Should Celtics Fans be Worried about BENCH Struggles?

CLNS Media Sports Network

Despite the Celtics' big win over the Wizards, there is one glaring problem with this C's team. The bench. A few injuries could change the Celtics season drastically.  This episode of the Garden Report is is brought to you by:  FanDuel Sportsbook, the exclusive wagering partner of the CLNS Media Network. Visit FanDuel.com/BOSTON and start earning BONUS BETS with America’s #1 Sportsbook! Because right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl Winner, you can GET BONUS BETS EVERY TIME THEY WIN IN THE REGULAR SEASON! 21+ and present in MA. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Refund issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Hope is here. GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call (800)-327-5050 for 24/7 support. Play it smart from the start! GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234.    With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Go to https://HelloFresh.com/CLNS50 and use code CLNS50 for 50% off plus FREE SHIPPING!    ODDS-R! Ever wished you could navigate the betting field with the confidence of a pro? Enter OddsR. They're not a sportsbook, but they're the sports betting advisor you've always needed. It's like having a playbook for smarter bets right in your pocket. Especially since Garden Report listeners get a 30-day free trial! Elevate your game day and join the smart betting revolution! Go get it at https://oddsr.com/celtics

Transcript

00:00 Not to crap on this parade, but this bench,

00:02 good God, if two starter injuries occur,

00:04 this ship is going to sink.

00:06 We can't sustain 100 point starter games.

00:08 I didn't want to get into the negative part of this one,

00:10 but we might as well talk about it a little bit here.

00:12 We can circle around to a few different things,

00:14 but the bench tonight, and again,

00:16 it's going to be very rare when you're going to see

00:18 five bench guys in at the same time, thank God.

00:20 - Right, right.

00:21 - This is not going to be something we see often,

00:25 at least not unless they're blowout situations,

00:27 but you got a good look at some guys tonight,

00:30 Bobby and Josue, and I can't say anybody,

00:33 aside from maybe Svee, who hit a three,

00:35 I can't say anyone really shined.

00:37 And Bobby, I'll let you start,

00:38 'cause you've been hyping certain guys on this bench here.

00:42 - Yeah, it was a bad night for all of them,

00:44 pretty much, except Lamar Stevens.

00:46 Svee made a few plays late.

00:48 The biggest case is Herrett now, which isn't great.

00:50 So this would have been a good night to see him,

00:52 and he ends up on the bench injured.

00:54 So this isn't a great group of players.

00:57 It's mostly minimum guys.

00:59 It's mostly players who came up from the G League,

01:02 in Lou Cornett's case, and Sam Howser certainly too.

01:05 So you have one good year on the books of Sam,

01:08 and you wonder how much defense

01:09 is starting to play him a little differently.

01:11 I thought he was good in the late stages of the preseason,

01:14 but so far through the regular season, it's been rough.

01:16 Not much to talk about in that Knicks game.

01:18 He was terrible early in the Heat game,

01:20 and they had to go in a different direction.

01:22 And then in this one, I think he finishes, what,

01:24 three for 10.

01:25 So we talked about that in the preseason.

01:27 He's that guy.

01:28 There's a lot of backup wings here.

01:30 There's a lot of opportunity to go around as that position.

01:33 And he doesn't have such a stranglehold on the position

01:37 that if someone else plays well,

01:38 he's gonna be able to hold onto it.

01:40 Now, I think they're still gonna trust these guys like him,

01:43 Pritchard, who was overrated tonight,

01:45 even Cornett, who hasn't played--

01:47 - There it is.

01:49 - I mean, these are guys-- - Everybody drink.

01:50 - These are guys you saw play well last year,

01:53 so I do think he exercised some level of patience with them.

01:56 But again, none of them have any kind of stranglehold

01:59 over their positions that if they play bad

02:02 for five, 10 games here,

02:04 they're gonna have a long leash on it.

02:06 And fortunately, Jimmy, like you said,

02:07 you have full health now, you have tighter lineups,

02:10 but eventually you do wanna see some of these other guys

02:13 in here get opportunities in good spots.

02:16 I mean, I don't really take anything

02:18 those guys on the lower end of the bench did tonight

02:20 for, you know, with any more than a grain of salt

02:24 because of the competition--

02:25 - You would have liked to have seen some production.

02:29 I mean, this is against a Wizards team

02:30 that doesn't have much talent on their end either.

02:34 And this would have been the perfect game to say,

02:35 "Okay, maybe the Celtics have something here with this guy,

02:39 "or maybe there's something here

02:40 "that they could zone in on with that guy."

02:42 But man, you go down the line, Bobby and Joe Swipe,

02:45 please chime in here.

02:47 Hauser, three of 10, Pritchard, O of eight.

02:50 Cornette didn't take a shot,

02:51 but let's just assume he would have missed it if he did.

02:53 He was minus 11 in 11 minutes.

02:55 - He did drop the pass. - Not ideal.

02:58 Yep, Preset, minus 10, and he was O for four.

03:01 Banton, one of three, and he was a minus 17.

03:05 I mean, who, there's gonna be, it hasn't happened yet,

03:08 but we're already seeing it around the league.

03:10 Load management here, load management there.

03:12 Teams are not shying away from it

03:13 despite what the NBA is trying to do to stop it.

03:16 Are the Celtics gonna be able to sit guys?

03:19 - Yeah, once in a while, or are they gonna have to worry

03:22 about playing five on four basketball?

03:23 - I mean, look, it's interesting because,

03:25 what was it, Drew said something about,

03:28 are you worried about production

03:29 or scoring person coming off the bench?

03:30 This guy was like, "Oh, on a team like this,

03:32 "you don't need scoring off the bench.

03:33 "You don't have to worry about that."

03:34 I'm like, yeah, you need some scoring off the bench though.

03:38 Right, guys?

03:39 I mean, you gotta, look, you gotta find some consistency.

03:41 - You need a secondary somewhere.

03:42 - Right, you need some secondary scoring.

03:44 You need that consistency 'cause you're gonna have starters

03:47 dipping into, helping the second unit,

03:50 and all of a sudden all those minutes add up.

03:52 And look, you just wanna be able to find

03:54 some sort of trust from the second unit

03:56 and guys not named Al Horford.

03:57 And I think that's where the Housers and the Pritchers

04:00 come up, I mean, these are the two guys

04:01 that obviously have more experience

04:03 than most of the second unit guys

04:06 that have been in the system with the Celtics.

04:09 And I just, I'm with you, Bobby,

04:12 and in a game like this against the Washington Wizards,

04:14 I wanna see a little bit more

04:15 from guys like Pritchard and Houser.

04:17 Look, Pritchard goes what, 0 for 8,

04:20 0 for 6 from behind the arc.

04:21 Houser goes 3 for 10, 2 for 9 from 3.

04:25 I just wanna see if Houser can find his offense

04:29 inside the arc at any point throughout this season.

04:32 I understand that's a big part of his game,

04:34 but he's gotta find a way to get going off ball, right?

04:37 He's gotta find a way, whether it's backdoor cuts,

04:39 whether it's off the dribble.

04:40 I mean, he's gotta find a way to find his offense

04:42 if the three-point shot's not falling

04:44 because I'm with you, Bobby,

04:45 that spot that he has in rotation isn't a lock.

04:49 There's other guys that could easily take that spot,

04:51 and though they don't do the same things that he does,

04:53 they're finding a reason,

04:54 or they're showing examples of why they're valuable,

04:59 whether it's the rebounding from Bursette,

05:01 which we saw Friday night,

05:03 or guys like Al Horford's gonna give you those rebounding,

05:07 playmaking, and then some, right?

05:08 Even hit a couple threes and score for you as well.

05:10 But if Horford doesn't have it,

05:12 which we've seen a couple of times already this season,

05:15 where are those points coming from out of the second unit?

05:17 Okay, you get away with that

05:18 in a game like this against the Wizards,

05:20 but if you're going up against a better team,

05:22 which is the majority of pretty much

05:24 almost every other team in the NBA,

05:26 you might run into some issues.

05:27 You're gonna need some sort of production off that bench.

05:29 And it's only three games since the regular season,

05:32 so there's still plenty of time to figure that out,

05:33 but I got my eye on that for sure.

05:35 I'm trying to see how that thing irons itself out

05:37 because it's gotta be other people

05:39 that they can rely on outside of Al Horford

05:41 coming off that bench.

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05:58 - Who's up and who's down on this bench?

06:02 Who's gonna end up part of this rotation?

06:03 It's up for grabs to some extent.

06:05 I mean, they're not gonna stick Pritchard

06:09 at the very end of the bench,

06:10 but there are roles to be won here.

06:13 - You need to find guys who compliment

06:16 the best players on the team.

06:17 And that's why I've always looked at

06:19 some of the guys further down the bench lineup,

06:21 like Omar Stevens, who might not look good

06:24 in a situation like this,

06:25 where you're subbing in five bench guys together

06:28 and they're all just trying to fire off shots

06:29 and show what they're made of.

06:31 He can grab the rebounds.

06:34 He can hit a shot off the ball.

06:36 He's not a great shooter, but he's wide open.

06:38 He can knock one down as he did tonight.

06:40 I do like the idea of giving him more opportunity,

06:43 especially if O'Shea Brissett struggles to shoot.

06:45 Joe Swayze, right, you need some scoring here,

06:48 but you don't need a ton.

06:49 And obviously the starters aren't gonna score

06:51 a hundred points a game,

06:53 but they are gonna be able to handle

06:54 the brunt of the scoring load here.

06:56 And that's how this team's gonna play.

06:58 So you need guys who do the little things, Jimmy,

07:00 the rebounding, the defense, certainly,

07:02 and even some of the facilitating.

07:04 Like I still like the idea of Delano Banton

07:06 as a guy who can pass and defend wings.

07:09 The shot's not gonna be there,

07:11 but you don't need a ton of shots from him

07:13 or a ton of minutes.

07:15 This is what you decided to do, Jimmy.

07:17 If people are pissed about the bench,

07:19 they should go back and reverse the holiday trade

07:22 and get you two bench rotation players back.

07:24 You're playing with a thin team, full of minimum guys.

07:28 So this is what you get.

07:29 You can't have everything.

07:30 It's the one thing John says that I agree with.

07:32 You can't have everything on a roster.

07:34 (all laughing)

07:36 - Just one, John.

07:38 - So they're gonna be patient here, Jimmy.

07:40 They're gonna see what they have.

07:43 Hopefully Joe works with the rotation a little bit

07:45 'cause a lot of these guys

07:46 really haven't gotten a chance yet.

07:48 And then close to the deadline,

07:49 you see what opportunities become available.

07:52 They're not gonna make a big trade right now

07:54 and send out a first round pick

07:55 'cause the bench played bad for three games.

07:57 - Right, I understand that.

08:00 It's just, I think, yeah, I mean, listen,

08:02 overall, you got the win tonight.

08:04 It was a pretty damn good play.

08:05 - You won by 40,

08:06 and people are bitching about the bench.

08:09 - Well, that's what we do here, Bobby.

08:12 That's what we do here in Boston, all right?

08:15 We find something negative to talk about

08:17 and we hammer it for half an hour.

08:19 - Always something.

08:20 - I don't think that's the focus.

08:21 Listen, it's not the focus of tonight's win.

08:23 I think we hit it off the top,

08:25 but you can't ignore--

08:27 - No, you can't.

08:28 It was bad.

08:29 - The fact that you got six guys

08:31 on your team basically right now.

08:33 So that's, again, that's something

08:35 that I'm sure we'll talk about many, many, many times

08:38 the rest of this season.

08:39 (upbeat music)

08:42 (upbeat music)

08:45 (upbeat music)

08:47 (upbeat music)

Transcript

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