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| Video of the Dunk...The Most Degrading Highlight of All Time |
That's right, blame the play calling. Doc's handling of the team has beennnn...suspect, to say the least as of late, and last night was really no different.
Now, let me say this by prefacing that I understand the C's aren't the deepest team in the league, we're playing Ryan Hollins and Greg Stiemsma regular minutes, so it's understood that our bench is in shambles...that said, Doc has used it HORRIBLY these past three games.
Make no mistake, the Celts had been lucky, very lucky, to win the previous two games. Doc is experimenting with lineups for 4, 5, 6 minutes at a time, that I only saw play together in garbage time. Take for instance Keyon Dooling...This team has an all-world point guard in Rondo, and a very suitable backup in Avery Bradley, yet inexplicably Keyon "Wouldn't Know an Assist if it Hit him in the Face" Dooling is running the for 5 or so minutes a night, mostly in the 4th quarter. It's inexcusable...and that'd be bad enough if that was the only egregious substituion, but it's not. You know who Keyon's running mates are? Ryan Hollins, Mickael Pietrus, Marquis Daniels, and one of Pierce or Ray Allen...or as I like to call it, 4 guys that are lucky not to be in the D-League, plus an all-star.
Now, that's a problem that Doc directly affects and should take all the blame for, but wasn't the real problem last night...the real problem last night was game plan and execution. Bottom line is there are players that are performing right now, and there are players that aren't, and that needs to be recognized by the team, and it needs to be the head coach to lays it all out for them.
Paul Pierce has negative lift on his shots right now. They're not flat, they're hardly reaching the front rim. I love that he's out there trying, and frankly he's still better than Sasha Pavlovic and Mickael Pietrus, but still, he can't be the focal point in the early, middle, or late stages of the game. Brandon Bass is a black hole in the truest sense of the word. The ball goes to him, and it immediately goes back to the other team. He doesn't pass, he doesn't hit shots, and his defense has been non-existant. Frankly, it might be time to bench him. He's shooting a horrendous 40% for the playoffs, which would be bad enough on it's own, till you consider that last night, he took 15 shots. KG, who's been the teams best scorer, took 12...and only had 4 coming into the 4th quarter. That's a crime against good basketball.
If I'm Doc right now, I'm pulling Rondo into a Rondo only meeting today and showing him highlights of Pierce and Bass tossing up brick after brick with subliminal messages flashing "Give KG the Rock." It needs to be drilled into the team right now that KG needs 5-6 shots per quarter for this team to win. Ray has more or less been Ray, Rondo has been his usual brilliant self, but with the lack of any production from Pierce and Bass, the only reason they've won at all in the last week has been KG's ridiculous playoff performance thus far, that needs to continue. We saw it again in the 4th quarter, he can dominate the game when he's the focal point, and that's exactly what this team needs going forward.
