For many years now, celtics It was a team on the brink. The type of brinkmanship depends on where you stand. Looking up from the foot of the mountain, the Celtics may look like a group about to reach the top of a mountain they have failed to overcome through several grueling and embarrassing seasons. But standing at a vantage point on the other side of the aforementioned mountain, I realized that its peak was actually the ledge of a chasm, ready for the Celtics to plummet off the edge and into it. You might understand.
In NBA basketball, perspective is paramount, if elusive.
Indeed, the Celtics have looked like part of a two-way powerhouse on offense and defense this season, dispatching every franchise in the league (save for the Nuggets) with cool efficiency. Boston’s brand of basketball is a quick slice with a razor-sharp knife. It’s flashy, neat, and can make deep cuts over and over again, retreating before the blood gushes. They’re not a group that really appreciates disruption on the floor, and that’s been one of their biggest problems.
Last season, Boston played two long series against the Hawks. sixers, before being thoroughly upset by the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. It was a gut-wrenching punch for a group that lost 3-0, regained momentum with three straight wins in tough games, and was punted down the mountain by a Heat team that somehow showed up strong in Game 7. Second quarter. Last season, Boston made it to the Finals, giving up a 2-1 lead to the Warriors.
What the Heat and Warriors had against the Celtics, beyond the obvious firepower, was the ability to put pressure on Boston and enjoy the discomfort that followed. Heat culture can be described as a variety of things, but in one word it can be called “troublesome”. The way Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and the rest of Miami’s players dropped to the bench to pressure Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to dribble out and force turnovers was often enough for Boston’s confidence. obtained. Win 4 matches. Despite getting better offensive rebounds (26% vs. Miami’s 23.5%) and getting to the line more often, Boston still suffered losses in turnovers (2020, when they beat the Celtics in the third round). So did the Heat team).
The Warriors also forced Brown and Tatum into close games, with Klay Thompson guarding Al Horford with menacing but exuberant fun — and got the same result: turnover rate of 12.3 vs. the Dubs. It was 15.1.
Libra Brad Stevens is an analytical executive. To his credit, he recognized the need to make up for these losses.For example, you can trade right away (and then extend) They have Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis to open the season, and they have enough big bodies to handle the squeeze the team brings in with Tatum and Brown. The former move was as appropriate as it needed to be, as Holiday is having a great season, with his effective field goal and 3-point percentages being the best of his 14-year career. He’s also good at getting out of Tatum when he’s doubled or tripled. Porzingis brought size and incredible scoring benefits when he played, but there are still big questions about his consistency in the postseason. During his time with the Mavericks, Porzingis played in a total of 10 games in the playoffs, three in his first year and seven in his second, all in the first round against the Clippers. Dallas lost both matchups.
Western countries, as much as they strive to progress, boast a quality of order enforced by experience and technology. The Eastern bloc, where permanent candidates have been trapped in a kind of self-created purgatory and have succeeded in sowing the seeds of equality by competing in the small market of conferences, is a different beast. Porzingis has never set foot in the quagmire of the postseason, a volatile, volatile landscape full of chaos.
In other words, confusion. What the Celtics hate the most.
Joe Mazzula has grown even more as a coach. Comfortable although uncomfortable, understand where deviations are needed and have the team’s willingness to adapt. He renewed his team’s efforts in the post, shaking off the rigidity of the five-and-out offense and opting for mismatches he renamed “crossmatches.” The Celtics’ offense flows from opponents quickly selecting their preferred defensive assignments, and when they don’t, Boston overwhelms them. This is all about getting ahead of the opposing defense and believing your team can adapt on the fly.
Mazzula said the same thing earlier this winter when asked why he’s less adamant about timeouts than other NBA coaches.he famous soccer coach, the inability to call timeouts, instills intuitiveness and creativity in players when adapting to a game in motion. It’s an interesting theory, and certainly adaptable considering these qualities are widespread among basketball’s best players, but most professional soccer players are conditioned to compete like that throughout their entire careers. It has been. In a close playoff game, an astute timeout can be a strategic energy bust, a much-needed reset on both ends of the floor, a psychological feint, a rest for tired legs, or a bright light to help you reconsider the details your mind went blank on. This may be an opportunity to check.
It can be a pain to criticize a winning team when their edge dwindles at the end of the NBA regular season, but for the Celtics it says it all – and it’s on the court. Not only from his actions.
After the fall of Boston, knicks — The team suffered its second loss after losing to the Bucks one game ago — Mazzula criticized his team’s struggles in the first half, but then made a strange categorization. ” He said.
Despite internal ups and downs and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s recent calf strain, the Bucks finished third in the East. The Knicks are Finished the season in 2nd place, don’t let them smell hopelessness. Coach Brown acknowledged that his team was in a “tough” situation in those two games, saying the change was due to physical backup and playoff expectations. Porzingis also seemed surprised, noting that when the teams were evenly matched in most close games this season, “we always had an advantage and we started building.” These admissions are small but enlightening. The Celtics are used to playing proactively and have struggled when they haven’t or can’t.
Slowing down is not ideal at this time. Many top-seeded teams have fallen into the same lazy trap, spending rounds struggling to regain the momentum needed to win in each long, volatile postseason game. Sure, the Nuggets were called the same way last year and went on to win, but Denver has a style of play that’s more like a locomotive. The Celtics have a history of losing momentum in the playoffs.
charles barley called the celtics He went into his shift remembering a season when he and his teammates did the same thing.
“We had the best record in the NBA, but we shut it down in the last two weeks of the season. It took us two rounds of the playoffs to get it back,” Barkley said of the 1992-1993 season. Told. phoenix suns. Those Suns would lose to the Bulls in the Finals.
It’s worth noting, as Mazzula pointed out, that the sense of hopelessness has a different nature in the playoffs. In other words, in order to continue winning, you need it in some way. It’s different for every team, but it always comes down to understanding the risks and a willingness to play hard to stay there. To lean into the chaos and get a little ugly.Mazzura weekend Said The Celtics are ready and say the postseason won’t be that different from the regular season. He also said he would have his team put in some high-intensity practices this week to get ready, noting that in playoff games “ultimately it’s going to be about the margins.” [to] execution. ”
He’s not wrong about the margins or the exact execution needed to knock out four wins in the series, but there’s something wrong with increasing the stress now Belying an oversight that could cause this team to fall out of the playoffs again.
The Celtics play beautiful basketball. It’s orderly yet airy, quick yet clean, but it can all fall apart at the slightest pressure. While Boston may be able to learn a thing or two from desperate teams — like Miami, which endured a torn tendon last season, and the 2022 Warriors, who have a dynasty on the line — the question is, will they make the playoffs? It’s about how we view ourselves. Have you run out of time to change your perspective?
