The Celtics eliminated the Heat in 7 games on Sunday. The Celtics offense did not perform to the level of expectation, but their defense played spectacular to help them eliminate the Heat. The Celtics starting five has a really good matchup defensively against the Golden State Warriors, so I am really excited to see what this matchup will look like.
Defensively, I think the Celtics have the best half court defense in the entire league. When they are playing the Nets, Bucks, and Heat it is really hard to score on the Celtics in their half court set defense. The Celtics bring up different defense packages when they are playing these three different opponents. Against the Nets, they were bumping Kevin Durant when he didn’t have the ball and forcing him to catch the ball more outside the paint. When he gets the ball the Celtics make sure that there are at least two defenders on him, one ready to contest his shots and the other ready to slap the ball away from him. This eliminates him to only 38% FG and averaging 5.3 turnovers a game. When they were playing the Bucks, besides game 1 they were doubling Giannis Antetokounmpo, the rest of the series they singled him with Grant Williams and Al Horfort and not allowing the Buck’s shooters to have wide open threes. When the Bucks are in transition, they set up a wall in front of Giannis very fast to make sure Giannas can not get any easy fast break buckets. The Heat’s offense is not as explosive as the other two opponents they faced, but the Celtics make sure they contest every three point opportunity that the Heat have because the Heat has the best three point shooting percentage in the regular season. The Warriors offense is not like any of these teams. They rely on a lot of off ball screens to set up open shots. The Celtics will need to have great communication on the field on how they are going to face these off ball screens. If the Celtics could slow down these screens and force the Warriors to take contested shots, their defense will be in good shape.
Offensively, what the Celtics need to do is take care of the ball. Just like I said, their half court defense is good enough to slow down any opponents, but if their offense keeps turning the ball over it will be really hard for them to slow down their opponents. The Celtics offense relies on a lot of isolation. They proved that their method would work during a shootout game. When Giannis and Jimmy Butler were heating up in late game situations, the super star of the Celtics also stepped up as well. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum both played really good against the Heat in close games. They were able to match their opponents scoring abilities and sometimes even outperformed. The other thing that I saw the Celtics are not having success with is trying to pass the ball inside the paint. A lot of turnovers come from when they are trying to pass the ball into the paint. What I think they did better is drive inside, pull the help defender in and pass the ball outside to their shooter. The Warriors defense has a lot of rotation to try to prevent them letting Stephen Curry defend the opponent’s most dynamic scorer. I think the Celtics should not waste too much time on trying to attack Curry like the Mavericks did. It is really hard to get the switch on Curry and even if they do, the shot clock would be less than 8 seconds. The Celtics won’t have enough time to execute their plays with 8 on the shot clock and this well leads to bad shot selections.
We all know that the Golden State Warriors have one of the most explosive offenses in the entire NBA. The games are often decided within 5 minutes when the Warriors are playing. It will be impossible for the Celtics defense to stop the Warriors every game, so it will be really important for their offense to step up and match the Warrior’s scoring ability. The first thing they will have to do is not turn the ball over and lose possessions. Second, their defense will need to play physical, but not fouling to prevent Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson getting into their rhythm because if they do, the game will be over in 5 minutes or even less.