wow072

1 | 9 days ago

Kind of a random question, but if the Celtics were to somehow win the chip this season how do you think it would impact some of the players legacy wise? Obviously winning a ring is a good thing, but how would Tatum look when it comes to talking about the all time Celtics players, how the dwhite trade is talked about, and how Celtics fans view the Paul George trade and more specifically Paul George in general as well as some other things

Tatum-Better | ☘️ Jayson " Since Larry Bird " Tatum ☘️

1 | 9 days ago

Does JT’s achilles leg look the same as his other leg yet? couldn’t tell from the new training footage

chinesefox97

9 | 9 days ago

I am super excited for Payton Pritchard this season. He may not be Jalen Brunson, but I expect him to take another huge leap. He’s gotten better every year he’s been in the league, and now he is going to get the most opporrunity ever.

22ppg 6apg is what i am expecting from him.

AdvancedCounty8890

2 | 9 days ago

You don’t think he’ll come off the bench?

Moodapatheticz | JT>

13 | 9 days ago

Fuck adam silver. The Celtics had to sell off a chip team because they didn’t cheat.

xskarma

7 | 9 days ago

Random thought for the DD thread:

Tatum is an intelligent and thoughtful player
Every Celtics player watches film of good and bad moments to learn and improve
If Brad Stevens, and literally every fan that watched more than a passing few minutes of the past 2 post seasons the Celtics played can see and can tell that what we were doing offensively was being stopped dead by our opponents in critical moments, then SURELY so did every player and coach on the Celtics

So, you kind of have to assume that Tatum and every player would, FOR THEMSELVES, think “right, I need to switch things up here”, and go into the lab with their coaches to see what can be done and tweaked to not have this happen again.

So that is basically my thought and what I arrived at. Tatum and Mazzula are both too smart and too keen on winning to fall for the same trap again and try to keep doing what they have been doing without change.

PebblyJackGlasscock | Second Round Pick Enthusiast

1 | 9 days ago

> switch things up

Conspiracy theory alert: Brad went into the end-of-season meetings with all personnel and had only one “must” - Must think we need to “switch things up”. And only one player thought nothing needed to change, no need to “switch up” what worked so well in the regular season.

> same trap again

I agree, mostly. Like, “the same trap” is probably missing open shots and that…happens. It’s the key potential flaw in any plan of attack.

They gonna do, basically, the same things and the same traps exist.

However, I do think there’s at least an emphasis on recognizing the traps and mitigating. OREB and possession are tactical “switch ups” that’s had already been implemented but they’ve been doubled-and-tripled down upon with roster choices like Mitch Robinson and Mike Conley.

> Tatum

The key. He has to want to “switch up” and do things a bit differently as he will dominate the ball.

Quicker swings. Faster downhill decisions. Movement without the ball.

I’m excited to see what changes Tatum applies to his, and the Celtics, offensive system. If there’s a “switch up”, it’s starts with JT.

King_Of_Pants | Sam Howitzer!

15 | 9 days ago

There is another option you’re not considering.

can see and can tell that what we were doing offensively was being stopped dead by our opponents in critical moments, then SURELY so did every player and coach on the Celtics

Right now, literally 90% of NBA fans have the exact same complaints about their team. It’s not a Boston-specific issue. It’s actually a league-wide trend.

When you look at these complaints:

Lost leads
Choking down the stretch
The coach not making enough “adjustments”
Refusing to call timeouts
The offensive being too 1-dimensional

Basically every fanbase thinks these complaints are unique to their own team, but these are the least original complaints that exist in the NBA.

Look at the 2022-23 Celtics for example:

Genuinely elite at holding leads and winning late, but people were still making the same complaints about Boston choking games and not being able to close out.

It’s just the state of the NBA. It’s a game of runs, and that means you’re going to see a lot of lead changes and most of your losses will come off the back of 1-2 of those runs.

Efficient_Art_1144 | Smart

1 | 9 days ago

The blown leads complaints come about because it’s happened in high stakes situations in the playoffs.

King_Of_Pants | Sam Howitzer!

7 | 9 days ago

Yeah but that’s still true for most teams.

Look at the past 5 years of Eastern Confernce runs:

Everyone mysteriously choked to the 2026 Knicks
Everyone mysteriously choked to the 2025 Pacers
Everyone mysteriously choked to the 2023 Heat
Everyone mysteriously choked to the 2022 Celtics

Everyone is losing in late-game situations. Fans freak out and act like this is a problem that solely affects their team.

And there’s rarely any rhyme or reason to it. The Knicks choked against the Pacers, who choked against the Celtics, who choked against the Knicks.

And tbf, it’s also what winning looks like.

When you look at Boston deconstructing Philly in 2018 (4-1) or Boston breaking Brooklyn in 2022 (4-0) or Boston making Dallas look easy in 2024 (4-1), you’ll see similar complaints. Even though most of us would say Boston was comfortably in control for all of those series, most of those games were 1-2 possession games with a couple minutes to go. Philly, Brooklyn and Dallas fans all came away with the same complaints about poor offensive adjustments, weak mental fortitudes and late-game offensive collapses.

Everyone knows the Knicks are the most clutch team in the league because they just won a chip off the back of late-game heroics.

Except if you look closer at their Q4s, you’ll see they had:

A 4 minute 17 second scoring drought in G1 (6:07 - 1:50)
A 4 minute 8 second scoring drought in G2 (6:04 - 1:56)
A 3 minute 28 second scoring drought in G3 (5:54 - 2:26)
A 2 minute 44 second scoring drought in G4 (12:00 - 9:16)
And then in G5 they scored 2 FGM in the final 4:30 to close out the series

Cleveland’s 3-1 clutch comeback involved them scoring 1 FGM in the final 5-ish minutes, and then LeBron was intentionally fouled with 11 seconds to go (went ¹⁄₂).

Long ~~scoring~~ scoreless stretches in basketball are really normal. That’s especially true in the post-season. We ignore them when we win and hyper-focus on them when we lose, which gives an impression that they’re the common denominator in all of our losses.

At a certain point, if every loser has the exact same complaint, then maybe that’s just what losing in the modern NBA looks like.

taco_jones

0 | 9 days ago

The complaint is usually about blown double-digit point leads and that link shows they were in the bottom third in 22-23, a year that really predates the other major complaint about the team - that they take too many 3’s (and don’t adjust when it’s not working).

xskarma

2 | 9 days ago

That is not at all what I was thinking about. You are basically bringing up the Joe Mazzula complaints list that people have spouted. This is not that.

Brad Stevens himself said that the Celtics had issues with Joel Embiid just sitting in drop, and their inability to get him out of that and that they didn’t generate enough good looks, and that once Philly stopped our offensive rebounding it was game over.

It’s this inability to generate enough offense/good looks for stretches that’s the problem. And that’s what I think Tatum and by extension Joe will have worked on this offseason.

And some of that gets “fixed” by just actually making the first shot and not needing the offensive rebound, so if the team collectively shoots better that is a good start, but it is easier to shoot with a good look that it is from a bad look at that first shot.

And that’s what I think the team collectively has worked on this offseason. That doesn’t mean wholesale philosophy changes, or anything, but it does mean re-thinking certain things that were standing in the way of generating those good first shot looks. What those things are is way above my level of understanding. I just know that Tatum and Mazulla won’t run things back the same as last year and the year before and expect different results. They are too smart for that.

nibbinoo8 | i took a look at baynes in the shower

1 | 9 days ago

that’s a lot of words to basically say nothing

Daily Discussion Thread - August 18, 2026