Boston Celtics get creative with defense-first practice that gave players ‘nowhere to hide’

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2019/03/boston-celtics-get-creative-with-defense-first-practice-that-gave-players-nowhere-to-hide.html




Boston Celtics get creative with defense-first practice that gave players ‘nowhere to hide’



Updated 3:50 PM; Today 3:17 PM





Cleveland Cavaliers' Larry Nance Jr., right, drives around Boston Celtics' Daniel Theis in the first half of an NBA basketball game, Tuesday, March 26, 2019, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)



By John Karalis | JKaralis@masslive.com



BOSTON -- Anyone just back from an five-month, wifi-less vacation would scroll through the NBA’s statistical leaders and be impressed with the Boston Celtics holding the league’s fifth-best defensive rating. Combine that with the 10th-best offensive rating and said vacationer might assume these Celtics have been plugging along at a fairly impressive pace.

We know that’s not true, though. Since February 1, Boston’s has the 19th-ranked defense in the NBA. It’s 20th since the beginning of March, and 25th over the past five games.

That’s some serious slippage, and fixing that has become priority numbers one, two, and three for the Celtics, who spent today at the team’s practice facility breaking down into small groups to put a hyper-focus on fixing the issue.

“We went hard in small groups, with our first group. We’ll do the exact same workout with the second group,” Brad Stevens said in between sessions. “We did that so that guys get more reps and we can really hone in on a few things that we need to do to get better, and we can go live because -- if we did that tomorrow, it probably wouldn’t be good with a Friday, Saturday game.”

“Something we have to bring in order to have any kind of chance,” Al Horford said after he was finished. “We have seven games, and this is a great chance to start showing that, because these games are going to be playoff types.”

“We’re just gonna keep harping on it and working on it,” Stevens said. “Today is a tremendous day to get a chance to hammer down some details and really hone in on what we need to do and get better at. When you’re in small groups there’s nowhere to hide, so that’s good, too. If we do, we’ll have a good team and have a chance. But if we don’t, we won’t. That’s the bottom line.”


“Lot of the defensive principles, reviewing them.” Horford said. “Now that the playoffs are near just making sure that everyone understands what we need to do. This is the time everyone starts tightening up all those little things on the defensive end, and the focus today was as good as it’s been, so I was happy to see that.”

Everything is connected in basketball. Good offense tends lead to good defense because guys are energized and they want to work hard to get the ball back. It also works the other way too. When guys are struggling with their shots, great defense is a good way to get into an offensive rhythm.

“I think it starts defensively for us. I think we have to find our rhythm on that end and that just means executing what we want to do and being a little more sharp with some of that execution, kind of executing the schemes that we have in place," Gordon Hayward said. “If we do that, we can get out and run and get some easy looks for ourselves and usually when you get some easy looks you get a little pep in your step, a little bounce, you’re not playing against a half-court defense and that helps you get going a little bit. For us it’s all about defense, we gotta get back to that.”


Boston started playing around with new lineups last night in an effort to fix that. Aaron Baynes started the game as Brad Stevens went to a more traditional, “double-big" lineup. It’s not the fix, but it’s an option that has worked well in the past. The problem is injuries to Horford and Baynes have limited that option this year.

“Once all those guys get off minutes restrictions, it will be a lot easier,” Stevens said. “We’d like to play big more, but we’re going to play ultimately, we’re going to match up and go into each game with what we think is the best way to compete.”

Boston has a short amount of time to get a lot of work in and fix what used to be the team’s greatest strength. Some better luck with health will surely help the team, but so will days like this to break things down to the finer details so they can put them into practice over the final eight games of the season.

“We got a bunch of big challenges coming up,” Stevens said. “Every team we play the rest of the way has a lot riding on every game. It’ll be great because it prepares you for the desperation of the postseason.”



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