BGleas

I hear what you're saying. Even last game the officiating swung wildly from one half to the next. But yes, there is home cooking in the NBA at times. I'd say Tatum is already an established star. He's a 3-time All-Star, 2-time All-Star starter and should be 1st Team All-NBA this year. He also absolutely destroyed Durant in a 1st round sweep.

I'm going to lose my mind. Tatum gets a touch foul on one end, then on the other the Heat are literally shoving people all over the place and nothing gets called. The last possession Robert Williams went up for a clear offensive rebound and PJ Tucker grabbed him around the shoulder so he couldn't jump and nothing gets called?!?!

Nice, looks like we have Horford back tonight. Disregard my earlier whining 🤣

I'm biased, I get it, but I think Lowry is pretty close to being cooked. I saw some stats where Miami is better without him. Don’t get me wrong, I'm sure they'd rather have him than not, but I don’t think he's close to as critical to what Miami does as Smart and Horford are to what the Celtics do.

I don’t know that I'm whining, but it's certainly not ideal to be missing Smart/Horford for Game 1 and then Horford/White for Game 2.

I don’t begrudge Derrick White on this at all, I'm a human first so wish he and his wife the best on the birth of their first child. With that said, geez the Celtics can't catch a break. Looks like Marcus Smart is back for Game 2, but now White is out and on his way back to Boston. Probably missing Horford again too.

Depends on when he'd be cleared to workout again in groups. The team workouts are way more important than the combine.

The most likely scenarios are 1) he got a 1st round promise, 2) he pulling out of the draft or 3) he has some type of injury preventing him from participating. I'd lean toward 2 or 3, can't imagine he already has a promise, especially given where he's projected.

It is elective, but I don't think TJD is in a position to opt out of the scrimmages if he's serious about staying in the draft.

Could also be he just hasn't gone yet. Givony listed a lot of players, but probably not everyone.

Could mean a few things. But another update is that Jonathan Givony was listing all the combine player measurements on his Twitter and did not list TJD. In some cases it could mean a player has gotten a promise and isn't participating. Wouldn't think that is the case for a guy like TJD though.

To an extent, I get that Tatum doesn't get all the calls that a guy like Giannis gets. But, Jimmy Butler? If Tatum got anywhere close to these calls that Butler gets, he'd average 40ish. You'd think Shaq was out there. He has 18 free throw attempts.

Haha, yeah. Playing Giannis should have been easier.

Also, Jimmy Butler taking 16 free throws in just 3 quarters is a joke.

Looks like the Celtics are going to lose pretty big in Game 1. Not too worried, we're missing two starters and you just need to steal one on the road. I think what I get irritated by is that the Celtics played Friday night in Milwaukee, Sunday afternoon in Boston, and now Tuesday night in Miami. Just ridiculous that they didn't get another day or two before this series started.

Obviously not a good thing and disappointing for the Celtics and us fans. But if there's a silver lining, if i was going to pick a game to not have him it would be a road game and probably a Game on the road. Only need to steal one road game if you protect home court.

Agree on the CP3 angle. He fell off a cliff after Game 2. Have to give a ton of credit to Jason Kidd. Not a big Kidd fan, but I think he made a smart move to become an assistant for a couple of seasons after flopping in Brooklyn and Milwaukee with no experience. For CP3, I think for now we can stop the talk of him making any kind of leap in the PG rankings ahead of Isiah, Oscar, Magic, Steph (gets categorized as PG), etc. But, that was an impressive performance by Dallas, Luka and Kidd. It will be a very interesting WCF. You have the ascending Mavs and Luka going head-to-head with the grizzled veterans. I tend to lean Warriors, but I haven't been overly impressed with them so far in the playoffs. Steph, while still great, almost looks a step slower. Edit: Just looked it up and Steph has his lowest FG% and 3pt% of his career this season by a wide margin. I'm a Steph fan, but we may be seeing his decline starting.

It was a great day of hoops!! My son scored 12 points in his game this morning going 4-for-4 overall, 2-for-2 from the 3pt line and 2-for-2 from the free throw line, and then we watched our Celtics dismantle the Bucks!!

Agree. I'm not going to stop watching college basketball, I love college basketball. But with that said, after you take out the pageantry, rivalries, atmospheres for big games, etc., which I love, the actual game play on its own really isn't that good. Especially once you get into conference play, often times teams struggle to even score in the mid-60's and to shoot in the low 40's from the field. The lanes are clogged, there's no spacing, the paces are typically slow and the coaches way over-coach the game.

To be honest, I'm not even really sure what we're talking about anymore? 🤣 A few of us were talking about college basketball vs the NBA, and then Scott jumped in with something about Isiah Thomas in the playoffs in the 80's playing hurt, which didn't really have anything to do with what we were talking about.

What I heard you say is that I'm right, since I grew up on 80's/90's basketball and still love basketball today. Not young, not old, middle-aged. 🤣

Are you referring to Morant? Not sure who you're talking about? The flip side is I just watched Emiid try to carry his team with a torn ligament in his thumb, a broken orbital bone on his eye and a few days removed from a concussion. I remember Scottie Pippen missing a conference finals game because of a headache, so there's that.

A lot of valid reasons there and I understand most of them. I get not liking the "team stacking". I don't love that either, but the flip side is sports are always better when there is a villain to root against. It was fun and entertaining to root against the LeBron Heat teams, it's fun to root against the KD-Irving Nets, etc., etc. I get where you're coming from on that, some just don't like it. I don't understand the "woofing and lack of sportsmanship" thing. I don't think there's ever been more sportsmanship in the NBA than there is now. Guys constantly hugging and trading jersey's after the game. I've never seem more opponents try and help each other up than you do today. There's no close-lining of players ala Kevin McHale on Rambis or Laimbeer on Bird. The game is infinitely "cleaner", etc. I think the last 10-15 years have absolutely been one of the best runs the NBA has ever had. The playoffs have been phenomenal over that span. This is an arbitrary span, but over the last 12 years the Finals have had 3 game 7's and 4 series go 6 games compared to just one sweep. During that time we also had the Celtics take the LeBron Cavs to 7 games in the ECF, the Celtics take LeBron's Heat 7 games in the ECF, you had the Warriors-Rockets go 7 in the WCF and the Durant OKC team take the Warriors 7 in the WCF, etc. I'm sure there are more conference finals examples, those are just the ones that popped into my head. Not everyone has to like the NBA, I get that. But the playoffs over the last 10-15 years have been phenomenal and entertaining basketball with largely great storylines to go with it. .

What i had read, unless something changed, was that rumors were that some team gave Houstan a promise.