So the topic of the day, maybe the week, probably the entire.
Offseason, if we're honest, considering.
How bad things are right now for the Celtics is just how bad of a job Joe Miszula has done coaching the Boston Celtics in the postseason?
How bad is it?
The Athletic has three articles written on it, like, aren't these.
Writers checking in with each other?
Three articles on Joe Mizzoula being a dumpster fire in the postseason as a coach. You got Bill Simmons devoting many numbers of podcasts hours to it. Twitter is a is just an absolute mess in the comment section on how Spoe is absolutely out coaching Joe Missoula.
Here, though, is what nobody is talking about.
Were witnessing in this Eastern Conference finals is to me the greatest NBA science experiment in the history of the league. So, okay, last year, right, emay Udoka takes over a Celtics team and it only takes him about a half a season to completely change the culture there. As we know, emay Udoka was bearing these kids in the media saying, oh yeah,
they're soft, they're not passing the ball. It was a mess and all of a sudden things clicked in the postseason to the point where they get to the finals and they lose a hard fought series to the Warriors. Now, you may not like the drop coverage that emay Udoka played on Steph Curry. Fine, fair, but I think we can all say that emay Udoka is an elite coach. Then, of course emai Udoka got quote unquote suspended for the season.
Aka got fired for not being able to I don't know, just like keep it together yeather, and he had some sexual relations with one of the members of the Stack, and so that to me creates a perfect storm of circumstances we've never had in the history of the NBA. A head coach who gets fired after leading his team from five hundred to the brink of a championship. Yes, Brad Stevens took this team to the Eastern Conference semis
multiple times, but let's be real. The Brad Stevens move to the GM position, it was because he was not ready and able to coach these men up. This wasn't Nick Nurse getting fired after four years after winning a CHIP. This was a coach everyone said was one of the best minds in basketball. Completely change the culture of Boston and he shockingly gets let go.
He would have been the Boston head coach for a decade or more. And on top of that, the kicker is that the Celtics didn't change their roster. This was a team that they thought they were gonna run every everything back.
They ended up actually getting better, getting the sixth man of the year in Malcolm Brogden.
They added him to the roster.
So this team, this Celtics team, has actually improved from last year, the one that we already know is good enough to win it all I already know is good enough to go to the finals.
And then all of a sudden they get handed one.
Of EM's assistants, not some random coach that comes in and has to take over a team that's already built a scheme and a system. No, thirty four year old Joe Mizula was there for the entire process under Ema Udoka. So now we get this beautiful opportunity to compare bad for Joe Miszula.
Really, because we.
Really have all of the same factors that are consistent except for the coach. We can compare how this team compares to last year's team because they're pretty much the same, and even better in our science experiment, they get to play the Miami Heat again, the team that they went toe to toe with in the playoffs last year, a team that is largely the same as it was last year, only slightly worse. They're missing Tyler Hero, They're missing Victor Oladipo.
And by the way, Hero averaged twelve four and three against the Celtics in the games he played in the Eastern Conference Finals, and the Heat won two of those. Ola Depot came in and averaged ten three and three in all seven games. So this is actually a beautiful perfect storm. The same two teams play against each other in two consecutive years, two consecutive Eastern Conference finals.
By the way, and the only difference really.
Boston changed coaches. And now the truth has come to light and the world is being debunked because there are for many years, people have said coaching doesn't matter in the NBA at all.
It's a star driven league. Stars do star things.
No, no, people. What we're seeing is the coaching matters a lot. Coaching matters on every level.
We have never had.
The ability to see how stark it would be if a brilliant coach left. When coaches get fired, they're usually not brilliant. They're usually not very good there. Usually you see their ceiling. Teams are bad, teams have failed, they've been disappointments. I don't think you go to the finals
and you fire your coach right away. We've never seen, hardly ever seen an elite coach get fired like this at this particular point in the juncture of his head coaching career, one year in to his coaching head coaching.
Career, and this is what happened.
The only reason emy Udoka isn't the coach this year and for the next decade is because of the personal scandal, right, and I had nothing to do with.
Coaching, so we know that.
Also, emy Udoka was masterful along the way to the finals.
Maybe you don't like what he did in.
The finals, but his defense, how he managed the roster. The identity of the team was defense all year long, ball movement, getting out and pushing the pace. And now we get to see how the same team perform under another highly regarded assistant coach, an assistant like I said, who I should remind you worked under Ema Udoka. It means the great Boston NBA coaching experiment proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, how one man can change the fate of a team, and more importantly, how important a
good coach is to a good team. Another thing that's becoming very evident. It is very easy for mediocre coaches
to paper over their flaws in the regular season. Malcolm brog didn't discuss this, which we'll talk about in just a second, but Boston easily got to hide under the regular season guide because of Missoula's inability to adjust when they were playing Detroit and San Antonio and teams that weren't scheming and planning and preparing for them because either the gap and talent was so much greater or those good teams great teams were not.
Really preparing for them.
Even in the first and second rounds of the playoffs, Boston wasn't exactly really getting tested, and yet they were still kind of not quite acing the exam. There were four shore signs that shit was already.
Going off the rails.
Lest we forget, winning two rounds in the NBA Playoffs gets you exactly halfway to the championship, you still have to beat good teams, Elite teams coached by elite coaches, and Joe Mazoo is very.
Far from an elite coach. I think we know that, right. I think we kind of know that.
He might be a good coach one day, he might be an elite coach another day. But asking him as a thirty four year old head coach with very little coaching experience and only two years experience in the NBA in total, that is a bridge, folks. This guy came from the main red clause. Okay, if you don't know what those words mean, like I understand if I said, what is she saying? This guy came from the main red clause. Yeah, that's where he came from.
Maine. That's the Gen League team for the Boston Celtics. He came from the G League team.
That's where he came from. Joe Missoula got his. It's basically Aaron Miles, my guy.
Who I love.
Aaron Miles assistant for the Boston Celtics. He has more coaching experience in the NBA than Joe Miszula, head coach of the G League Santa Cruz Warriors, and then an assistant for the Warriors in their title run, and then an assistant on the bench.
For the Boston Celtics.
So listen, I don't know what the deal is with Joe Missoula and why he's not very good, but I can say this, the adjustments aren't there, the rotations aren't there. He blames the team when he's the one at fault, and he blames himself when it's the team. He wasn't at fault for this team going down three zero in the third game. They didn't give the effort that they needed.
He wasn't at fault for them laying down and staying down.
The lack of effort was embarrassing. Tatum and Brown and Smart and the others. They they either need to be consistently motivated or if they aren't, they're not consistently giving their full effort. It feels very much like the Brad Stevens era, and Missoula didn't get to coach under Popovich like Imeu did. He was a college assistant who got plucked directly by Brad Stevens and then went to the G League and then went to the pros. So you could say, oh, Trista, where were you when Boston started
out eighteen and four? Well, when Missoula won Coach of the month, both in November and December. I get that, but that was Eme's team. Missoula got, you know, like a good class. When they get a good substitute, they get a substitute teacher. Like the bad habits don't restart right away. Missoula got appointed on the eve of training camp. And second of all, the more that Joe Miszula put his stamp on this team, the less they started to win. And once he got thrown up against good coaches, the
cracks could be seen. Quinn Snyder led a far less talented Hawks team to six games in the first round. The bullet was dodged in part because Trey Young played like buns in the first two games. Then Joe lucked out in the coaching against the Sixers with an injured Embiid and the only coach in the playoffs hey get out coach was Doc Rivers. And even still he didn't look great in this series against a very underman Heat team. Was cold water on him because Spolstra is just much better.
He has conducted a masterclass, and Joel has only this to say for it.
Joe, the biggest game of the season, a game you had to have, and you guys just looked completely lost after the first six minutes. What exactly happened out there?
I just didn't have him ready to play.
Within the last forty eight hours.
Yeah, just I just didn't have them ready to play. I should have h whatever it was, whether it was the starting lineup or it was an adjustment, just I have to get them in a better place ready to play. That's not me.
What does that mean? I just didn't have them ready to play? What goes in?
See this is investor investigator Krick then like detective Crick. That comes out like what does that mean? What does it take to get a team ready to play? Like what did you not do this last forty eight hours that you've done in other forty eight hours? Like what do you think you'll do now moving forward to get them ready to play?
What does that mean? It's a must win game.
You're down two oh and both of those losses were at home.
That never happens. And now let's be real.
The Celtics are done and as they're about to exit the playoffs, players are spilling the tea like Malcolm Brogden, the tree shaker, Malcolm Brogen, exposing the flaws in the culture of the Boston Celtics.
I am not shocked.
I think in these playoffs overall, it's it's showing because we're playing a very disciplined, consistent, well coached team. But I think in the Atlanta series, I think in the Philly series, I think we got away with with things that now are are biten us. So you know that that's definitely troubling. I think it's I think it's mainly
on the defensive end. You know, we haven't been consistently great defensively all year long, and that was the team's identity last year, and I think that slipped away from us. We've had spurts where we've been great defensively, but not consistently, and honestly, we've struggled in every series we've played, So you know, now we're playing a team that's playing, you know, as if they're the best team in the league, and.
Pass we've struggled in every round we've played so far. Defense was the identity of this team last year and it is not the identity this year. These were all issues by the way that Joe and the team have denied in the postseason, and they've denied all year, but they were very evident to anyone who watched them play more than a game or two. Celtics insiders are now hinting at toxic issues in the locker room. What does that mean. I need to know what's happening there that's toxic.
Back to the great NBA coaching experiment happening here in Boston. We just have never had the ability to quantify this before. This is the first time we've ever had the opportunity, and I think it's great because now all of the people who are out there on Twitter and on the social media saying that coaching doesn't matter and you can just plug and play Steven Silas in the mix and you're gonna get a championship team if it's composed of championship caliber players.
That is false.
They're playing the same team that they played last year in the Eastern Conference Finals. They have the same roster, and they're actually a little bit better, and they're playing a team that's actually worse. Tells you exactly what you need to know, was hard truths. Coaching matters a lot much more than people want to admit. In the regular season matters not at all. Teams that fight through adversity sometimes come out stronger in the postseason, like the heat.
And also like I don't know Boston in twenty twenty one twenty two when he may uk Doka was in charge. So good job, Joe Mizula.
You're a very important part of history, and we'll see you the fuck later