Boston Celtics slowly becoming what Ime Udoka had envisioned

https://www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2022/02/06/boston-celtics-slowly-becoming-what-ime-udoka-had-envisioned


John Karalis

This is why they brought in Ime Udoka.

Brad Stevens saw in Udoka a coach with the cachet to pull together the plan he saw slip away. Udoka and Stevens shared the same vision for winning basketball: a vicious defense and relentless ball movement that can make up for whatever deficiencies existed on the roster.

Basically, if a team defends and passes well enough, they can find enough offense to win games because the other team won’t be able to score.

It took a while to get here, but here they are.

“This is kind of what we envisioned,” Udoka said after blowing out the Magic. “It's coming to fruition now that we have some consistency with our lineups.”

This is very much still a work in progress, but progress is definitely being made. Credit the players for doing the work, but credit Udoka for demanding it of them. He challenged Jayson Tatum to be a better playmaker for his teammates, and after a November and December averaging less than four assists per game, he dropped 4.6 per game in January and now 5.7 in three February games.

In fact, the team’s assist percentage as a whole has followed the same trend. It was 57.5% in October and November, but has since jumped to 60.4% and 66.9% in December and January. In the small sample of February, Boston’s 66.9% assist percentage is sixth-best in the NBA and only 2% from the top.

“Obviously we got two guys that can really score in isolation but we don't always don't depend on that,” Udoka said. “At times early in the year it's habits, and we want that to be a piece of who they are and what they do, but also add to that and be more versatile offensively. And so, you're starting to see that. Guys are trusting each other, finding each other, and enjoying playing together. So when you get that mix of transition, pace, isolations, pick and roll, post ups, and all the things we can do and an off ball unselfishness, I think that's where you've seen us grow offensively.”

Even though things are trending in the right direction, the Celtics are still a middle-of-the-pack team overall on offense. The good news there is that they spent a big chunk of the beginning of the season as one of the worst offenses in the league, so them just moving up to “competent” is a big step.

But average offense is okay for now because their defense has been elite. Boston’s starting lineup is uniquely able to switch everything without any obvious weak spots. The starting lineup of Tatum, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Al Horford and Robert Williams currently boasts a defensive rating of 89.8, best in the NBA with 100 minutes or more on the floor together. They're also the league’s 12th best offensive lineup, giving them a net rating of 25.2.

If an opponent downsizes and Boston subs Josh Richardson in for Horford, that lineup has a defensive rating of 98.9 and an offensive rating of 125, giving them a net rating of 26.1 (in 45 minutes on the floor together).

“We're living up to our identity,” Brown said. “We talk about it coming out to jump out with the right intention early and not give teams hope, or make it tough on them from the get-go. Obviously when you hold somebody to 15 in the first quarter and 13 or whatever it was last game, obviously you're coming out with the right mental focus and locked in on your job.”

Udoka has always preached defense first, and so Boston’s early defensive failures were always especially problematic. The early over-emphasis on switching led to hiccups that the team had to ride through, and the constantly changing lineups due to injuries or COVID made getting to this level extraordinarily time-consuming.

But Udoka always knew that whenever the team was able to come together, they’d click on that end of the floor.

“Yeah, defensively. You're always going to be ahead somewhat there,” he said. “When you look at our personnel, it's what we're capable of with the size and the versatility and no real weakness defensively with our first unit, even with guys coming off our bench.”

It has taken them a lot longer than they wanted, but we’re starting to see what the fully-realized Celtics can look like.

It’s sort of been like trying to bake a cake in a broken oven. The ingredients are there but when the environment isn’t quite right, it’s just going to be a pile of batter. Now that there's some heat, this thing is starting to rise. It’s not ready yet, but you look at it and see where it’s heading.

"I would say before the season I think that, the way our team was structured, we had a defensive group,” Brown said. “We had a lot of guys who made names for themselves on the defensive side of the basketball. I think this is what we imagined when we all started. So we just gotta continue to take it one game at a time and keep it up."

bobheckler wrote:


Bob
MY NOTE:  This is Ime's presser after the Magic blowout on 2/6/22.

This is a great idea for a thread, Shamrock.  We have separate threads for the players, how they play and what they're thinking, but not one for the coach who is the one doing most of the thinking, and it is long overdue.


.

It is a great idea, but I can't take credit. I just posted an article, you came up with great idea.

Yes, I never saw passing like that in years. IME was the guy to break the players. Stevens lost the team several years ago and the rot started to to infest the team.

Red would never have tolerated it and let it go beyond a year, the player or players would be gone!

IME is a no nonsense guy who I think behind the scenes takes no shoot from the players!

112288

112288