My offseason prediction
Now that the sack Joe / too many 3s / get giannis posts have died down, I wanted to share my prediction for this offseason.
It feels to me like the celtics had 2 main problems in the Philly series:
Guarding Embiid, Embiid was sensational (horrible to type) and there aren’t many bigs in the league that would have slowed him down sufficiently. I believe Queta with more reps and experience can do a job at this level, tbh we have little other option given the cap situation and the Js contracts. The 76ers averaged 106 in the 4 Embiid games, the other end of the court was a much bigger problem…
Spacing, I felt that the last 4 (even the win was ugly) games in the 76ers series really resembled stretches of the previous year’s NYK series. Slow to get up the court, Js iso doesn’t really go anywhere as the paint is crammed and Embiid is in drop, with a few seconds left kick it to someone on the permitter for a meh 3 look.
When brad said “we need to get to the rim more” many believed that we were trading JB for Giannis. To me a Giannis trade would be the antithisis of how Brad works. There are many reasons I don’t like the idea of that trade but number 1 is what happens in 3+ years (best case) when Giannis slows down but still gets max money and JT is in his prime?
The “we need to get to the rim more” is, of course, correct but we have two studs who are excellent at getting to the rim maybe we should help them more? That was the beauty of the KP/Jrue team, the space - always lanes as the defence were stretched. I believe the Vuc trade and the minutes he got was our shot at raising the ceiling, if he could hit 3s everything would open up for the Js.
So what we need is a stretch big which of course is super difficult to acquire, I honestly think our best chance is to get KP back on the MLE with a strong promise of a longer contract once we are past this years repeater tax. We have the bigs to handle the regular season but we need a KP level to raise our ceiling and I don’t see us going over the tax after all the effort to get under it. Will KP come? No idea but he obviously has a bond with the franchise. Will he be healthy? Again no idea but this is our most realistic way forward imo.