Should Celtics Fans be Worried about BENCH Struggles?
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.
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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.
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