Coming To Grips With Being Down 0-2

Thanks – really sums up my feelings.
As much as I want to believe it can be turned round, the bottom line is that we looked soft and slow in the last 3 Heat games (plus the Bulls whipping as well).
I supported “the trade” but it does seem like too much of a coincidence that the wheels have come off so badly since.
What really scares me is that it wasnt the usual issues (the bench, the lack of a solid center to go with the big four, Rojan havin an off game) which has cost us so far against the Heat, rather it’s been our one, great strength which has gone missing – the big 3.
If we do go out (in say 5 games), I can’t see Danny tinkering – I think it would have to be a reboot.

Great article. Also agree The Big 3 did not show up for the games in Miami ( yes, I know, they did show up, but were simply outplayed by the opponents). I know we’ve got enough weapons to make the series way way way tougher for the Heat. They (Miami) have been playing with nearly no opposition. That has got to change. We can still win the series? I am not sure, maybe. We definitely have enough power and options and alternatives and different game plans to get them in trouble big time. I think the problem is Miami has figured us out. We have to make it difficult for them again, because that’s where they’ll suffer the most. Miami cannot seem to close games out. Let’s Go Celtics!! (Hi from Spain).

Being genuine is good, though.

The Truth shall set you free.

Rondo is supposed to be the difference, but when only 1 of 3 play good in a game, Rondo has to tear it up. He’s played well, but not great.

I have already come to grips with it. The season has been over for some time. The team lost its confidence after that trade. Who can blame them when the Coach and GM pull the rug from under them. The C’s will go out in 5 and then rebuilding starts.

At least DA gets to drool over the first round pick he earned from his wonderful Green trade.

always comes up.
The strange thing is that it’s not Perk the player (although some of his D wouldn’t go a miss) which is hurting us it’s the loss of that togetherness.
To be honest I would rather have JON starting than Perk right now, imo he has been our most consistent starter this post season but I am starting to wonder if even a 25 y.o. Shaq would make a difference when the big 3 look so mentally “gone”.
I have also got my head round it – this isn’t just us getting knocked out, it’s the end of a great (although should have been greater) era.
My only (very small) hope is that PP has not had a full game in this series yet and he can inspire the rest of the team.

Danny took a calculated risk by trading Perk. The team was playing about 700 ball before Shaq got hurt. He bet that Shaq would reemerge and was therefore willing to trade Perk to get Green and a first rounder. It made sense because the team needed another small forward and he could also start the rebuilding process with Green and a first round pick. A reasonable theory. Because Shaq hasn’t played, he may have lost the bet for this year and maybe beyond. I also believe that although Perk has intangibles, they were not a factor in the win/lost column while Shaq was on the court

Get back to the present Celtic fans. We have lost 2 road games. Granted we didn’t play our best. But Miami probably did play it’s best down the stretch in Game 2.
So, if the Big Four raise their shotmaking percentage and everybody plays defense with no turnovers down the stretch for two games we are dead even in the series. And we all know it’s up for grabs again!
Our bench won their minutes in game 2 so it’s up to the big 4 to raise their level of play.
I agree that Jermaine was the most consistent player in game 2 and probably should have been in the game down the stretch with the lack of offense Big Baby is producing.

when the Big Three was put together, I figured there was a 3 year window, now into year 4.
Danny Boy is going to have a lot of work to do a couple years down the road,
if not sooner.

I love the C’s just like anyone else but I’m at least realistic in my thoughts. This team has really been done for sometime. They have no heart, no passion, no intensity, and no desire. We always say, “Wait till next game.” Pretty soon there is no next game. As much as Danny is no good Doc Rivers is just as bad. His rotation scheme is the WORST in the league. My 3 hopes for this team is: we win the next 2 games, BBD hopefully will be gone next year, and WANT Doc gone right after this season. I want to win these games but I’m realistic that they probably wont. Oh yeah, either Shaq is really soft or Doc is full of crap.

I wish I could shake this black, cynical feeling that has come over me after watching these first two games.

I’ve watched a ton of NBA basketball over the years. And seen a ton of really, really bad officiating. These last two games have kinda put me over the edge with completely understanding just how much the games are at the mercy and whim of the officials.

I don’t know if they are corrupt or incompetent. I just know I can’t trust it to be fair and competent. And that just taints everything.

Even if we win these next two – is that a sign that the Celtics have the ability to come back and win the series? Or is that just the officials extending the series for $$ reasons?

I think I can actually say that right now I am more depressed about what this says about the state of a sport I enjoy – the NBA in general – than I am about the Celtics’ situation in particular.

Forget James, he`s indestructible….and Wade isn`t much different.

Miami has two Hall of Fame players in their prime….they have gone 21-4 since March 8th…they are 3-0 vs. Boston since the Perkins trade….they smell the blood in the water.

Boston`s one shot was in Game 2, when the score was 80-80 mid-way through the 4th quarter. It was then they let the Heat get away from them…along with the series.

is shining even lighter now with the Lakers 0-2 situation, but at least Boston is HOME for the next two, so there is still hope.

yeah, it looks bleak right now. we’re old, we’re beat up, we’re fatigued, the heat have the 2 best players, etc, etc. But if we win game 3 then who knows? We need to turn this around one quarter at a time. If we stay in the moment and focus on our D and O we have enough horses to win this thing but we need to start playing as a team right now. I think Baby SHOULD attack the rim. we need to get inside on these guys. But he has to do it in the flow of the game and not kill ball movement. He also can’t start his bull rushes 20 feet from the basket. KG needs to find some inner reserve and assert himself. If he gets tired then DOc has to trust in the bench. we don’t need hero ball- we need guys playing together. Pierce has to step up. He has been MIA for 2 games and we need our best player to play like our best player.And Rondo has to pick up where he left off in the 4th qtr when he finally started to look like the guy who beat the knicks. All of these things are doable. Will they happen? I don’t know.

Give this team a chance to come back. They are champions after all.

They deserve that respect.

How can anyone definitively say that what has happened to the Celtics has nothing to do with the trade? It’s that simple. Tell me how you know that for sure.

things that need to happen:
- shaq needs to return
- BBD needs to play fewer minutes and restrict his shots (or have them restricted)
- DW needs to play more. He can create his own shots.
-JG needs some of BBD’s minutes
- Guard the paint better.

What I think is killing the C’s is the Heat’s backdoor passing in the paint. The Heat are getting too many easy, demoralizing pick and roll/baseline cut shots in the paint. Whoever is guarding the paint needs to guard it more. Less double teaming on the perimeter. Let them kill us with 3’s. I can live with that.

He didn`t mean to kill the team….just like Princess Di`s chauffeur didn`t mean to kill her.
But, it did happen….That`s life.

1} Like many others, he vastly overestimated Jeff Green.

2} The trade stripped the Celtics of their identity and chemistry. Now, they are just a collection of players.

by Miami. I don’t know if the trade never happened if there would be much difference. What can you say when the big 3 +1 play like mice – not men (my apologies to Ray). Where’s the heart, the toughness, I mean, it looks like they’ve forgotten how to run even the most basic plays.

On the plus side, LA’s not going anywhere, and like Bynum said “there’s trust issues.” Could that apply to the Celtics as well?

No, but they’re playing better at the moment. The did what they had to do which is protect their HC before heading to Boston. We’ve seen this so many times in sports. We can all make the argument that the Celtics have played poorly in both games 1 and 2, and the refs didn’t help either. So here we are in rough position, but it’s no over until the road team wins.

The Celtics dug a grave, and now they have to figure out whether to jump in or cover it up with dirt and fight on.

Seriously – this topic is getting ridiculous.

From a mechanical standpoint, Perk’s physical absence had nothing to do with how poorly the Big 3 shot from the field the last 2 games. And our defensive numbers are not the problem. Despite claims of us being ‘soft’ in the post, the fact is that the Heat only came in to the rim 16 times in Game 2 (compared to our shooting at their rim 27 times). Our problems in these two games have almost entirely been to touch fouls away from the basket on pass-out recoveries from over-aggressive doubles. Almost the entire sum of the point disparity is accounted for by the latter alone.

So if “The Trade” is the cause of any of our woes then it is mental. And if that is true – complete and utter speculation by fan-psychologists, mind you – then frankly our core players are mental weaklings and don’t deserve to win the title anyway.

I personally do not believe that Ray, Paul & KG are mental weaklings. Call me crazy, but I see too much history behind all those guys to believe that. So that is why I don’t believe “The Trade” has anything to do with things at this point. I could be wrong. But this belief makes more sense to me.

I think our current situation is due to a conflux of several other more direct factors that have nothing to do with the trade.

I hear u Jeff Clark. I see it like this. If the Celtics want it bad then they need to go get it. It’s that simple! What I’ve saw in games 1 and 2; is no fight, urgency or the want to compete. The Celtics seem lost, delusional and caught by surprise by the way the Heat are challenging them.

Come Saturday night those Boston fans at TD Garden better go insane like it’s game 7 do or die. lol

is literally what I did after Game 7 last year. Just walking with my thoughts as my only companion, without a single destination. Sad times.

I will always believe in this team, I love this group, though I do miss Perk. Celts in 6.

…where folks feel “good teams play through it,” or “champions make no excuses,” etc. Of course, this is completely faulty, with little relationship to reality.

The reality is more complex than a few points swung one way or the other. The refs dramatically affect the game in many ways — some obvious, some not. Their fouls affect the score, sure…. but they also determine who’s on the floor. The number of fouls on a player directly changes the way he plays, especially on defense. And then there’s the deeper stuff. What happens to a team when it realizes the zebras are screwing them over? When they recognize (or just feel) that whatever they do, the calls are going to go against them… are they going to play as hard? What would you do?

I am reminded of last year’s Finals game 3, when it was obvious from the start that the zebras would not let the Cs win… and they played like it.

There are things we know, and things we don’t know. Here’s something nobody knows: Nobody knows what would have happened in the Cs’ last two games if the referees had officiated both games fairly. You can SAY ‘the Celtics were outplayed’ — but there’s no way to KNOW what would have happened in fair games. That is a fact. One of the few we have.

No conspiracy talk here. I don’t know why the refs do what they do… I just know they do it. And they impact games dramatically, always have. Watch an NCAA game and the difference is striking. The refs make mistakes there too, but far fewer, and evenly.

So the NBA is still rotten. Big news, eh? That’s what happens when there’s too much money sloshing around, I suppose. Maybe it’s inevitable, I don’t know. I know there’s an easy way to fix it — just install video refs and take most of the power away from the refs. But none of that is going to happen, clearly, because the people who run this ‘sport’ like it the way it is.

Even the players and coaches are in on it, you know. Not in any conspiracy. But with their silence. It’s not the fines that keep them quiet… it’s not wanting to rock the million-dollar boat. The NBA feeds them all, and their families, and so what if the zebras screw them over from time to time? The money still flows, and that’s the bottom line. It would be for you too.

So what to do? For me, the answer is pretty simple. Walk away. Don’t invest your emotions in what amounts to a giant scam. I’m going to do that. Promise.

Yes I will.

One of these days.

We need to be tougher that the Heat. The first 2 games they had their way with us. We need to return the favor. We need the intense KG not the timid one. We need the quick and speedy Rondo not the one that hangs out on the perimiter. We need PP to drive, get fouled and go to the line. We need to get Ray wide open looks by setting hard screens, We need JO to dominate the post. No easy baskets without a hard fouls.

Make sure the foul is not above the neck though because we know who the ref’s and Davis Stern want in the finals.

chemistry is an issue. but remember the fab four have been playing with JO for only a week or two. if they had two months with JO, then the starting five may mesh again.

chemistry matters, but chemistry with a new player can be developed. my hunch is that if JO had played all season, the team would have chemistry. perkins isn’t the only object of chemistry. i liked perk and wish we hadn’t lost him.