Breaking Down The C’s 4th Quarter Near Collapse vs. Cavs
Posted by Brian Robb on Apr 6, 2010
This year, the C’s have blown 13 double digit leads, which is tied for the 2nd highest total in the league. An alarmingly high number of those blown double digit leads have come at the TD Garden against elite opponents, and on Sunday, the Green almost delivered number 14, before recovering for the win.
Now for Celtics fans this year, it hasn’t been a matter of if a good team will mount a comeback against Boston at home, just a matter of when. Dallas, Orlando, Cleveland, Los Angeles, you name the finals contender, they’ve come back from an imposing deficit on their way to a win at TD.
So what has exactly led to these comebacks? Well, there have been a lot of factors that have come into play. Inability to get stops, turnovers, mental mistakes, etc.
However, to me, the unifying factor that has disturbed me the most, is the offense becoming stagnant. In all of the games, I’ve mentioned earlier, the C’s have struggled putting any real points on the board for a span generally ranging anywhere from 6-12 minutes.
This sequence has normally arrived in the 3rd quarter for the C’s, but is prone to rearing its ugly head at any point in the 2nd half, as we saw Sunday. Against the Cavs, entering the 4th quarter the C’s had scored 98 points in 36 minutes and held a 17 point lead.
Over the next 9 minutes and 58 seconds, the Cavs outscored Boston by a 23 to 5 margin, turning that 17 point deficit into a one point lead. Naturally, I decided to review this sequence indepthly for the Celts on the offensive end, since well, I really like to torture myself.
Honestly, though I just wanted to figure out what went wrong. Bad shot selection? Turnovers? No ball movement? There had to be an answer, and I was determined to find it. My surprising conclusions, after the jump
To begin, a few numbers to break down the C’s offensive struggles in those 10 minutes of play.
- 1 of 13 shooting from the field (all 2 pt attempts)
- 3 of 3 on free throws
- 4 turnovers
- 5 points scored in 9:58
Those are some gruesome numbers. Considering the Cavs scored 32 in that final frame, it makes you wonder how the hell The Celtics won this game. They recovered nicely though in the final 2 minutes with 14 points. We will get to that later though, onto the offensive trainwreck first, which ended up being not as bad as you would have expected.
11:40: Pierce cuts under hoop and blows a semi-contested open layup. (Good shot)
11:23: Pierce front-rims contested FT line jumper. (Tough shot)
10:44: Rajon Rondo airmails a pass over Michael Finley’s head in the corner (turnover)
10:14: Pierce stepback jumper over Anthony Parker at the right elbow. This is his bread and butter spot on the floor. Not a terrible shot, but still front rims it. (Makeable)
9:34: KG turnaround 10 foot jumper in the key. Contested but still well within his range. Looked like he rushed it. (Good shot)
9:02: Ray Allen hits technical foul FT after Lebron blows his gasket
8:55: KG misses wide open 18 footer at the left elbow. (Good shot)
8:22: Pierce pulls up on a drive, and missed a wide open FT jumper, front rimming it once again (Good shot)
7:52: Perk, gets double teamed in post, tries to pass out of it but Z steals ball. (turnover)
7:26: KG hits a contested step back 17 footer, for the first FG off the quarter. (Tough shot)
6:39: KG posts up on the left elbow, attempts a drive to the left and misses a difficult contested 14 footer, floating to his left. (Tough shot)
6:07: Perk has ball in post once again, gets his pocket picked by Anthony Parker. (Turnover)
5:39: KG catches ball in the paint and misses a contested 12 foot turnaround, below the free throw line. Well within his shooting range, but definitely makeable. (Makeable)
5:09: Pierce drives to the hoop and gets stripped by Lebron from behind. (Turnover)
4:58: Pierce makes a strong move to the hoop and gets fouled by Z. Hits both free throws. (2 points)
4:30: KG misses a contested 8 foot pull up jumper on the left block. Not a smart shot. (Tough shot)
3:47: Pierce gets the ball up top with 8 seconds on the shot clock, gets stripped by Lebron, recovers the loose ball to get it to Ray Allen. Shot clock expires. (Turnover)
3:15: Rondo gets a pick and makes a strong move to the hoop, getting bumped along the way. He misses the layup, gets no call and gets T’d for his trouble for complaining after the play. Ugly play all around. (Should have been a foul)
2:38: KG misses WIDE OPEN 18 footer from the top of the key. (Good shot)
2:29: Rondo drives down the left side of the lane, takes a tough angle to the hoop and puts up a shot that is easily blocked by Antwan Jamison. (Blocked)
2:02: Ray Allen drives to the hoop and ends the destruction, by getting fouled and hitting both free throws.
Well that wasn’t pretty, but not nearly as painful as I thought it was going to be. Let’s break down the C’s shot selection further to see what we can learn from this drought.
- KG: 1 of 7 shooting. Made contested 17 footer. Missed shots from (10, 18, 14, 8, 18, 14) Four “good” or “makeable” shots. Four tough shots.
- Pierce: 0 of 4 shooting. Missed from (3, 13, 18, 16) Three “good” or “makeable” shots. One “tough” shot
- Rondo: 0 of 2 shooting. Two missed layups. One blocked and one should have been a foul.
Conclusions
As a whole, this sequence was about a couple players going cold more than anything else. As seen in the shot breakdown, KG and Pierce did practically all the damage during this sequence, going 1 of 11 combined from the field in those 10 minutes.
They took some tough shots, but they also took plenty of baskets that they make 6 or 7 times out of 10, if they’re open. Both guys went cold. It happens. Now a few of these shots looked rushed from both All-Stars, making me wonder if either got tight or felt the pressure from the impending collapse as it unfolded. I’ll give both veterans the benefit of the doubt though in that regard.
However, the bigger problem to me here is where all these shots were coming from. The mid-range game. During this offensive drought, the C’s stopped attacking the rim, instead settling for the longer jumpers.
With KG, he shouldn’t be taking that many shots in the fourth quarter. Period. He’s obviously not capable of driving to the rim effectively anymore, and offensively he’s clearly the 3rd, if not 4th option on the floor right now. If he’s not hitting those mid range shots, he shouldn’t be taking seven of them. That’s just too many.
With Pierce, I’m worried about him a bit. Mike Gorman, the C’s play by play man, has always told me, the way you can tell if Pierce is feeling good, is if he is getting to the rim. Well he only shot one field goal at the rim on Sunday. This is not good.
He hasn’t been able to create much separation in iso situations as well. The guy is clearly still hurting, and him front rimming 3 makeable jumpers and blowing an open layup speaks volumes to that point. Hopefully, Doc gives him plenty of rest in the next couple weeks to keep him as refreshed as possible for round 1, since this team needs him attacking the rim in order to succeed.
Finally we come to the biggest problem of this whole sequence. 0 shot attempts for Ray Allen in 8 of those 10 minutes. The man checked back into the game with 10 minutes on the clock in the 4th quarter, yet didn’t even get a whiff of a shot attempt until he went to the line with 2 minutes left.
Now yes, you could say Cleveland tightened up in him defensively in this timespan, but the truth is, after dissecting the tape, the C’s weren’t making an effort to look for him. The man was easily their best offensive option all game long, 5 of 8 from deep at that point, and he doesn’t even take a shot while the team’s offense goes down the tubes? That’s unacceptable.
You live and die with your best offensive player at that point, which Ray Allen clearly was on Sunday. Instead the C’s tried to die without even using him. Thankfully, they went back to him before it was too late.
So there you have it. An ugly fourth quarter breakdown. Just some cold shooting more than anything else. The four turnovers weren’t pretty but given this team’s track record with miscues, isn’t an overly disturbing numbers.
The C’s need to wise up and keep moving the ball around when they face adversity like this. Don’t go away from what was working and especially don’t go away from your hot hand.
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