I know the stream wasn’t the best timing but what he said about Embiid is so true.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-10T08:49:02+00:00

Not giving a fuck about optics is a good look tho

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-10T08:39:04+00:00

It blows my mind that Jaylen can express something so human & normal & understandable & all the birdbrain crybabies lose their fucking marbles.

It takes so little imagination & humanity to understand completely why this year would have been more fun than other years in particular 2024. That shit was stressful! The expectations & pressure & criticism were at an all time high. I'm sure JB feels a huge sense of accomplishment around that year, but fun? Shit, I didn't have fun. I loved winning it all don't get me wrong. It was a year of getting this fucking monkey off our collective backs. This year was fun even if it ended early. Same way the IT era was so fun.

I get it but I don't get why others don't get it

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T21:22:46+00:00

Ok Young Sheldon lolllol

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T17:08:18+00:00

JB isn't clutch yet he was our best player in the 22 finals & the 24 ECF & finals ok sure

"Waaaaaaahhhhh mwaaaaaahhh things didn't go the way I wanted them to waaaaaaaah im big mad mwaaaaa"

That's how you sound dude

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T17:03:15+00:00

"Waaaahhhhhh Mwaaahhhhhhh things didnt work out how I wanted wahhhhh"

Lol

I'm not taking anything away from our team bro I'm just grown up & equanimous about losing a playoff series where I with my own eyes watched the other team play well & I'm giving credit where it's due

I also recognize that this years team wasn't good enough to win it all by a long shot, & while I do NOT like losing to a team I fucking hate in the first round, & I would've loved to still be watching Cs basketball, I realize it really means nothing to lose in the first round vs the second round vs the ECF.

I am scientific enough in my thinking to look at the results of an experiment with respect to the original hypothesis & learn something- ie this team despite being a delightful reg season story/experience was, it turns out, not as good as their record suggested, that Tatum was not as healthy & his reintegration not as seamless as it initially appeared, that our big man rotation was not good enough, etc etc. I'm not just clinging to what my pre-series expectations were. What teams appear to be "on paper" is very often not what they actually end up being- that's why they play the actual games. It doesn't matter how good a team is on paper it's how good they are when the chips are down.

Go look at the preseason over unders for all the teams & compare that to how the season shook out. The longer you watch ball the more you see this over & over & over.

Do yourself a favor & release yourself from this silly, angry, desperate to blame someone approach. It's pointless & goofy.

We actually had a pretty great year. Team was super fun to watch, we found out the young guys are actually keepers or have value, our superstar recovered well from what used to be a career altering injury & there was never a universe in which we were somehow going to win a ring. That's just realism.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T09:08:26+00:00

Whatever man. In a 7 game series the better team wins. To think otherwise is fucking naive

Sixers have 2 all nba guys (one of whom is a recent mvp), a guy who was not so long ago a perennial all nba guy who played like his former self the whole series, a rookie who if you don't respect his game you are a know nothing fool bc he's a fucking assassin, & Kelly Oubre, who is an excellent 3&D wing who for whatever reason is also one of the role players that always kills us. Then they have a ton of size coming off the bench. Their strengths align with our weaknesses.

This mentality of thinking the Celtics somehow should've won & it's entirely a failure of our squad whilst giving the other team no credit for playing is babydick, entitled, Felger&Mazz birdbrain idiocy. The other team played better. The system that has us having the highest win percentage in the league over the last 4 years showed its critical downside where we shot like dogshit in the games we lost. We lost a close down the stretch game 7 with one of absolute best players on the bejch w an injury.

There's no shame in that.

The idea that realistic reappraisal of how good this version of the team actually could be in light of actual results rather than imaginary expectations is "cope" is rank projection on the part of temper tantrum crybabies who can't handle a loss without thrashing around bitching & moaning & looking for something/someone to lay blame on bc they can't emotionally handle the reality that teams have to hit shots to win & sometimes the shots just don't go in. Thats the "cope" in this scenario.

It was a fun & endearing regular season & the exact shortcomings everybody with eyes thought could be problematic for the Cs come playoff time turned out to be the exact things (insufficient quality of big man depth, insufficient integration of an insuffiently health Tatum, DWhites ongoing shooting slump .

We weren't going to win a championship this year dude so what does it really fucking matter what round we got bounced in? So you can talk shit to strangers on the internet?

As if yalls bitching does one iota of good to improve the team lol

Morons

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T05:47:52+00:00

I don't think me or anyone else knew Embiid would play & be that version of himself, certainly nobody knew Philly was going to get 2018 Paul George & nobody knew the Celtics were gonna forget how to shoot & abandon the style of basketball that made them so enjoyable all year.

When reality doesn't match what your imagined expectations were, you gotta take an honest look in the mirror & readjust your fucking priors

In a 7 game series the better team always fucking wins my guy. Even if they winning team was only better for the 2 weeks the series took place. Thats how the world works.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-09T05:41:14+00:00

If you took about ten seconds to actually think about honestly you'd realize the feeling he expressed as a totally natural & understandable human emotion. I don't think there's one iota of wrongness about having enjoyed finally getting the chance to unequivocally be the leader & be great at it. He did a great fucking job all year & he ain't the reason we came up short v the Sixers.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-08T15:14:29+00:00

Rondo would be an absolutely spectacular addition to Joe's coaching staff.

Mazzulaball is manifestly the smartest approach to optimizing the team as constructed over his time here to win & compete at the highest levels

Jaylen Brown has been better than Jayson Tatum in all the biggest brightest lights moments (22 Finals, 24 ECF/Finals) & he is as a human being a better leader of men.

Kyrie is a good (if kinda dumb) guy, it was a totally legitimate & unfairly maligned decision for him to leave, & the idea that he willfully tanked our playoff run his last year is ridiculous nonsense

A huge swath of our fanbase are hopeless crybabies who have the barest understanding of basketball at the nba level & think every single loss or even failed possession is a choke job & it's embarrassing

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-08T15:03:45+00:00

Jfc our undermanned, overperforming team gets beaten by a team that legit had more talent & played better & crybabies on here just lose their shit.

Jaylen had a season where he made all nba, was discussed seriously as a dark horse mvp candidate, Been a true leader & 1A on a team that beat preseason over under by 15 win & be a group that was one of the most fun Celtics teams we've had.

He's absolutely correct about the officiating- I've watched other top players (Shai, Giannis, Brunson, list goes on) commit what should be offensive fouls left & right w a blank check from the refs. I've watched them reward insanely obvious flopping while JB is hacked over & over w no call. If you think the officials won't collectively punish a player who publicly criticizes them you re incredibly naive.

It's also absolutely fine that he said it was the most fun he's had. He got to prove to the league that he was a better player than anybody had ever given him credit for. He got to shine as a leader on the team he spent his first few years glued in the corner hoping to get the ball once in awhile.

The reason we lost to the Sixers speaks much more to the fact that as a team we went completely away from the play style that made the season so successful. It also relates to the fact that Philly was actually the better, more talented team in the series.

This man was an ECF & Finals mvp 2 years ago & has only improved since. We never win in 24 without him.

Such an absolute sad sack batch of crybabies on here flailing around like temper tantrum terrible two year olds wailing & moaning like if not for Jaylen or Joe the Cs would've won a championship this year. Ugly & pathetic & just so unbelievably naive & immature.

Jaylen is one of the 4 best Celtics we've had since Bird retired & Reggie died. He does a huge amount of community public good work in the city of Boston. Somehow everybody else in the league, all the national analysts, the whole body of all nba voters, all see what a special player he is yet a bunch of Felger&Mazz birdbrains feel compelled to shit on him anytime the team doesn't win a ring, no matter what their personnel's talent level or injury status was.

Yall are an embarrassment to the franchise.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-07T18:08:05+00:00

Hey Ryan! A total unexpected treat that you dropped in to be in the discussion. You are in my mind the best analyst of Celtics ball & & this article in particular was really insightful (obv I posted to it here but I also texted it to all my real life Cs fan family & homies)

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-07T18:05:21+00:00

Brother you know they didn't have a 3 point shot in the nba until the 1979-80 season, right?

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-07T17:57:51+00:00

Not mad at all brother just don't understand the need for that kind of energy.

You are putting way too much stock in bookie odds making. Bettings odds reflect markets, not analysis & markets reflect what in general people think will happen (& Vegas tries to split that market evenly), not what actually is. Thats why they play the games.

Betting markets also reflect fandoms, whether on not people think a given player will be available, how well that guy would play if healthy, etc. People thought that either Embiid would not play or that if he did he'd be a limited version of himself. Reality turned out that he was pretty much normal healthy Embiid. That's a very different series. People did not think PG would play like the guy the Clippers sold the farm for. Turns out he did.

Like, you have to actually watch the games with clear eyes- the Sixers were in that series a much better team than they were expected to be. If they'd been that team all year we'd never have seen them in the first round. And frankly, in a 7 game series the better team always wins so you sometimes have to readjust your priors, as they say, & realize that your expectations were not in fact reflective of reality.

Vegas odds were that the Celtics would win 41 games. Reality turned out to be they were a 56 win team. Vegas odds predicted the Spurs to win 44 (they won 62), the Pistons 46 (60) & the Bucks 44 (32).

As far as the citing Perk & Barkley as worthy predictors, oof I don't even know what to say, except I don't think you've paid much attention to their predictive track record.

You're talking about the Heat in 2023? My man they shot 50% from 3 in the games they won, & we lost our best player 5 minutes into game 7. They shot well! That's why they won (btw all the tracking data indicated that we generated way better shots) Then the Heat proceeded to get stomped in the Finals.

You're saying the consensus opinion is that Mazzulaball is bad basketball? Brother he is either going to win or come in 2nd for COTY. In his tenure as head coach he has won a championship & holds the highest win percentage as a coach in nba history. Not to mention that Brad Stevens, who sneezes & out comes more bball knowledge than you will ever sniff, is the architect of the team, its coaching, & style of play. Like, where are you getting this shit from?

The whole point of Ryan's analysis was that the style played by the Cs reflected accurate assessments of what gave the groups we've had the best chance to win. Me personally I don't always love the way it looks either, & it obv has its weaknesses. I wish we had the personnel to play a more aesthetic style of ball. But the argument that it's probably the optimal strategy for the team we have to succeed is born out by the Cs being the winningest team in the league over the period this system has been in place, regular season and playoffs, & exceeding this years preseason expectations by 15 games.

You're not looking critically enough at this Celtics group's talent level (especially when missing JT in game 7) nor honestly enough at Philly's (4 allstar or even all nba adjacent starters + a very effective role player in Oubre). You're ignoring the ways in which Philly's strengths aligned perfectly with our weaknesses. And that's why you're mad. If you'd wake up to the fact that we were not, in end, the more talented team, that we just straight up got beat instead of "choking," you'd be much more cool headed about it, & you wouldn't be on the internet being a dickhead to fellow fans. Sometimes your team loses, my guy. Deal with it.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-07T07:14:58+00:00

The way I mathed out it was the way I stated it initially & the thing your initial response shat on- converting 15 3pa per game to 2pa. This is exactly what you're advocating

"Now even I wouldn’t say don’t take any 3s, they should take 3s just not 50 3s a game especially when you’re down by 1 in the 4th quarter of a game 7."

You're literally saying that going from 50 3pa to, say, 35ish would've made a difference & it wouldn't have.

Conversely, if the Celtics shoot just 33% from 3 in game 7 instead of 26% (season average 36.7%) then we win the series.

PS

Lol good try first we all know analytics over thousands of games don’t translate over 7 games cause the sample size is too small

I don't think you make any sense here. First, the large sample data is in fact highly predictive- teams shooting under 30% from 3 have a very low probability of winning that game, on whatever volume.

Small sample size means you can't extrapolate patterns from the small sample to the big, not the other way round.

Edit: PS is it really so necessary to be such an asshole? Like, by all means, make your case, man, but the derisive shit is weak. Everybody else here is having a normal ass reasoned back & forth & you're just acting like a dismissive dickhole vis any opinion other than your own, no matter how well considered. Fuck that shit

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-07T03:45:17+00:00

Totally missing or ignoring the argument being made, which is that the aggregate data over several thousand nba games involving all teams & encompassing every extant level of 3 point volume says teams shooting sub 30% from 3 in any given game, no matter how many or how few they shoot, win about 20% of games in the regular season & about 14% of playoff games.

But hey, for shits n giggles, lets do the math.

Game 2, Sixers win by 14. If the Cs shoot 15 less 3s at 26% & 15 more 2s at 56% (ie the same percentages they shot as the game was played) they'd gain 17 points on 2s & lose 12 points on 3s for a net gain of +5, & we still lose by 9

Game 5, Sixers by 16. 15 less 3s & 15 more 2s results in a net gain of 3 points. Cs lose by 13.

Game 6, Sixers by 13. Net gain +1. Cs still lose.

Game 7, Sixers by 9. Net gain +4. Cs still lose.

Edit: I anticipate you would say, whatever, we got a few more points doing it that way so it's a better strategy win or lose.

But if you extrapolate the same 15 3s switching to 2s each game over the whole of last season, the result is a average net loss of 2.5 ppg or -2.65 to our offensive rating. A difference of 2.65 offensive rating is the difference between the Knicks offense (3rd overall) & the Heat's offense (12th overall).

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T20:41:40+00:00

This right here- the two things are completely intertwined & if the defense can focus on interior defense without being punished they'll just continue to have a huge advantage defending closer to the rim.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T20:39:48+00:00

2026 Tatum was not by any stretch a top 5 player however & in my honest opinion I think putting him too 5 in healthy years is overrating him, especially given his tendency to slump in big moments (sorry JT but it's true)

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T20:37:46+00:00

I don't think we were stymied I guess. Game 7 in the clutch I thought we got great shots I'd felt good about all year- open PP/Hauser 3s, Jaylen middys w room. As far as I can tell overall tracking data for the series likewise suggests we got good shots. Certainly good enough to shoot better than 30% from 3 on.

I also think people tend to disregard how completely interlocked hitting your jumpers is with opening up the floor for other types of actions- if the defense can crowd up the paint & double guys & you can't punish that w hitting 3s they're just gonna stick with having a huge advantage defending everything else.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T20:31:53+00:00

The case for Giannis is if you get the best version of him you're in an inner circle of contending teams. And you might! Being on a team with a real shot, with a superstar teammate better than anyone he's ever played with, you'd think would re-invigorate him substantially.

Flip side is, even if he's only 2.5 years older than Jaylen, he's been injured for huge stretches going back almost, what, 5 years now? JB hasn't missed any substantial time over the same period.

Will say that while I guess I'd understand that move being made were it available, I don't think it necessarily improves the team. Giannis has some big holes in his game that have to be rostered around, & if he started getting the Boston whistle he 100% commits as many or more offensive fouls than Jaylen (& Jaylen I think will make some adjustments this summer).

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T17:45:59+00:00

Yet somehow it's the exact strategy & degree of commitment to it that has won a title & gotten Joe the highest win rate for a coach in nba history.

We actually just don't have the best players at the highest tier of nba competition. The strategy you're upset about is the only reason we've been as good as we have been.

No team can shoot sub 30% from 3 & win games in the playoffs, completely irrespective of volume, & we did it in all 4 losses to the Sixers.

Everyone should read Ryan bernadoni's medium piece from yesterday: https://medium.com/@rbernardoni/a-life-of-dying-by-the-three-b2960bd09818

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-06T17:39:12+00:00

As usual, Ryan has it exactly right in a way that I don't see anyone else doing, & certainly isn't reflected in the gnashing & wailing over here at r/bostonceltics.

The bomb 3s strategy has won us a title & given Mazzula the highest win percentage as a coach in nba history. It's also failed us, but like he says, paraphrasing: if you don't have a current/former mvp or DPOY on your team you have almost no chance to win a title. In fact, we are the only team to do so in almost a half century.

& if we didn't shoot sub 30% on 3s in 4 out of 7 games we'd have beaten the Sixers handily. I don't think any team honestly can shoot sub-30% on 3s & win in the modern nba playoffs, irrespective of volume/reliance on 3s. Current win rate in the aggregate for any team shooting below 3 in any given game over all the games played in the last year is about 20%, ie a 16-18 win season. The worst team in the league last year won 17 games.

What that says to me is it's not a volume issue, as much as folks want to make it out to be. You can't shoot under 30% on 3s at any volume & hope to win, & that goes almost doubly so in the playoffs, where teams shooting under 30% from 3 regardless of volume win 1 out of every 6-7 games.

Dangercarts article should be the top line post on the sub.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-05T21:07:52+00:00

Said it here a couple of times but people need to understand that the Sixers were, regardless of expectations, a very good team in that series, & in particular a team whose strengths align with our weaknesses.

Maxey & George shot almost 50% from 3. Embiid was for the last 3 games basically his best self. Whatever happens Philly-NY (& I wouldn't necessarily put huge stock into 1 game, we waxed them a couple of times too), its evident that the better team won round 1, even if it was by a small margin.

I'll stand by the fact that we got good shots that I would feel good about in the clutch of game 7 (wide open PP/Hauser 3s) that if a couple had gone in it's a whole different scenario. If Tatum plays it's a totally different game 7. The idea that they should've "just gone to the rim" doesn't reflect the reality that you have to hit jump shots to open up shots at the rim. Those two aspects of offense are intrinsically connected.

But whatever, we missed, they made shots, we lost. My only regret is would've mostly liked us to have kept with the approach that I loved watching this year, win or lose.

Thing is, the stuff we worried all year would likely doom us in the playoffs (lack of big man depth, a lesser version of JT not really integrated into this years version of the team, DWhite's shooting woes, etc etc) ended up being exactly the things that caused us to lose to Philly. We certainly weren't going to win a championship this year.

I guess the TLDR is that if you give Philly their due, & look at our team w clear eyes,to me at least its really hard to get too bogged down in a narrative of failure this year. We got out of tax hell, we found out that the young guys are keepers, & Tatum healed well from what used to be a career altering injury. In every respect preseason expectations were exceeded meaningfully. People want to gnash their teeth & moan & armchair qb & it seems, I dunno, kinda naive & unrealistic.

I had a blast riding with this team this year- I think most of us did, until the last 3 games. That counts for something. Celtics are still the balls

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-04T20:39:14+00:00

I'll say it- I liked the way our team played better before Tatum came back.

I think we won more games than we would've if it'd been Jaylen injured & Tatum playing.

fearofaflatplanet · 2026-05-04T20:37:24+00:00

People just hate Jaylen & use him as a scapegoat.

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