SouthernDukie
Member
What legacy?
NBA 2024-2025 General Discussion Thread
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FosterCoachK82
Member
Mazzulla likewise seems unconcerned.
SouthernDukie
Member
He’s too cool for school as well. Just not my style. I was raised in a different era. Just don’t like this modern mentality.
I just hope when Cooper Flagg comes to the NBA he stays competitive emotionally. Love his fire.
King of Defense
Member
Tatum? The guy with an NBA title and two Olympic gold medals?
If I added correctly, the Boston starters were 25 for 76 from the field.
SouthernDukie
Member
Any number of players have NBA championships and even Olympic gold medals. Not being clutch doesn’t mean you’re not a great athlete or even a great player. These guys are unquestionably fantastic players. But it doesn’t mean they’re clutch. I came of age with Larry Bird, Christian Laettner, and Tom Brady. Those guys were clutch. Tatum and Brown want to be remembered as Celtic greats. You don’t do that by losing 2 consecutive games where you had 20 point leads in the second half of playoff games. Not a good look.
Do they have time to add to their legacy? Of course they do. Could they still come back and win the series? Sure, anything is possible. Perhaps Tatum will hit the clutch shot in the closing seconds of four straight games against the Knicks. If that happens, then I’ll say he’s clutch. But right now neither he or Brown are demonstrating that.
FosterCoachK82
Member
Michael Porter is useless.
For Boston fans who might be despondent, with good reason, let me tell you that this Knicks fan is far from confident in the outcome of this series despite being up 2-0. The Knicks have not been great at home this season and are 1-2 there this postseason. The Celtics are a far better home team than a road team this year. Also, the Knicks have not played well this series. Rather than see that as some kind of untapped potential, I think it follows a trend of not playing well in the playoffs. This is not some reverse jinx, I admire my team's fight and toughness and truly never think we are out of a game until we are actually out of a game, but there is a lot of work to do to finish this series, A LOT.
To be fair, Tatum hit two big FTs in the last minute and then completed a spectacular coast-to-coast dunk that brought the crowd to its feet and gave the C’s the lead in the waning seconds.
And as far as that last play goes, the Knicks had three guys on him. There was really nothing he could do. Even the Legend (Larry Bird) would have missed that shot.
Personally, I think the Celtics are poorly coached at this point and need a change at head coach.
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SouthernDukie
Member
I think the blame has to go all around. To the coach, and the players. As for Larry Bird, he never would’ve allowed his Celtics’ teams to lose 2 back to back 20 point second half leads to begin with. Tatum and Brown, along with the other Celtics, are setting records that you don’t want to be known for in this series.To be fair, Tatum hit two big FTs in the last minute and then completed a spectacular coast-to-coast dunk that brought the crowd to its feet and gave the C’s the lead in the waning seconds.
And as as that last play goes, the Knicks had three guys on him. There was really nothing he could do. Even the Legend (Larry Bird) would have missed that shot.
Personally, I think the Celtics are poorly coached at this point and need a change of head coach.
You don't think the Knicks have played well in this series that they lead 2-0, having beaten Boston twice on Boston's home court? You don't think they've played well in the playoffs despite having dispatched a game Detroit team and now with a big advantage over the higher-seeded Celtics?
He's playing with one arm.
Not really. In this series, we were down 20 in the second half in both games and needed straight up miracles to win both. We needed a bail-out call against Detroit or else we probably were looking at a Game 7 that I would not have felt great about. Our defense has been giving up tons of open 3s, neither opponent seems to be able to cash in. I think we are really really fortunate. We did not close the regular season very well, and have struggled against good teams all year. Detroit was young and not ready. Boston seems to just be...I don't know...lacking urgency when they've got us on our backs? Trust me, I'll take it all, but aside from these insane comebacks, I don't think we look great. But, there's a now a path to the ECF that I didn't think was possible a few days ago so I am very happy.
JasonEvans
Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup
Watch that play and tell me what every other Celtic on the floor did to help Tatum. They other four guys basically don't move at all. They don't get their defenders to move to create space. Horford kinda sets a screen, sorta... but it accomplishes nothing and then Horford gets in the way of the Tatum drive. The rest of the guys are just standing there hoping that Tatum can win the game going 1 on 3.And as far as that last play goes, the Knicks had three guys on him. There was really nothing he could do. Even the Legend (Larry Bird) would have missed that shot.
Agree that the coaching from Mazzulla, a good buddy of Jon Scheyer, has been less than stellar.
SouthernDukie
Member
Tatum also loses the ball a bit which forces him to go further left than I think he originally intended. A lot of things went wrong at the end. But Jayson is supposed to be the guy, so some of it has to fall on him.
Spot-on analysis. It’s just bad coaching. The C’s players are unprepared. Period.
Yes, some of it falls on Tatum for sure. But certainly not all of it. This is a team sport, not a one-on-one street ball league at Rucker Park.
But you know this.
Yeah, not sure what happened to the "Tatum is underappreciated thread" but in reality, while he compiles strong counting stats and is the leading scorer for a championship caliber team, Jayson is relatively inefficient for a top 5-10 player in the league. He ranked 15th in PER and 17th in Win Shares per 48 this year, while his true shooting percentage of 58.3% ranked 91st, and last among any of last year's 1st or 2nd Team All-NBA selections. And as noted recently in this thread, the jury is very much out on how clutch he is.
SouthernDukie
Member
I certainly do know that. Tatum and Brown weren’t alone in missing shots in the fourth quarter. All of our best closers did the same. But Jayson and Jaylen want the smoke, so to speak. They want to be in the same stratosphere as Larry Bird, Paul Pierce and many of the other Celtic greats. And I believe other than Tatum‘s dunk, neither of them scored from the field during clutch time last night. And it wasn’t really much better in the previous game. So there’s still some work to do for those two if they want to climb the Celtics Legacy ladder.
Unfortunately, this is kind of where I’m at. And it kills me because I love all of the Dukies in the NBA. It’s the primary reason I even still follow the NBA at this point. I so badly want Jayson to be that guy. But it’s striking in this NBA postseason where we’ve seen several other players be as clutch as they can be. It just stinks that he’s been a part of two complete collapses in a row. On his home court at that.
There’s still time for a miracle recovery in the series. But if the Celtics go out this way against the Knicks, the team will not be the same next year. There will be major changes. And that doesn’t necessarily bode well if you want to be a modern day dynasty. The team is built to win now. They need to seize the opportunity.