just one decent shot. It would have to be someone who might stick around. It’s obvious now though Kemba Walker will not be the guy he was before his injury so we should look for opportunities to unload him. Without the injuries though, if Kemba was still the guy we signed and nobody got COVID I think Celtics would have been right in the mix this season.
There is no way you’ll get a “championship caliber player” for Jaylen, unless it’s a guy who is on the downside of his career. Jaylen just hasn’t proven himself to be worth more than that. I doubt the Warriors would be willing to part with even a Draymond Greene (a player who would really help the Celts) for Brown without some valuable picks thrown in. NBA fans’ tendency to over value their own players is pretty common. Not wanting to risk losing an asset you think is valuable because of “the future” is the main reason the Raos have as many rings as the Celtics have in the last 35 years. That type of thinking is what will keep the Celts right where they are. In the last 5 years the Lakers traded 2 young all stars, , a young 6Moty, and a young MIP. Hated to lose those guys, but whenever I read “Lakers can”t develop players or, “Lakers didn’t know what they had,” I just point that ‘20 championship banner. Celts need to fire Danny and go all in for Masai. He could change free agents’ perception of the franchise as well possibly changing the perception of the city of Boston. Celts might then start getting some premiere free agents.
See? Didn’t get swept. They’ll still lose but Tatum put up 50 again and held a home game. You really think, if Celts went all out for Harden or Leonard when they had the chance, they’d have had any chance to keep them? The Celts don’t have the shiny factor of the Lakers. Both of them explicitly said they would not stay there if traded there. California and New York teams have the benefit of being in markets top players want to play in. If Boston didn’t nurture Paul Pierce, they never get Allen and Garnett and wouldn’t have their one. They didn’t want Boston, they wanted Pierce. If we have any shot at doing it again it’s through Tatum. No team that isn’t in one of those states can do what the Lakers did by virtue of being where Lebron James wanted to be. Hell, remember how much credibility Boston lost with big names when they traded away Isaiah Thomas, and Thomas is one of the worst defensemen in the league. Davis specifically cited that.
This is a cliche NBA fans repeat without any real knowledge or evidence to support it. When the Lakers were really struggling some years ago, we got turned down by Melo, LaMarcus, and couldn’t even get a meeting with Kevin Durant. The Knicks haven’t been able to get a premiere free agent in decades. The Lakers didn’t get a quality free agent until we cleaned up our front office and showed some competency in drafting. But what also attracted LeBron was the Lakers consistent commitment to winning which has nothing to do with location. BTW, the Clips have been in the same market as the Lakers and just attracted their first premiere FA last year — after 35 years. It is about players feeling like they can win, not location. Nope, not true. KG and Ray Allen were acquired through trade. They didn’t “choose” the Celts, It was a sweetheart deal between two ex-Celtics, Regardless of Tatum, who may or may not , become “that guy,” I still say your main problem in getting quality FA’s is Ainge. I just saw video of an interview he gave recently on Twitter, where he was asked about athletes protesting social injustice. Ainge said he pretty much dismisses what NBA players say about politics. He said it was just like “Hollywood” when players speak about politics. He finally said there were only two NBA people whose opinions on politics he disagreed with but respected, Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr — two white men. Dude is a trumpie. No wonder he gave less than a damn about IT.. If there aren’t some changes made, you guys might lose Tatum first chance he gets to bolt. He is going to be asking, ‘do I have a chance to win in Boston?
As a longtime NBA fan, one of the more interesting things I’v learned is that playoff blowouts many times, don’t have the meaning that many fans think they do. That being said, the Lakers will need to be a different team when the series gets back to LA. Okay, firing Danny Ainge was the right thing to do, but of course, the Celtics prove to be as shortsighted as they have been for the last few decades. They s really should have hired a person of color for the GM slot. They might still be able to do this as Stevens will be Pres I’v Basketball operations, but current ownership doesn’t seem to be very forward thinking. What I think they’ll do next is hire a Black HC and it will almost surely be an ex-Celtic. This will be an attempt to replicate the KC Jones era. Hiring a Black HC is prob a lot easier for them, I suppose, than hiring a Black person in a position of significant power in the organization. Right now the organization, it’s fans, and the city, have an aura of intolerance. I think the org is hoping that a lot of that will leave with Ainge, but is Brad Stevens, Ainge’s handpicked coach, any different? Juries’ still out. Maybe this will work for the Celts, but if it doesn’t, they stand to lose Tatum and Jaylen, which might mean another total rebuild.
Eight teams remain in the NBA postseason, and none of them has won a title since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984. Sixers/Hawks; Nets/Bucks; Jazz/Clippers; Suns/Nuggets. New faces abound.
Although Clippers are down 0-1 without home court, they lost the least important game of a 7 game series, I see the Clippers winning this series in 6. Jazz are inexpericed and the Clippers should be on a mission. Course, when you have guys like Paul George, a habitual no show in 4th quarters of big games. But Clips have a bench this season. In the east I have a hard time believing the Nets are as good as they appear to be. But Giannis has shown that he has a hard time living up to his press clippings and awards, so maybe the Nets will continue looking great, at least in this series. BTW, Giannis has the dubious “honor” of being one of only 2 multiple MVP’s who has never one a championship (or even been in the Finals. Steve Nash is the other one). But Giannis still has a chance to get out of the “Most Overrated of All Time Club.”
Not a problem in Detroit with GM Troy Weaver and Coach Dwayne Casey (one of the classiest gentlemen in the NBA). Despite the 2nd worst record this year the Pistons young team played hard. They sat veterans near the end both to develop the kids and maximize draft position (aka tanking aka fade for Cade). I'm hoping they get an allstar level player in the draft and can attract a decent free agent after Blake Griffin's atrocious contract comes off the books. I'm rooting for the smaller market teams in these playoffs since my favorite team is one and I have hopes to see them a contender again. Given the Piston's championship history I'm convinced it will be good for the game when they are good again even if it is because they are villains to Lakers, Celtics, Bulls or Pacers (Malice at the Palace) fans. Anyway gblews I appreciate your perspective on the state of the Celtics.
Kemba Walker and pick #16 to OKC for Al Horford, Moses Brown and picks. Brad Stevens' first big move as Celtics GM. What do you think @JirinPanthosa?