SO SAD: AS A Boston Celtics star player suspended due to….
Most people believe that the Celtics’ “top 6” is the finest in the entire league. Pritchard and Hauser have made good rotation players. The Celtics bench has a lot of question marks after that.
Shams says that the Celtics should be prepared to make moves to strengthen their bench.
The Celtics have a $6.2 million TPE that they can use to recoup salary without having to trade any players, as Keith Smith has pointed out. Locating someone who would make a significant difference within that pay range is the tricky part. Furthermore, when figuring the tax bill, adding salary at this point would count three or four times the salary. In a perfect world, the owners would approve the additional expense if there was a clear upgrade. Which players meet that description, I’m not sure.
You must think about which players you would be willing to trade away if you aren’t using the TPE (and 3-for-1 deals are difficult to complete in season while teams still have roster constraints).
OFFICIAL: Boston Celtics Coach make a fearful statement about…
It’s scary hours for Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics.
Playing on their home floor became a house of horrors once again Friday night as the Celtics fell into a 2-0 series hole against Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat in a 111-105 loss at TD Garden.
Not even a game-high 34 points from Jayson Tatum was enough to save Boston.
It was another late-game collapse from Mazzulla and the Celtics as they seemed to take control early in the fourth quarter with a 12-point lead. But as they’ve done often late, the Heat made their run and Boston could not find a response.
The Celtics’ bad late-game execution and inability to respond to runs has been a running theme throughout these playoffs. And going up against an advantageous team like Miami—that thrives in those situations—has been a recipe for disaster.
Timeouts were once again an issue with Mazzulla as he refuses to use them in critical situations when the Heat climbed out of that late-game deficit in a matter of minutes.
He also took out Tatum for a couple of moments in the fourth quarter that were critical for the Heat’s comeback.
The inexperience has never been more evident for the 34-year-old first-year coach than in this series going up against Erik Spoelstra and his all-world coaching staff.
And the Boston faithful were letting him hear it on Twitter following the loss.
Brown caught a lot of flack for a really bad shooting night by his standards. He finished with 16 points of 7-of-23 shooting from the field and 1-of-7 from three-point range to go along with four rebounds and two turnovers.
As for Williams, he did what some in the business would call “Dillon Brooksing a game away,” by poking the bear. With a few minutes left in the fourth quarter he got caught up in a trash talking match with Butler and loss.
Big time.
The Heat were once again led by Butler and Bam Adebayo, who finished with 27 and 22 points, respectively. They also got a huge contribution form Caleb Martin off the bench as he had 25 points of his own to go along with four rebounds.
The series will now head to South Beach for Games 3 and 4 as the Celtics look to avoid falling into a dreaded 3-0 hole.
Game 3 is on Sunday night at 8:30 p.m. ET.
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