Your Morning Dump... Where it's the Final Countdown

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

“I kept telling these guys during timeouts in the game,” Thomas said. “’Know what you’re playing for. Don’t take your foot off the pedal. Continue to grind. Continue to stay in the moment.

“And, hopefully, we can get that third seed.”

Providence Journal

That’s from a recap of the Wednesday night game against New Orleans, but the point applied to last night’s game–a far more complete effort by the Celtics–and to each of the next three games.

The NBA’s schedulers delivered up a serendipitous ending to this season. A crowded playoff race concludes with Boston playing Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte (currently seeded 3, 5, and 6) to close out the year. The Celtics control their destiny. If they win out, they’re the number three seed.

It’s time for the Celtics, winners of thirteen of their last twenty games (a 53 win pace), to prove to themselves that they deserve the highest playoff seed they’ve had in five years.

Page 2: Where Tyler Zeller had himself a night

Zeller, who hadn’t scored in double figures in his previous six appearances and who hadn’t played more than 19 minutes in his previous nine, rolled in for a three-point play early in the second quarter and started to accelerate.

Forget that he missed a pair of five-footers prior to the scoring play. The basket altered his entire night.

“It’s always nice to see your first shot go in,” said Zeller. “Once you get one to go in hopefully your confidence can keep building from there. I started to see some of the reads that I knew I had to make for this game, and it’s always nice when you settle in to that. I think they were trying to get after our guards a lot so I was able to beat them either to the spot or beat them to the basket or the rotation was a little late.”

It also helped to be on the floor with Evan Turner and Marcus Smart, who each came off the bench with nine assists.

“They were great,” Zeller said of his primary feeders. “They put it right on the money and really like I said all I had to do was catch it and either get fouled or take it up strongly and finish. So it made my job very easy. They don’t get enough credit for what they do.”

Boston Herald

Last night’s game sort of illustrated the 2016 Celtics’ motto: “We’re one superstar.” Against a team that was built to be big and scary, the Celtics bigs collectively had a field day, and Tyler Zeller did the best of all of them. On one hand, it was quite unexpected, but on the other hand, it’s also what we’ve come to expect from the Celtics this year.

Page 3: Where the Celtics are campaigning for Jae Crowder.

Celtics release this graphic to start “Jae Crowder for Most Improved Player” campaign pic.twitter.com/864GzoBRX6

— Jay King (@ByJayKing) April 8, 2016

Crowder landing the Most Improved Player award is probably an even longer shot than Isaiah Thomas ending up on the All-NBA team.

As John pointed out yesterday, with respect to Boston’s campaign to land IT on the All NBA team, this sends a message to potential free agents as well: Boston’s got your back.

Page 4: Where Derek Fisher didn’t trust the triangle

“If you want learn something, and truly learn something, you have to immerse yourself in it. That probably goes for about anything. We didn’t fully immerse ourselves into practicing [the triangle], developing it, learning how to work with it, going through the breakdown drills to execute it properly so we kind of skirted over things,” Rambis said Friday prior to the Knicks’ shootaround. “The real learning process of it didn’t have enough time to take place. We also didn’t allow the players the kind of time that it needs in terms of putting in the time to allow them to get comfortable with it. And then you start getting into the season when we weren’t scrimmaging a lot, and practicing a lot. You need those days, you need that time to allow players because the light turns on at different times.”

ESPN

Did you get all that?

The reason why the Knicks are terrible is because Derek Fisher didn’t commit fully to an antique and idiosyncratic offensive system, and not because the team is run by a disconnected guy cashing gigantic paychecks and attempting to care, owned by a clueless meddler, and coached by people whose greatest qualifications are their willingness to put up with this crap.

What is truly wonderful about the Triangle Offense is that anything can be blamed on a failure to properly execute the Triangle Offense. Next year, when the Knicks are still terrible, Rambis can blame the players: ‘they’re just not buying into the Triangle Offense’, or ‘they don’t have the skills required to execute the Triangle Offense’, or ‘they’re not used to the Triangle Offense concepts.’

The Triangle Offense has become, for Phil’s Knicks, the equivalent of spending one’s life savings on lottery tickets and losing it all–and then insisting that the problem was not that the idea was incredibly stupid, but that it was not executed properly.

Finally: Philly’s got picks and nothing else

The 21-year-old Philadelphia 76ers star rented a 4,800 square foot home outside of Philly back in September 2014 — paying $54,000 for a one-year lease. But he not only trashed the place and left weed throughout the home … he also allegedly threatened the owners after he moved out.

In their lawsuit, the owners of the home list all of the crazy damage they found including after Noel moved out in August 2015:

— “Splashed neon colored sports drinks (such as Gatorade) on the carpets throughout the home.”
— $30,000 in other damage to carpets
— Extreme water damage throughout the home
— Clogged toilets filled with cotton balls and feces

…

The owners say they also found weed and roaches from joints in the home — including pieces of marijuana in the master bathroom drawers.

TMZ

You will still find Philly fans saying that Sam Hinkie got a raw deal. The above is further proof that he manifestly did not.

Hinkie did a great job assembling picks for Philadelphia. And if that were the only thing required to win in the NBA, well, the Sixers would be on their way to untold glory and Sam would still have a job.

Instead, Hinkie presided over a disorganized operation that, among other things, brought in a host of young players and essentially left them without guidance or role models for their conduct off the court. And while you may plausibly argue that these guys are all adults and should know better, handing a kid that grew up poor a multi-million dollar contract with no assistance in either spending it wisely or figuring out how to give back to the community, just expecting him to suss these things out on his own at age 20 or thereabouts is just irresponsible.

I said it Thursday and it bears repeating. You need much more than talent on the court to win consistently. Jerry Krause was pilloried for saying “organizations win championships”, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.