The Good, Bad, and Ugly Against Denver
The Celtics got a much needed win against the Nuggets last night by a score of 112 to 99. This win came after losing back to back games to the Wizards and Pistons, two of the worst teams in the entire NBA. The Nuggets were definitely dealing with some injuries, as were the Celtics, but they still had their duo of Jokic and Murray. There were certainly some positives from last night's game, but also some concerns. I'll begin with the positives from last night's performance.
The Good: The Young Guys- Five of the Celtics eight players that played 20+ minutes last night were all 25 years or younger. This included the two rookies, Nesmith and Pritchard who led the team in +/- with +20 and +19 respectively. The Combination of the Nesmith, Pritchard, Timelord, and Green has created probably my favorite 4 man lineup I have seen so far this season, in just over ten minutes they were a +14. I think this lineup should be called "All Gas, No Breaks" because these are four guys that just fly around, they are definitely prone to make some mistakes. but it is a lot of fun to watch these four play together. I hope I can continue to watch this unit play together again in the future, regardless of who is at the four.
The Bad: Fouls: This is something that the Celtics have struggled with all season long and it continued last night. I understand the difficulty of guarding a player like Jokic without fouling, but this has gone on all year. The Celtics are 24th in the league in personal fouls at about 21 per game, and last night they committed 22 fouls. The Nuggets didn't get a ton of free throws out of the fouls, they only shot 15, but made them count as they hit 14 of those 15. Too many dumb fouls has hurt them in past games, most notably against the 76ers. The Celtics are a pretty good defensive team, but the one thing that they can certainly improve on is limiting fouls.
The Ugly: Guarding Jokic: I fully understand that there is only one Nikola Jokic, but it is more of the type of player that he is that worries me. With the way the seedings are right now, we'd face the the 76ers in the 2nd round. That means we would have to defend Embiid for a 7 game series. Embiid and Jokic are clearly two of the best centers in the entire NBA, but Jokic scored 43 last night and Embiid has scored 38 and 42 so far against us this season. Last night when Timelord was on the court Jokic was 4 for 8 from the field and scored 12 points in 10 minutes and was only a +3. While defended by Thompson he was 12 for 15 from the field and scored 31 points in 27 minutes, but was a -1. Neither player did exceptionally well against Jokic, but Williams provided a little more resistance. I will mention that Thompson played his best defense against Jokic in the fourth, where he looked significantly better than he did for almost all of the game.
Just some other things to mention. Murray had a good game, but not a great game, I feel like he absolutely owns us so I'll take him getting 25 against us. Jaylen looked great other than his turnovers, and Tatum has continued to look incredible as a playmaker over the last stretch of games even though he has been struggling scoring the ball since returning from Covid. The Celtics are back at it tonight against the 11-16 Hawks, I really hope we can see the Celtics win again tonight even with Kemba and Theis out.
-@threalmattmoney
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