Celtics All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum told reporters that Boston, now leading the Mavericks 3-0 in the Finals, is hardly satisfied after the team nearly surrendered a 21-point second half lead in Game 3 on Wednesday night, writes Joe Vardon of The Athletic.
As Tatum notes, Boston itself fell into an 0-3 hole against the Heat during the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals, and ultimately pushed Miami to seven games. Tatum sprained his ankle during the first quarter of that Game 7. The Heat eventually won and advanced to the Finals.
“We really felt like we were going to come back,” Tatum said. “We almost did. You know, we were a sprained ankle away from having like a real shot. So, you know, we are not relaxing or anything like that.”
There’s more out of Boston:
- Second-year Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla‘s unique approach to the game has the club on the verge of capturing its record-setting 18th championship, notes Jared Weiss of The Athletic. “Anytime you’re developing a new philosophy or a new style, it just takes time for understanding and execution,” Mazzulla said. Per Weiss, Mazzulla’s philosophy is all about preparation, as well as read-and-react basketball in a variety of situations. As Steve Buckley of The Athletic adds, Mazzulla rose quickly in the ranks from a second-row assistant coach under former head coach Ime Udoka to his current position. Mazzulla takes an unorthodox approach to his film sessions with his team, going so far as to use UFC clips to motivate players.
- Some of Celtics coach-turned-team president Brad Stevens‘ less heralded team-building transactions have helped pay dividends for Boston as the Finals have worn on, according to Brian Robb of MassLive.com. With starting center Kristaps Porzingis out in Game 3, Mazzulla opted to use deep-bench reserve big Xavier Tillman behind newly elevated starter Al Horford. Tillman delivered, notching one critical three-pointer, four rebounds and two blocks. Robb also lauds Stevens for his decision to keep the faith in Jaylen Brown, who was frequently mentioned as a possible trade candidate for a more established star earlier in his career.
- Kristaps Porzingis wasn’t able to play in Game 3, but there’s a chance he’ll be available in Game 4, Shams Charania of The Athletic said on FanDuel’s Run it Back show (Twitter video link). Mazzulla stressed that Boston’s commanding 3-0 lead won’t impact whether or not Porzingis will try to play on Friday, according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps (Twitter link). Porzingis is dealing with a posterior tibialis dislocation in his left leg, suffered during Game 2. The 7’2″ center did get an opportunity to put some shots up during practice on Thursday while wearing a brace on his left ankle, per Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe (Twitter links).
Woj reports Porzingis is not suiting up because the Lakers are now interviewing him for their coaching vacancy
What was in that locker bro
And Sham Charlatan just re-reported that JJ Redick continues to be the frontrunner for the Lakers’ head coaching position. In Sham’s latest tweet, he described Redick as not being entirely convinced the Lakers were intent on further embarrassing themselves – and the Laker brand as a whole – by hiring him, so he requested that Buss and Pelinka scan long and hard to pinpoint a coach who has had a lot of recent success. Per Charlatan: in Redick’s last text to Pelinka, he flat out stated something along the lines of, “…..if you interview someone whose coaching resumé and vision for the Laker future absolutely blows you away, and all the while you’re STILL having thoughts about me being the first coach to participate in LeBron’s pregame patty-cake sessions and him and I doing our budcast at center court after EVERY SINGLE game – no matter if it’s road or home – only THEN will I be convinced of your interest in me.”
West best team is about to get swept. With KP hardly playing.
Now maybe we can stop the West is better, deeper nonsense.
As of 2023, the Eastern champions have a 40–37 advantage in NBA titles over the Western champions, with their most recent being the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021.
Boston Celtics 2024 !!!!!
Now 41-37 ……. West coast my ares
the west is better.
The West is still better. Boston is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the league but the East’s number two seeded Knicks with Brunson and Randle at full strength would be hard pressed to beat Dallas, Minnesota, OKC, Denver or a healthy Pelicans or Clippers squad in a seven game series.
A healthy Knicks team can beat the Celtics. Certainly take it to 7. West can even win a game. Go leap into the pacific lol.
No they cant and no they would not.
Stop.
Nonsensical and completely without any foundation in actual facts. Losing all credibility and actually becomes laughable when you include the likes of clippers,pelicans,Dallas in your ridiculous hypothetical.
A healthy Giannis makes the Bucks legit. Celtics, Knicks (healthy), Sixers (Healthy), Pacers (Healthy) and Bucks (Healthy) are all legit teams who can compete with anyone in the West.
People still think the Lakers are good. Playoff Pacers would embarrass them.
Haha, the “playoff Pacers” are pretty good. They showed that in the IST when the celtics, bucks, and sixers couldn’t beat them. Of course the Lakers smoked them in the final. Having Siakam for the actual playoffs but being after Haliburtons hamstring issues essentially offset. Pacers don’t have a prayer to get out of the first round in the west (against those teams that contribute to you being convinced the lakers are so bad) and yet they were playing the celtics even in the conference finals before haliburton went out (and even somewhat afterwards).
West is a bloodbath… Luka is getting injections before each game because he ain’t healthy…
The East has a stacked team and teams that would be in the play in in the West…
Both conferences are weak, particularly at the top. The rosters of the best teams have some great players, but, for the most part, their rotations are simply not championship caliber. They can perform at a championship level at times, but not consistently, and certainly not on demand as is required to truly compete for a championship.
The West was deeper playoff/play-in group, but was weaker at the top, particularly when you consider that 4 of the top 5 in the East at the All Star break had multiple injuries that arguably compromised their work product down the stretch of the season and into the playoffs.
Still, just like last year (with DEN), there is only one team (BOS) that can put together a consistent rotation championship level rotation. Last year the real competition at the top was DEN vs DEN, and this year it’s BOS vs BOS. BTW, these two teams, while exceptions, also have attributes similar to other top teams.
true, we need Celtics nuggets finals to even it out
Haha okay I’ll take the bait. If you think the Mavs are the wests best team, you’re giving away your east coast bias. They played about as perfectly as they could’ve in the first 3 rounds and have reverted back to what they were in the regular season in the finals. The twolves were gassed after the emotional series against the nuggets but both those teams (and the thunder) are better than Dallas. The celtics went 1-4 in the regular season against the wests actual best when those 3 teams had their guys and they should’ve been 0-5 because the win was a game the twolves blew with sloppy turnovers late to allow the celtics to force ot… This year is similar to 2004 when Kobe decided not to pass to Shaq in the finals and the pistons got gifted a title when any of the other top 4 west seeds would’ve waxed them. The celtics just got handed the easiest path to a title in a long time, possibly ever (so much so that their bumbling hc couldn’t even screw it up for them). Conclusions from that about the relative strengths of the conferences are about as irrelevant as can be.
West is deeper and better.
Do put things in proper context.
I guess you don’t understand. Proper context means it’s actually true.
This impending CELTS championship, is about the best evidence that the GM/Executive plays a more crucial role, than the coach.
Last offseason was a masterpiece from Brad Stevens ….. posted here last year, that KP would be a gamechanger for the playoff team that gets him from the Bullets er Wizards.
The cherry on top was Jrue.
Horst absolutely inept for not putting up conditions on the Dame trade. Let’s just say that Pops wouldn’t allow a key asset to be traded to a division/conference rival.
What could Horst do? I think the Bucks needed to make the Lillard trade as their offense was stagnant in last season’s playoffs. He can’t very well tell Portland that they can’t trade Holiday to Boston.
More than a few, including Lowe, Windy and the Ringer boys have said that Horst could/should have setup a multi team trade, whereby Jrue lands on a non rival team.
Horst might have tried, but until such info is known, Jojo and the rest are flaming Horst for helping create this iteration of the CELTS.
Stevens is playing 3D chess. He got Tillman and Jaden Springer on cheap contracts for nothing and can develop two young role players to replace anyone who becomes too costly to keep the core 5 together. Both have weaknesses, but if they can teach either or both how to shoot things look very good.
Al is probably retiring soon. He got Tillman to replace him.
I would expect Brad makes a play at trading up for a cheap young guy in the teens he can develop as well.
Hopefully Brad has a plan for Derek White who is going to be costly.
What if everyone Boston played had been healthy? The team that came through the west fully healthy. We’ll conveniently forget Kristaps has played little part in the playoffs. What if Miami traded for Holiday or Lillard? LMAO, they didn’t, next. Now Boston will have to win multiple chips or they are a flash in the pan. The argument of can Tatum be the best player on a championship team has already turned into…Tatum isn’t the best player. Now every analyst who’s stated Tatum won’t win a title as Boston’s no.1 can claim being correct instead of admitting they got it wrong and congratulate the winner. When Bron won the bubble chip while every team he played had guys missing they call it the hardest title ever won, LOL. When Steph won a title playing exclusively against back up point guards the entire playoffs the debate was is Steph the best point guard ever. Some delusional sheep question if the nba caters to curtain teams or sets of fans…ratings, money much. LETS GO CELTICS.
While I agree with everything you say, the thing is, it doesn’t matter what people say. When you win the championship, you win the championship, and that’s the whole story. Haters gonna hate.
Warriors first championship was filled with injuries.
OKC had no Russ after Bev and was the #1 seed
Grizz missed Conley
Nugs had some injuries and Iggy likely snitched
Kyrie got hurt for Cavs
I honestly never heard the media question it.
Sometimes the best team doesn’t win the championship. I feel like it shows more in other sports, but it’s just the way it is. Doesn’t take anything away from the team that won it ask David Eckstein. The west is deeper than the East, but I don’t think the separation is as great as ppl make you believe. I don’t necessarily think the Mavs are the best team in the West, but here they are
The best teams in the West this year were young and young teams make mistakes…
Dallas made some major upgrades, but I agree that they aren’t the best team in the west…
In the NBA, the best team not only almost always wins the championship. Further the best team in a playoff series, almost always wins that. The best team doesn’t always have the best seasonal record. DAL was the best team record-wise in the West in the 2nd half of the season. Because the roster (and starting lineup) was reset at the deadline, that’s somewhat more relevant than their overall record. The head to head domination of MIN, the team that beat the only real contender in the West (DEN) furthers that.
The team that’s playing better at the point of the series almost always wins is a better way to word the concept you’re talking about. The Mavs had way more to play for seeding wise than the wests top 3 so that had a lot to do with their record down the stretch being so strong. The twolves were gassed after the emotional series with the nuggets and the league sloppily has the conference finals on the every other day calendar so they never recovered. The twolves have a better bench and 4 of their 5 starters are superior (all but doncic) – zero chance the mavs win that series in a normal setting. Ditto if they had played the nuggets. Mavs are not the west’s best and it’s not particularly close. They just played about as perfectly as they’re capable for 3 rounds (and hence were better at the time). Moral of the story is that it continued the theme of the celtics getting the easiest possible opponent every round of the playoffs.
So are you saying the team that most deserves a championship is the one who has played the best basketball for the longest stretch of time? Fine give it to the team with the best record — oh wait a sec…
LOL. Teams don’t get dominated (to the tune of a gentlemen’s sweep) because they are spent from a prior series. Maybe you’re a MIN fanboy, and believing nonsense is your way of coping.
Regardless, its not difficult to determine the best team, even retroactively when they lose, if you know the sport, teams and players. Record matters, but it has to be adjusted for playoff style basketball, injuries and in-season resets. No doubt that DEN was the best team in the West, and little doubt that DAL was second. And, this post-season, like most, the best team won every playoff series, except one (the DEN-MIN series). And that loss, deprived the NBA of what could have been a classic Finals.
I know you like to use the word fanboy, but what it says to me is you didn’t seem to particularly consider what was said. I know you’re more of an Eastern conference guy so it makes sense that your opinions line up with how the media portrays the west, but maybe try to consider a little deeper. I brought up the twolves-mavs comparison because it makes logical sense. Besides luka over conley, no rational nba personnel evaluator would take the mavs starter over the corresponding twolves starter. And that series wasn’t domination at all: prior to game 5, the twolves had spent the majority of the minutes leading (and unlike the Mavs who were playing to their ceiling, they weren’t playing nearly as well as they had previously in the playoffs). It easily could’ve been 3-1 twolves and would’ve been 2-2 if doncic doesn’t hit the game winner in game 2 that I’m pretty sure he shoots under 50% on for the season for that shot. But I digress – if you don’t like the twolves comparison, take the Mavs series against the thunder. It was a dead even net rating and the Mavs won on the strength of superior coaching and strategy and hence again were winning close games. Both the thunder and twolves obviously have room to develop in playoff execution/performance, but anyone actually paying attention could see they are both superior to the Mavs (again not saying that Mavs didn’t deserve to win, just that neither series was reflective of what you would expect if both teams played their relative bests). And like I said in a previous post, the celtics were 1-4 against the combination of the actual top 3 from the west when said teams had their guys (throwing out the game thunder had Shai and Jalen out) while they are now 5-0 against the clearly lesser Mavs – that should be the most damning evidence that the Mavs are clearly no better than the west’s 4th best team. The finals was probably going to be lopsided no matter what (with this being the only matchup in the celtics favor) unless the celtics being so much fresher from playing barely play-in caliber teams in the first two rounds allowed them to hang otherwise… Obviously not the popular take because most people and especially the media like to be so overreactionary, but a little critical thinking can go a long ways. And this argument can be applied to the best in the east too. When the Knicks and Bucks were full and healthy, they were 1-0 and 2-1 respectively with 3 blowout wins over the celtics. Boston isn’t actually good at all against other elite teams – they just kill it against everyone else – and “everyone else” is the entirety of what they’ve faced in these playoffs.
I read every word. I’m a NYK fan, but, outside of them, I watch games from both conferences about equally.
Evaluating a team, particularly for playoff basketball, isn’t about imagining 5 one-on-one contests, and certainly not about head-to-head regular season matchups, which are next to meaningless. It’s all about the various ways a team can win, whether its finishing off a win with a lead, coming from behind, and, most importantly, winning the last 5 minutes of a close game.
Neither DAL or MIN is a championship contender in the true sense. They can only be made that by default. As between them, MIN is more talented, but they’re less consistent. It’s easy to see why. They’re a 2 option team without an identity on the offensive end. The top option is Edwards, an uber 2 way talent, and maybe one day a top 5 player, but right now he’s young and not a championship level first option. Too inconsistent, and too many youthful mistakes. Towns, who should be his reliable veteran wing man, simply isn’t reliable in big spots. Conley is a good PG, but not really a good third option at this stage of his career. McDaniels plays out of position and can’t even be a 3rd ball handler, let alone an offensive option. Gobert is not an offensive option. DAL is also a two option team, but their two guys are Luka and KI, two of the best finishers in the game. After the midseason trade, they were able to surround them with the right 2 way pieces. The team IQ is high, and there’s depth that complements each other and the stars.
MIN might be closer to being a great team than DAL is, that’s hard to assess. But, right now, DAL is a better team. I doubt either team gets to greatness from here, at least based on their asset base and the current CBA rules.
Definitely appreciate your response and perspective. I’ve generally noted your posts on here are thoughtful which is why I sought to be thorough in clarifying where I was coming from. I agree regarding what you’re talking about as far as winning playoff series although we’ll have to agree to disagree on some of the subtleties of the discussion… The regular season matchups can be irrelevant, but they can also be reflective predictors as well – I think it’s a case by case basis. My main point and frustration though is that the celtics never faced the other 5 teams that I personally think are elite (Knicks with Anunoby, Bucks with their big 3, Thunder, Nuggets, and Twolves). And considering how thoroughly they struggled against said teams in the regular season, the sample size and diversity of elite opponents seems significant to me to draw conclusions on how a playoff series would’ve gone.