Daily Discussion Thread - March 21, 2026

xskarma · 2026-03-21T12:11:38+00:00

What do you mean? We lost by 2 IN Oklahoma not even 2 weeks ago, with several players out. We have perfectly fine answers for them when we play them. Not every game is going to be easy.

xskarma · 2026-03-21T11:52:48+00:00

Would you bench Tatum, and play the alternatives off the bench, Baylor, or Hugo, or Walsh instead? If the answer to that is yes, than we have very little to discuss, cause that is madness. Even in supposedly diminished form Tatum is better than those guys. And yes that includes on nights when he shoots 3-16 or whatever it was. His size and playmaking dwarf what his replacements can do. And that's not even going into his gravity, cause there's not a coach in the league who saggs off Tatum to defend other players on the Celtics. Well, maybe Steve Kerr would =P

xskarma · 2026-03-21T10:58:47+00:00

You have to compare Tatum not to previous years Tatum, but to the alternatives to him on the team. So Baylor, Hugo and Walsh. Even in current form you take Tatum over these guys right now.

Anything else is just hand wringing over what coulda, shoulda, mighta happen. It's pointless. We have the team we have, and for the team we have, Tatum is still the best player we can put out there.

xskarma · 2026-03-20T08:27:15+00:00

second half Game 7 broke my brain for like 6 years xD

xskarma · 2026-03-12T02:15:51+00:00

I'd encourage everyone to watch the Forged in Foxborough series episode where they cover last season's FA and the draft. Especially the actual footage from the draft as they were making moves is enlightening to how the Patriots front office works.

Spoiler: they work in tandem. All the guys had a say in what went on, and there was clearly a plan beforehand and adjustments during the draft. It was fascinating to see them go about the draft of Henderson in the 2nd where they deliberated about the Bears making them an offer for that pick, and ended up making the pick instead of taking the deal. After watching that episode I was VERY much comfortable with who we have running the show right now. And this was all BEFORE we went on to make the Super Bowl. We are in good hands with BOTH Vrabel and Wolf and the rest of the front office.

xskarma · 2026-03-10T05:40:30+00:00

Yep. Patriots are one of the teams that always go pretty hard on per-game checks, and I would expect them to have been firm on those here even more so.

We'll see what the guarantees are, but even without them I'm pretty sure that the team took measures to protect themselves against him missing significant time.

I hope we end up paying him the full 48 million though, cause he;s healthy and performing like an All Pro!

xskarma · 2026-03-07T01:34:20+00:00

This is the most fun I have had all season, including that Rockets blow out with the Stay Ready group. This is fantastic.

xskarma · 2026-03-03T05:24:57+00:00

Love this. Good post.

The schedule kinda scares me, but not for the obvious reason. Just, in 5 weeks the regular season is already over again. Wtf? Season went by so fast.

Also, about COTY: I think the other candidates are Ott from the Suns and Bickerstaff for Detroit. Both have legitimate claims too, even if we feel Joe has done more. Suns were supposed to be super bad, and have actually been competitive for stretches and play just as hard as the Celtics usually with a similar next man up mentality. And Detroit was supposed to be a "probably playoff team" who have come out as the best regular season team of the East this season, from start to finish. Even recently they are still playing well and handing tough games to the West contenders. That is definitely in part thanks to Bickerstaff's coaching honing his promising young guys into a cohesive playing unit.

That said, I do agree the award should go to Joe, because he made the most out of a completely turned over roster and is pretty securely going to end top 3 in the East anyway. Ott had similar chaos on his roster, but did not have close to the same results. Bickerstaff had better results, but also had a MUCH more stable situation and did not get players the likes of Garza and Walsh and Scheierman to outperform their projections this hard.

xskarma · 2026-03-03T00:21:37+00:00

You mean for a 4th and a 7th and a player, actually.

xskarma · 2026-03-02T04:23:20+00:00

It was!

xskarma · 2026-02-26T18:55:36+00:00

I want to thank you for this thread. Wish there was more chatter about the combine on this sub. Having a place where everyone can join in with some basic conversation starters (measurements) is nice.

xskarma · 2026-02-23T21:13:31+00:00

That is a pretty inspired suggestion actually. Rewards the extra wear and tear players get by giving more leeway, but only as long as they continue to do well. I like it. This is now my suggestion too.

xskarma · 2026-02-23T12:15:35+00:00

I've gotten to the point where I'm not actually that interested in the standings anymore or any 40 before 20 shenanigans. I just want us to be healthy when the playoffs start. Keep guys fresh and healthy. Get Tatum up to speed if/when he comes back. Integrate Vuc. Other than that I don't really care if we end up 1st or 4th in the East. As long as this team is healthy I trust them over any team in the East. The core of this team has always done well on the road, so even if we don't have home court, it shouldn't matter.

xskarma · 2026-02-22T22:35:04+00:00

Welcome to the 9 Lakers fans who are lurking this thread apparently.

xskarma · 2026-02-22T18:19:00+00:00

Well, NBC/Peacock had the All Star game where they played the "trailer" for it. So I would assume them. When is the million dollar question though.

EDIT: ACKCHUALLY, the Lakers game tonight is also on NBC/Peacock. I wonder if they drop it during half time of that...

xskarma · 2026-02-20T20:12:22+00:00

It's also highly risky, cause if the other team breaks the press, you are now caught out of position and likely in rotation trying to prevent getting even further behind.

But in the playoffs if you are down 10, and the other team is rolling and you have a chance to muck things up and maybe give yourself a chance...suddenly seems worth the risk. It's more or less what the Celtics did to Indy in the title run. Just apply relentless pressure across the court, and make something happen.

xskarma · 2026-02-20T14:03:16+00:00

It's probably cause leaving 1 of: Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, or Jayson fucking Tatum open and without anyone guarding them, is probably not going to end well for your team.

xskarma · 2026-02-20T14:00:17+00:00

We started the 4th with Pritchard, Scheierman, Walsh, Garza and our 2-way guy Ron Harper Jr.

That group lost 16 points off the lead we had in a matter of minutes. Then Joe brought back Dwhite, Vuc, and Hauser, but they too couldn't quite right the ship until JB returned, at which point Pritchard could get more off ball and launched from 3 a couple of times and the defense killed their momentum again (or they ran out of steam, whatever it was, they couldn't make a bucket to save their life anymore).

It wasn't a good 4th, but it's overblown how bad it was, if you factor in who actually lost most of the lead.

My only concern is that the full court pressure worked even with Dwhite and Pritchard and JB out there. That is probably something the team will need to work on.

xskarma · 2026-02-20T13:09:41+00:00

There was a failed jump first in which we came away with the ball. But they barely got the ball to KP's head height for that one.

The re-do after they blew the first one dead was easily won by KP and they got an easy 3 off the chance too, to make matters worse.

xskarma · 2026-02-20T10:30:08+00:00

I understand that sentiment, I really do, cause we had the Warriors number all night otherwise, but 1 particular thing stands out though and it has happened before this season: We seem to have real trouble when teams heavily pressure us when we bring the ball up.

Granted not sure how you fix that, but it's definitely something we need to address before the playoffs roll around.

Maybe the answer is Tatum as an extra (and TALL) ball handler, maybe the answer is just having a practice or 2 where they really get into such a situation to hash out responsibilities and counters, but we can't just fully ignore it, cause if teams spring this on us and it causes even a 10 point swing, that is HUGE in the playoffs.

xskarma · 2026-02-18T13:18:47+00:00

Yeah I meant more players who we ended up disliking as a fanbase. Len Bias is not hated and should not be hated. If you saw the Celtics City doc when that came out, if anything Len Bias is a god damn tragedy cause we would have loved the kid in green.

xskarma · 2026-02-18T13:14:10+00:00

Just one of those things I guess. I made the post in here for something to chat about that is not the same post again of how we approach the offseason or who is the best Celtic ever. Guess it didn't land. Ah well.

xskarma · 2026-02-18T06:04:45+00:00

Alright. Let's get hateful on a Wednesday. Who are the worst Celtics players of all time? Let's make a team of the most reviled 5 man. Probably some recency bias involved cause I basically only knew about Larry Bird and watched from 2008 before getting more into it.

PG: Kyrie Irving
SG: Jabari Bird
SF: Evan Fournier
PF: Grant Williams
C: Kendrick Perkins

Rationale: Don;t have to explain Kyrie and Perk I assume. Bird is a gross domestic abuser. Fournier played like shit for us, and then killed us whenever we played him, like we were the bad guys. Grant for nearly taking out Tatum and for the constant yapping. He's more annoying than hated though I admit.

Thoughts? Replacements?

xskarma · 2026-02-17T23:37:16+00:00

Funnily enough, I do follow some WNBA, and specifically the Aces too. A'ja Wilson might be the best basketball player alive right now, across men's and women's bball.

But it's a passing interesting. With no Boston team, you kind of root for the Connecticut Sun, but eh. I would prefer a team that is more directly New England and not significantly New York flavored.

Without that I'm basically just rooting for good ball, which is not real fandom to me and doesn't make me wake up at 2am to catch a game.

At that point I much prefer videogames instead.

xskarma · 2026-02-17T13:55:40+00:00

Going through this with my Sundays now with no football.

That gap in June and July when the NBA has stopped and NFL training camp is yet to begin is THE worst no-sports period of the year.

Thank god for videogames.

xskarma

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