Eastern Conference Finals Discussion - Cleveland vs. Boston

Stevens 2
LeLue 1

Series on script so far....
lets see what Celts do game 4, life on the road has to change b4 the most important game 5
 
You guys are probably right about this series going to distance.

Boston in these playoffs won 1 game on the road thus far.

NBA execs and higher ups going to want this series to go 7, shoot if they can make it go 8-9 games they probably would! Money money moneyyyyyy... lets get it!
 
Game 4 will be interesting to see if Boston can slow up the pace the Cavs set... That was some actual solid coaching by Lue to push it more.
 
This forum knows Scott Foster's history, but this should be posted in the game forum every time he is listed to ref.


Retburj13 said:
Game Official 1 Official 2 Official 3 Alternate Boston @ ClevelandScott Foster (#48)Bill Kennedy (#55)Eric Lewis (#42)David Guthrie (#16)


on C's +7
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http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3684129
Foster's name came up in a FoxNews.com report in July, which indicated he and Donaghy exchanged 304 phone calls between December 2006 and April 2007, raising suspicions he was involved with Donaghy. He said he has known Donaghy for 17 years and they talked frequently once they both joined the NBA officiating corps. Donaghy is the godfather to one of Foster's three children.
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http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/06/...y-phone-calls-refereeing-celtics-heat-game-3/
Donaghy’s calls to Foster took place immediately before and after games Donaghy was officiating 54 times.
The initial report showed the following call log from the day of Dec. 30, 2006:
10:34 a.m. – Donaghy calls Foster.
10:35 a.m. – Donaghy calls another referee.
10:36 a.m. – Donaghy calls [Thomas] Martino, the “middleman” between him and his bookie.
10:39 a.m. – Donaghy calls Foster.
5:15 p.m. – Donaghy calls Martino.
5:23 p.m. – Donaghy calls Martino.
7 p.m. – Donaghy referees game between the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic. The Magic win in a rout, 97-68.
8 p.m. – Foster referees a game between the Toronto Raptors and the Memphis Grizzlies in Memphis. The Grizzlies win 110-104. Foster and Donaghy speak 12 minutes after the game.
11:27 p.m. – Foster and Donaghy speak for at least the fourth time of the day.
11:38 p.m. – Foster and Donaghy speak for at least the fifth time of the day.​
The records also showed Donaghy making several calls to Foster on the days of games, generally for no more than two minutes.
The report also said that when Donaghy called Foster, he mostly used the phone that he dedicated to gambling-related phone calls, and the phone calls stopped abruptly when Donaghy said he stopped gambling.

“The only thing I’d say is that I love being an NBA referee,” Foster said in November 2008 while trying to clear his name. “What’s happened over the last 18 months hasn’t been fair.”

Foster insisted the numerous, short calls were just friendly conversations, and that betting was never a topic they discussed.
“It’s not atypical for officials to play phone tag from time to time,” Foster told Sports Illustrated. “Just today I’ve talked to two refs twice and two refs once. We go back and forth. I get to the airport and I’m in the security line, I’d give him a call. I’d be watching SportsCenter, I’d give him a call. It’s constant water-cooler chatter. That’s how we work out here. You have one or two buddies who you bounce things off of and share experiences with.
“I made a list of things [Donaghy and I] could have been talking about. It was about 45 things. It could be a family thing or who was hotter, Betty or Wilma.”
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https://twitter.com/x/status/951329787003527168
 
https://985thesportshub.com/2018/05/21/celtics-cavs-game-4-referees-scott-foster/
Home teams were 38-23 in the regular season in games officiated by Foster, and have been 6-2 in the playoffs so far. However, personal foul calls have been a virtual tie for Foster, with an average of 21.9 calls in favor of the road team compared to 21.0 for home teams.

Kennedy's numbers suggest an even stronger tilt toward the home team. They are 5-0 so far in the playoffs in Kennedy-officiated games, with 19.8 average personal fouls called against them compared to 22.0 for road squads. As for Lewis, home teams are 5-1 in playoff games officiated by him this season.
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http://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/05/21/referee-scott-foster-celtics-cavaliers-game-4/
Unlike in that game against Philadelphia, though, Foster will not be joined by Tony Brothers. Instead, the Celtics-Cavs Game 4 officiating crew will be rounded out by Bill Kennedy and Eric Lewis, with David Guthrie standing by as the alternate.

Road teams have actually fared well with Foster officiating this postseason, going 3-2 thus far. However, in games that took place after Game 1 of a series, the team losing in the series has gone 4-0 in games officiated by Foster.

Miami won Game 2 against Philadelphia after dropping Game 1,
Utah beat Houston in Game 2 after losing Game 1,
New Orleans beat Golden State in Game 3 after falling behind in the series 2-0,
and the 76ers won the aforementioned Game 4 vs. Boston after falling behind 3-0 in the series.
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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-cavs-live-and-die-by-the-three/

MAY 17, 2018 AT 10:29 AM

The Cavs Live And Die By The Three
And against the Celtics so far, they’ve been dying.
By Neil Paine
Filed under NBA Playoffs
More than any other team in the league, Cleveland relies on 3-point shooters like Kevin Love to win games.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have plenty of problems right now, and many of them concern their struggles on defense. Through two games in these Eastern Conference finals — both losses — they’re allowing 112.8 points per 100 possessions against a Boston Celtics team that averaged only 105.2 during the regular season (according to Advanced NBA Stats).1 They’ve been torched by Jaylen Brown (who’s scored 23 each game) and they have no answer for the threat Al Horford poses from both the inside and outside.

But the Cavs being inept on defense is not really breaking news. They’ve ranked among the league’s worst at that end of the floor all season. Instead, they win games with their offense, and not just because LeBron James can decide to take over games whenever he wants (although that helps). More than perhaps any other team in the NBA, the Cavs’ fortunes rise and fall based on how well they knock down shots from the perimeter. And they’d better heat up soon against the Celtics, or their bid for a fourth consecutive East title will clang harmlessly off the rim like so many of their 3-point shots.

The playoffs have helped crystallize the Cavaliers’ reputation as a team that lives and dies by its shooting. This is, after all, the same group who struggled to get past the Indiana Pacers while making only 32 percent of their 3-pointers, then turned around and hit 41 percent from deep while steamrolling the Raptors a week later. Even during the regular season, though, Cleveland was unusually dependent on the hotness of its shooting hand: In wins, the Cavs made threes at a 41 percent clip, versus just 31 percent in losses — a 10-percentage-point gap that was the biggest in the league. And that regular-season gap has only widened, to nearly 11 percentage points, during the playoffs.

Every team shoots better in wins than losses; making shots is kind of the point of the game, after all. But some teams can get by during poor shooting nights more readily than others. The Minnesota Timberwolves, for instance, were as good on offense as the Cavs this season, but they had the league’s third-smallest difference between their 3-point percentage in wins and losses (3 percentage points) because they didn’t really rely on threes for a strong offensive performance.2 For the Cavs, though, threes are the leading indicator of their overall health as a team. Here are the correlations between various metrics and Cleveland’s efficiency margin in each game this season:

https://imgur.com/BmakFAO

By far the statistic that tracked most closely with the Cavaliers’ overall efficiency in any given game was their 3-point percentage, which had a correlation coefficient of 0.58. (By comparison, the correlation between the Warriors’ 3-point percentage and their efficiency margin was 0.44; for the Rockets, the correlation was 0.38; and for the Celtics, it was 0.28.)

Now, it is fair to ask which direction the causation goes here. The Cavs’ offense is mainly predicated on LeBron James coming off a ball screen and either creating for himself or finding the open man when the opponent brings help. And certainly James himself has taken on a huge percentage of Cleveland’s 3-point shooting load. So maybe the Cavs are simply getting better looks because the rest of their offense — i.e., LeBron — is functioning at a higher level. (For example, the Cavs have shot a very healthy 20-for-32 on passes from James in the Eastern Conference Finals so far.)

But if LeBron is generating more open shots only in games where the Cavs are rolling, it’s not showing up in the numbers. According to Second Spectrum’s Quantified Shot Quality metric (which calculates an expected shooting percentage for each shot based on its difficulty), Cleveland doesn’t tend to get better deep looks in its good games than its bad ones. In wins during the playoffs, the Cavs have an expected effective field goal percentageof 52.4 percent on 3-pointers; in losses, that number barely drops, to 52.0 percent. Instead, it’s Cleveland’s ability to capitalize on those 3-pointers that has varied wildly: from an eFG% 4.4 points higher than expected in postseason wins to one 10.6 points lower than expected in losses.

Game 2 against Boston was a great case study of Cleveland’s Jekyll-and-Hyde shooting tendencies. In the first half, the Cavs built a 7-point lead while going 7-for-14 (50 percent) from deep; in the second half, they watched that lead slip away as they shot a dismal 3-for-17 (18 percent) from beyond the arc. Their shot quality on threes (again according to Second Spectrum) declined by 2.1 points of expected eFG% between halves, so the Celtics did a better job of challenging the Cavs’ shooters as the game went on.3 But a far bigger factor in Cleveland’s decline was its massive 35-point drop in eFG% versus expected — in other words, the kind of streaky variance that can’t be explained by shot quality alone.

And what does explain it? Maybe the Cavs shoot so many threes — they’re third in the playoffs in attempts per game — that they’re bound to run up stretches of good- and bad-shooting games like this. Or maybe they’re just collectively trying to provide further evidence that the hot hand really does exist. Whatever the explanation, Cleveland has to hope that its shooting starts fluctuating in the opposite direction, and fast. Because not even James, with his 42 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in Game 2, could keep the Cavs from digging themselves a deeper hole in this series.

We’ve seen the Cavaliers brush off these kinds of cold shooting performances in the past, burying opponents under an onslaught of threesthat can make you wonder how they ever got cold in the first place. But that’s also the point: Cleveland needs a sustained 3-point resurgence if it’s going to claw its way back against the Celtics. As crucial as LeBron’s production is to the Cavs, it might be just as important for his teammates to step up and knock down their shots when they get the chance.
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I'm not caught up in the talk of the Cavs taking this thing over. I think this is going to be a home-based series all the way thru Game 7. Celtics much more comfortable in the Garden and don't miss all those gimmes, etc. in Boston.

Sign me up for Boston as a PK tomorrow night. I still trust Stevens, mightily.
 
I would not trust this C's roster in Game 7 vs LeBron.

C's need to win in 6 if they're gonna win this series.

Basically if they lose Game 5, it's over.
 
emkee said:
I would not trust this C's roster in Game 7 vs LeBron.

C's need to win in 6 if they're gonna win this series.

Basically if they lose Game 5, it's over.
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Agree... I believe we will see Celts win Game 5 and Cavs win the series in 7 games. Celts had a chance last night, but missed some huge momentum changing shots...
 
divol said:
Agree... I believe we will see Celts win Game 5 and Cavs win the series in 7 games. Celts had a chance last night, but missed some huge momentum changing shots...
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I will be on Cavs again tomorrow, and if they should lose then and force a G7, I would play that game accordingly. They will get 1 of the games in Boston.
 
Straight-up trade of Kyrie for Kawhi and the C's would win the East and actually challenge the Dubs in the Finals.

Until then....
 
When Boston went up 2-0 and the memes and pics came out in this thread, I hope it doesn’t come back as the ultimate jinx. C’mon Boston, get it done.
 
I wish I knew how the refs are going to call this game. I like UNDER but would be pissed on a foul fest game like the last one.
 
gonna rock my Reggie Lewis jersy tonite at the Gahden

taking C's ML

giphy.gif
 
Home court has been huge this series. Anybody think Celtics can take it, or at least cover the spread?

I think the best thing to do is just keep taking the home team in this series.
 
Got +165 on C's series before tonight, might just take the same on Cavs and call it a day. Celts aren't winning in Cleveland
 
LeBron James in elimination games
-- 12-9 record overall; 3-2 record vs. Celtics
-- 33.5 PPG, 10.8 RPG, 7.3 APG, 49 FG%, 34 3P%
-- Since 2014 return to Cleveland: 36.9 PPG, 12 RPG, 9.1 APG
 
Frank Costanza said:
I'm not caught up in the talk of the Cavs taking this thing over. I think this is going to be a home-based series all the way thru Game 7. Celtics much more comfortable in the Garden and don't miss all those gimmes, etc. in Boston.

Sign me up for Boston as a PK tomorrow night. I still trust Stevens, mightily.
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Series ain't changing its stripes. Cleveland in game 6, Boston in game 7.
 
Kyle Korver curiously only played 19 minutes in the Celtics’ 96-83 Game 5 win over the Cavs, even though he scored 14 points on 4-for-7 shooting in Cleveland’s decisive Game 4 victory. Even more amazingly, Korver didn’t check into the contest until the start of the second quarter, when the Cavaliers were already trailing by 13. He was also pinned to the bench during the third period.
Korver finished the night with seven points on 2-for-6 shooting.
When asked about Korver’s abbreviated playing time, Lue said the Celtics messed up his plan, because guard Semi Ojeleye wasn’t on the court.
Huh?
"Well, initially, (Stevens has) been putting Ojeleye in,” Lue said, per ESPN. “So that's been kind of Kyle's matchup when he comes in the game. He didn't play him tonight, so it kind of threw us for a loop.”
While that explanation makes no sense on its own, it looks even worse once you dig deeper into Korver’s matchups this series. Entering Wednesday, Korver had played 90 minutes through four games. Only 31 of those minutes came when Ojeleye was on the court.
The Cavaliers desperately needed offense Wednesday. Yet, the player who’s made the fourth-most three-pointers in league history spent way more time on the bench than the floor. And it’s all because one of the Celtics’ backup guards didn’t check into the game.
Not only is LeBron James tasked with carrying his teammates, but he has to carry his coach. No wonder he’s exhausted.
 
ESPN had article on Kyle Kover losing his youngest brother back in mid March. He’s played pretty well in playoffs given he’s very close to his brother. Totally different teams on court last night.
 
Lebron playing all 82 games in the regular season is taking a toll finally. Just like the Warriors when we played to get the best regular season record with 73 wins, it hurt them in the playoffs late.
 
KJ said:
Remember the elimination under, bet this is a shitshow
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i did take that into account but Cavs and defense is like Lue and coaching, doesn't exist
Cavs and jaintors should be better, Bron is home and his side piece should recharge him and so long as Celts shoot decent, should go be ok:fingerscrossed:
 
Think the season catches up to Cleveland tonight. This is the 3rd in 5 after that mini vacation and g4 wasn’t easy. Raptors were poised to destroy a Cavs team in a similar test situation in Game 1 and conceded the series and a 20 point lead.
 
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