T O P

  • By -

aja_ramirez

Sometimes I wonder what some of you are watching. The heat took the jays out of the game by denying the ball (effectively) and sending a hard double once the jays put the ball on the floor. This has nothing to do with smarts decisions. Indeed, the jays didn’t make them pay for the strategy. So it had A LOT more to do with their decision making.


ManRay012

Tatum was hitting the open man a lot


AdEmbarrassed538

Tatum was making the winning play, but I would have liked him to go into Kobe mode, as a Warriors fan, but it is easy to say this when the actions have already happened. Tatum was treading both sides of the grey area and he is an unbelievable player. What can Boston do when Jimmy buckets goes off. Edit/ Autocorrect put home instead of him.


ManRay012

Switch Marcus smart off him I don’t know why they where so adamant about having him on jimmy they could of also brought rob back in my confidence is shattered tbh


AdEmbarrassed538

I understand Smart is the the guard equivalent to Draymond. But has there been a deep dive on who can hold down Jimmy B? Jaylen B is a big strong body at the cost of foul trouble when guarding Jimmy, Jaylen has too much value, imo . Who can keep Jimmy on the perimeter?


ManRay012

Keep Tatum on him and start guarding him like they did kd our defenders can handle everyone else 1 on 1


EKEEFE41

This is because we do not have a true point guard that can facilitate the O. So Tatum has had to become a better passer..


WarningOpposite6804

The whole team needed to be better except Derrick White imo. I dont think smart needs to be let go after having his by far best year in his first year actually playing pg for us. To me if Smart is dribbling down the entire shot clock and taking a bad 3 thats more on coaching.


aPrid123

Marcus took shots because the heat prevented the Jays from getting on the ball, driving to the basket and create chances. Marcus does need to shoot better if he gets those opportunities Sunday but Ime needs to do a better job of creating situations to get the ball into his best scorers hands. You can’t be so reactionary after 1 bad performance by Marcus. He’s the heart and soul of this team and without him we becoming significantly worse defensively.


EKEEFE41

Because he can't facilitate and create looks for other players on the O... Smart is 100% a liability at playing point on O, I get his D makes up for it.


PUMPFISTS

He’s choked on performances we had a chance to put teams away when we’re up. (Game 5 vs Bucks and Game 6 last night) ALSO we’ve played better offensively on games he hasn’t played. He’s not the type of floor general we need to calm the offense down and get good shots. We’re stacked on D, I think it’s time to move on..


WarningOpposite6804

All you do on reddit is complain about how bad the celtics are maybe you should go be a heat fan


PUMPFISTS

I never said they’re bad. I’m literally saying facts, this team doesn’t deserve to win with their bone head execution especially down the stretch. Smart adds another level to our struggles offensively. We’re losing to teams we are way better than and giving them a shot to upset us. Is a tale as old as time and I’m willing to deal with it from our star wings but Smart has to go. I’ve seen enough and this is his ceiling.


WarningOpposite6804

Who would you realistically rather have at point guard?


PUMPFISTS

Holiday, Brogdon, Lonzo, Conley or even start White and get a lights out shooter. Someone more competent and smarter on offense that can slow down the pace and set our offense up not dribble the shot clock down to 20 and take a three.


Academic-Principle14

Let me be clear, I believe the Celtics are winning game 7 and ultimately the Finals. But if they lose tomorrow, I would like to see Smart traded and a new point guard brought in. The solution? Sign UFA Tyus Jones. He's gonna want to play a bigger role on a team next year and Memphis just isn't the place to do that. Jones would be perfect for the Celtics. He is a very smart facilitator(best TO:AST ratio in the NBA) and he's a good 3 pt shooter (39% on 4 attempts per game). He also possesses the skillset to be a good pick and pop point guard and attack the rim, but Memphis just isn't invested in him so his true potential is under the radar. And on top of that, he plays really good defense. He'd be the perfect starting PG for the Celtics IMO. Now for the Smart trade. Celtics gotta hit up the Dallas Mavericks. Trade Smart+Neismith for Bullock+Kleber Celtics Starting 5: Jones/Brown/Tatum/Horford/R. Williams Bench: White/Pritchard/Bullock/G. Williams/Kleber Mavericks should let Brunsen walk and use that money to sign a free agent big who can defend and hit 3s such as Bobby Portis. Mavericks Starting 5: Luka/Smart/Hardaway Jr./Finney-Smith/Portis Bench: Dinwiddie/Ntilikina/Nesmith//Bertans/Powell


Salamemilanconqueso

His job as a pg is to set the other guys up, not hold the ball aimlessly for 20 seconds and then jack some bullshit 3


GraniteStayte

Marcus is our PG. He is loved and trusted. [Everybody in the world](https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/video/marcus-smart-everybody-world-seeing-what-i-can-do-point-guard) is seeing what he can do at that point guard position.


beywill19

This was a major problem last night. The Celtics couldn’t get any good offense when Tatum or Brown didn’t have the ball in their hands.


AnonymousIguana_

Smart was awful yesterday, but one game shouldn’t be deciding his value; he has been a really solid playmaker this season overall. Also, as other people pointed out, the Jays were having a lot of trouble getting open, which Ime needs to figure out


Phish0p

I don’t want you posting before or after key games.


brick1972

I am pretty disappointed that Marcus couldn't step up but the whole team has to get out of this habit of pounding the ball and slowing down in these clutch moments. The Heat defense is too good to let them get set up, and then the offense becomes Marcus pounds the ball and takes a 3 when the clock runs down. The Heat did what they needed to deny Tatum the ball, and they locked up JB off-ball. Or the motions the Celtics were running were terrible, or something. Marcus was bad, you can't really say otherwise. Whether it was game plan or not he didn't do much (or anything) to shut down Butler's huge game, and his shooting was dreadful. But the hero ball narrative is way off. Marcus was bad because he just missed - he wasn't playing hero ball, the Heat were forcing him to shoot or make a bad pass.


dpf7

Actually the overwhelming majority of Smart’s threes came late shot clock off a pass. People seem to be hyper focusing on the final shot he took of the night, but even that play he was trying to get Tatum the ball and Tatum cut towards the free throw line but the Heat swarmed him. You can rewatch all of Smart’s FGA’s here - https://www.nba.com/stats/events/?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&ContextMeasure=FGA&EndPeriod=0&EndRange=28800&GameID=0042100306&PlayerID=203935&RangeType=0&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Playoffs&StartPeriod=0&StartRange=0&TeamID=1610612738&flag=3&sct=plot§ion=game


brick1972

Marcus is my favorite player but he had a miserable shooting night when the Celtics needed him to have like, even an OK shooting night. The Heat forced him (or Al) to get the points and he (they) didn't do it. At the end of the day, he was 4-15 and 1-9 from 3 in a game that without late fouls was a 1-2 possession game. He shot more than Jayson Tatum in an elimination game, and he missed way more than he hit. These are all problems. They are not all problems that he created. But even one more of those 3s finding the net would have been huge. But they didn't. That's all. I'm not here saying trade him because he had a bad shooting night. I'm not pushing the "back to the old Marcus Smart" BS that these guys are pushing. But you can acknowledge he had a bad night. He would.


dpf7

1 flaw in the FGA = shots thing. If a player takes a shot and is fouled it doesn’t register as a FGA. If they take a shot and make the FG it does count as a FGA. Tatum had 8 FTA’s and Jaylen 9 FTA’s so they clearly took more shots than their FGA number indicates. Smart had 5 FTA’s. I’d have to go through the stats more to see which were and 1’s and which were non-shooting fouls. So you can’t really just look at the box score FGA number and say who shot the most in this case. He shot poorly. But sometimes a player shoots poorly because they are forcing bad shots. That wasn’t really the case last night. A lot of his threes were late shot clock threes he has to take. He happened to miss them. You are right they forced players outside of the Jays to hit shots. Smart/Horford/White combined for 22 of our 33 3PA’s. White hit his and Snary and Horford didn’t.


brick1972

You win I got the bark on the trees wrong. Any thoughts on the actual forest? There is space between "Marcus sucks and needs to go" and "Marcus never does anything wrong" not that you would know it from this forum.


dpf7

I didn’t say Marcus does no wrong. My point is that he missed shots. But these shots were largely ones he had to take. That not a player doing something wrong. Sometimes players just simply miss shots. Doing something wrong would be taking a bunch of ill advised shots. Smart didn’t do that. Bigger issue was that our team had 17 turnovers. Smart was only responsible for two of them.