Monday 5/22/23
Jaylen Brown said that the Miami Heat are playing above their means.
Why would you do that? Why would you belittle your opponent? They're not just beating you. They're kicking your ass. They're embarrassing you. Don't then go out and embarrass yourself on top of that.
Jaylen Brown is about to be overvalued by a team that doesn't realize he's nowhere near as good as people like to say he is. He can't be the guy. Not good enough. The Celtics have a problem in that the guy--Jayson Tatum--is also not the guy. He's not a leader, and you won't win anything with him as your best player.
Tatum is so inconsistent. He's not present. He is a frontrunner. He's not a finisher. He doesn't dictate what is going to happen.
When I say he's not present, what I mean is you can get this guy off his game so easily, as if he was barely engaged in the first place. He's mentally weak. He also cares more about shoe deals and All-Star game MVPs than winning a championship.
Soft, weak, entitled. Priorities not in order. Folds with adversity. You can watch him panic in games. The mental mistakes mount. What happens in his head starts to mess up what he's doing physically.
I didn't understand why he was first team All-NBA. It's like he has a good publicist. People buy into him being this player that to me he's clearly not.
I refuse to call him a superstar. I don't think he's at that level. And superstars are consistent. Look at Jokic. How many Tatums is he worth?
Yes, superstars have bad games. But you more or less know what they'll give you nineteen times out of twenty.
Tatum? You have no clue. And when it matters, he's more likely than not to be a no-show. Or to disappear for long stretches of the game.
Marcus Smart is a fool. Jimmy Butler baited this guy into thinking--and Smart needs little encouragement to think this way--that he's this under-used offensive force with a few obviously planted compliments.
Smart--a needy egomaniac--swallowed the bait. First two possessions of Game 2, Smart was shooting. Which doesn't mean anything in and of itself, necessarily; sometimes the shot is the shot. But there's the larger point that he could be manipulated that easily, and he clearly was. If you were a pig and in need of a brick house so as to put off the local wolf, Marcus Smart might very well be the contractor for you, and of course Butler knows this.
Mentally, this Celtics team is a way below average team.
Further: their roster isn't nearly as good as how people talk about it. What is here after the first two highly flawed best players? Horford? Brogdon gives you something, but he's inconsistent, too.
Then there's Rob Williams. What has he added to his game since he entered the league? What is he?
To me, he's a part-time player with defensive upside, though you can't count on him; he's a wild card, too, from night to night. His offensive game is lobs. No lobs, no production. Every now and again the offense runs through him and he distributes, but you're surprised when you see a phase in a game like that.
Then the coach, Joe Mazzulla. This guy is wound way too tight. I don't think he knows what he's doing, and I'm convinced he's uncomfortable calling a play. He's almost one of the guys, with some aggro rah-rah and some strange Christian stuff, but with hostility.
A reporter asks him what he said to so and so on the team, and he answers, "I told him I love him."
Yeah. That's not what is going to be best here. It's kind of irrelevant. At the same time, he's short with people. Rude. Obviously flustered. Defensive. Petulant. Disrespectful.
Why was he extended when he had proven nothing and never coached in the playoffs? You're stuck with him now?
This is a dysfunctional unit. It has been for quite a few years. Do you realize how many postseason games Smart, Tatum, and Brown have played together? It's getting close to 100. They have a ton of experience and experience together.
I don't think this is going to work. Tatum isn't a number one. Not on a championship team. Brown is a number two at best. They also don't play well together, these two. Why does no one talk about that? They take turns doing isolation ball. Tatum gets more turns. They often play slowly. They're stagnant. Both Brown and Tatum are poor at moving without the ball. The Celtics are at their best when they're moving, running. Pushing the pace. Playing fast, moving the ball, making the extra pass. The defense is dreadful. Does Mazzulla know anything about defense? He seems disinterested in it. Or fearful of it. Like he doesn't know how to coach it.
They quit. They in-fight. They don't take winning seriously. They overrate themselves. They do lots of drama. They fold. They habitually take nights off.
The lack of urgency has added up over the years to make them what what they are now. A team that's just not getting there and that doesn't know how to fight and how to win.
To be playing an eighth seed in the conference championship, as the defending conference champions, and get swept? What makes you a bigger joke of a team than that? That's bad.
This guy Jimmy Butler is crushing you. And he's loving it. He has more balls on his own than the entire Celtics roster has if you added them all up.
Do you see how much fight is in that dog? He is one competitive son of a bitch. He's doing it the way you should do it. If I had a kid I'd be like, "Watch that guy. Watch how he competes."
He's shaming the Celtics. Just as they're shaming themselves.
