Film Study: How Al Horford and Boston Celtics shut down Kristaps Porzingis

http://celticswire.com/2017/10/25/film-study-how-al-horford-and-boston-celtics-shut-down-kristaps-porzingis/




Film Study: How Al Horford and Boston Celtics shut down Kristaps Porzingis










By: Jared Weiss | 12 hours ago





Boston has faced several matchup nightmares in their first week of the season. LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo fashioned crown jewels to their MVP campaigns against a Boston defense coping with the immediacy of the loss of Gordon Hayward.


Then they found their footing and pushed Joel Embiid to one of the stalest performances of his career. On Tuesday, Al Horford led a brigade of Celtics defenders who completely removed Kristaps Porzingis from any semblance of his dominant capability.


Porzingis shot 0-for-10 when covered by Horford or Aron Baynes, as the Knicks were buried by the Celtics 110-89 and Porzingis finished with just 12 points in 32 minutes.


The issues begin with execution, as New York struggles to find Porzingis easy looks. Former Celtic and current Knick Courtney Lee said after the game that some players didn’t know the plays and need to pay more attention in practice. It became apparent when KP constantly found himself going one-on-one with few options to bail out.

https://streamable.com/8rskr



Spacing around Porzingis was a mess, with Tim Hardaway, Jr. often too close to the point that his defender could loose double onto Porzingis. This helped make Horford’s life much easier, cutting off driving lanes for Kristaps and limiting him to pull-ups that Horford can contest effectively.

https://streamable.com/82hdm



Hardaway, ironically, voiced frustration with what was wrong with the Knicks’ offense after the game, as relayed by ESPN’s Ian Begley.

“Everything. Nothing – couldn’t get anything offensively. We’re all out there just running like we don’t know what’s going on. It can’t happen.
“You guys see it out there. It’s no secret. We’re turning the ball over, lackadaisical out there. Nothing seems crisp really. I mean, yeah, that comes with not really that much experience all together, like all these other teams. But at the same time we can control what we can control, that’s keeping the ball in our hands and executing properly.”

But when Horford was put to the test, he excelled. Horford has the unique combination of length, power and agility to keep up with Porzingis, while still being able to get a hand near the ball on the 7’3 behemoth’s shots. Horford maintains a low center of gravity and has the balance of a much smaller player, able to change direction and accelerate to stay in the play.

“He’s a guy that you really have to make sure you stay locked in with,” Horford said of Porzingis. “He’s just really dangerous and he can go in easily. I think we did a good job of really chasing him on everything, contesting all his shots. I feel like we really did a good job with the game plan, what coach wanted us to do with him.

https://streamable.com/k0giw


Porzingis threw everything at Horford on this play in the first quarter. The Knicks run a box set on the baseline inbound, faking a short pass to Ron Baker to open up a deep inbound to Porzingis behind the arc. The design of this play is to get Porzingis an easy blow by on Horford, collapse the paint and either get to the rim or hit the corner shooter on the weak side to set up a swing to the top for an open look. But Horford sniffs the whole thing out.

The first step is avoiding the inevitable cross screen from Kyle O’Quinn. Horford sees this coming when O’Quinn whiffs on a back screen on the first action and comes over for the cross screen to free up KP. Al is faced with a conundrum, as he has to go under the screen while staying close enough to KP to catch him at the three-point line and prevent a pull-up three. Horford’s veteran savvy is oozing here, as he grabs KP’s jersey to keep him close and slips around the moving screen.



In a matter of four steps in one second, he steps around the screen, turns 90 degrees when Porzingis flares to the top of the key, reaches to deflect the pass, then resets into his stance balanced in front of Porzingis. The number of bigs who can navigate all of this whittles down from a few dozen at the beginning of the play to maybe a handful. But when Porzingis drives left and Horford manages to reverse his momentum backwards, catch up to Porzingis and smother his floater, the count may not get past one hand.

“A lot of names get thrown around, rightfully so, in the defensive talk around the league,” Stevens said. “I mean, there’s a lot of really good defenders, but Al’s up there, and doesn’t always get mentioned, and that’s okay with Al. I mean, I think that he’s kind of proven that he’s okay with just contributing to winning and whether he gets talked about or not.”

Enes Kanter had a big game offensively, picking up the scraps of a discombobulated Knicks offense with 19 rebounds (nine offensive) and 16 points. The Knicks game plan had Kanter either setting down screens in the midrange area or fighting Aron Baynes under the net for position. It worked in getting him second chance opportunities and the occasional dump down, but it made stopping Porzingis even easier.

When Horford had to switch off of Porzingis and a guard or wing had to – try to – switch on, Baynes could rotate over and go vertical. Baynes is not a good shot blocker, but he’s tremendous when he can rotate early and go straight up, a barrel chest that is all of Australia.
Even when Porzingis could catch a switch onto Jaylen Brown, Kanter’s flooding the lane allowed Baynes to rotate over and force a difficult fade away. Brown struggles to guard power players in the post, but he has the length to bother a finesse player like Porzingis.

Boston was able to survive the switches off of Horford because of Baynes’ limited heat map covering Kanter, but it was Horford who had to carry the mantle the length of the game.

“[Horford] was great on (Ben) Simmons on Friday, he was unbelievable tonight on Porzingis, and it’s not just that,” Stevens said. “The way that we were guarding Porzingis, we had a lot of guards switching onto him and doing different things, and I thought that both Al and then, for the few minutes that Semi (Ojeleye) was in the game on him, they both provided a good lift in that regard.”

The scheme was strong, but the generational capability of Horford is what truly shut KP down. Kristaps Porzingis took seven shots being guarded by Al Horford Tuesday.

He missed them all.



bob



.

I'd think that Morris would match up with him well too.

Even with the "Master of Disaster", Phil Jackson gone, the Knicks still appear to be a mess. It may take more time than their fans want for them to be able to turn it around.

Porzingis had an off night yesterday (we would still love him in a Cs uniform), but a much bigger issue for them is the mess that Hardaway mentions. If Hardaway is correct, players not knowing where to be on the court reflects very poorly on the head coach and his staff. A few more losses and they, too, may be looking for a new coach.

The old "New York minute" concept may apply to coaches who have a team looking so poorly this early in the season.