Yeah, I'm not sure I'd rely on flipping that switch. This game made me nervous. It was a playoff game after all, so we should be taking it seriously. The talent differential is like the JV (Celtics) vs the varsity so it shouldn't be this close. It was like a compendium of all our weaknesses --
--offense often looks confused and ineffective without Lebron or Kyrie playing ISO-ball
--defense is good in spurts but can't be relied on consistently for stops.
--live by the 3, die by the 3 -- if they aren't falling we have a hard time varying our game
--front line cannot score reliably outside of Love shooting 3s and the occasional Mozgov alley-oop,
It's not that we're bad, it's that we should be better. We have two legit superstars and what should be a solid supporting cast, but we are not yet maximizing our talent.
Nonononono. This isn't a fair or rational viewpoint. The Celtics might be under the radar and they certainly don't have our level of talent, but they aren't a bad team.
-They have played really well on the road as constructed, in the 2nd half of the season.
-Their 2nd Half record was good.
-They DID come out fired up, and we didn't match that intensity. That might look like coasting to you, but all of that energy spent gave them a whopping 1 point lead at the end of Q1, and my interpretation is that their extreme Q1 hustle is exactly why they had dead legs in Q3.
-I think the Celts were ready for the weakside passes that we were relying on too, so we adjusted and turned our D into O in Q3, and had some blow by opportunities b/c the Celts were worn out.
I just think people are getting a little bit too nit-picky about the Cavs. Stuff like:
-"our offense is all iso" - That's the best offense in the playoffs thus far.
-Our D is weak - It's been quite effective and the Celts do have some advantages with their personnel versus ours.
-Our 3 balls at 33% is the equivalent of shooting 50% from the 2 point range. Obviously very good albeit worse than usual.
So we are up 2-0 against what is likely the 6th best team in the East. They are well coached, a point which LeBron made, and we should all be satisfied with our lack of panic yesterday.
Like
@theSTEREO. said, this is actually an ideal opponent. That doesn't mean he doesn't want us to sweep, it just means that they play hard and make good basketball decisions. Not blowing them out shouldn't be read as any trending weakness in our team's play.
The more I think about it, if we play the Bulls in round 2, I think we are set up to really hand it to them. They are getting a false confidence by beating an offensively challenged team, and we will have more a more consistent mental approach based on our series with Boston.
