It has been almost three weeks, but the sting of losing to the Sixers hasn’t gone away even a little bit. The frustration has continued for the Celtics as they watched Philly combust in round two against the Knicks in pathetic fashion. It was only compounded by seeing the Pistons and Cavaliers struggle in the other Eastern Conference semifinal.
And now somehow, it’s getting even worse watching the Thunder and Spurs battle it out in the Western Conference Finals. On the one hand, it’s easy to look at both teams and how they battled in Game 1, and make a determination that the bar is so high above what the Celtics could have reached that they shouldn’t feel as bad.
But on the other hand, the way that these teams are playing, and their coaches are coaching, makes the loss to Philly even more infuriating. And the reason is that Mark Daigneault and Mitch Johnson are embracing their depth, trusting their young players, and finding success with what has worked for them all season long.
The Spurs played two rookies crucial minutes, including 46 minutes for Dylan Harper, while he was quick to pull the plug on veterans, Harrison Barnes, and Luke Kornet when they were ineffective in short stints.
Meanwhile, the Thunder played 12 different players in their biggest game of the season. Daigneault didn’t hesitate to tinker and toy with his lineups and rotations, having a short leash for proven starters like Isaiah Hartenstein and Lu Dort, while trusting less established players like Jared McCain and Ajay Mitchell.
Mazzulla refused to trust his depth and young players
As Celtics fans know all too well, this is basically the opposite of what Joe Mazzulla did in the series against the 76ers. All year long, guys like Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez, and Luka Garza proved that they could play and impact games.
But when the playoffs started, Joe lost trust and fell back on riding veterans like Sam Hauser, Derrick White, and Nikola Vucevic into the ground. Lineups with White and Hauser were getting destroyed, but Mazzulla refused to make adjustments to his lineups and went down with the ship.
Even though his younger players were giving him good minutes in short bursts, he refused to stretch them out and went with a conventional, classic short playoff rotation. It wasn’t working. And he didn’t seem to care. It was even worse because mixing and matching the depth based on matchups worked all season long and turned the Celtics into one of the best and most surprising teams in the whole league.
We’ll never know what would have happened if Joe had just stuck to his guns from the way he coached all season long, but it’s hard to imagine it could have gone worse. And now, seeing how Dags and Johnson are coaching in the WCF, Mazzulla’s foolish mistakes look even worse.
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