Doc Brings Up a Good Point About C's

Doc going old school.


http://bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/boston_celtics/2013/01/doc_brings_good_point_about_c’s


WALTHAM — There is such a thing as going back. With Rajon Rondo out for the season, the Celtics have no choice.

The C’s are about to replace their All-Star point guard’s dribbling dominance with more movement and, above all, a lot more passing. Though his remaining guards include Avery Bradley, Courtney Lee, Leandro Barbosa and Jason Terry, coach Doc Rivers wants to drop the term “point guard” from his playbook.

You can’t even refer to what he’s thinking of as a point guard by committee.

“It’s just basketball. There’s no point guard. It’s basketball by committee,” Rivers said before Celtics practice yesterday. “I had some teams in Orlando (when coaching the Magic) — Darrell Armstrong was my point guard, and he’s a little like JET (Terry). Grant Hill brought it up sometimes. We had the year with Grant Hill, Mike Miller and Darrell Armstrong, and whoever brought it up brought it up. It didn’t hurt us at all, we scored a ton of points. We just didn’t have a lot more talent after that.”

The C’s presumably do have more talent, their record notwithstanding.

According to Rivers, NBA history is filled with examples of teams that took a community approach to bringing the ball up and setting up an offense. Rivers mentioned the Dennis Johnson/Danny Ainge backcourt, which is the direction the Celtics took following the departure of Tiny Archibald.

And then there were Michael Jordan’s Bulls.

“Before it didn’t matter — Rondo is bringing the ball up,” Rivers said. “Now you have to really be focused on where their pressure is coming from. Think back to the Bulls with Michael. They had three guys. If we pressured B.J. Armstrong, Michael brought it up. If we pressured Michael, then Scottie (Pippen) brought it up. It’s not that hard to do.

“There really are no different roles. I don’t want a guy to now think he’s Rondo. The only thing that may be different is someone else brings the ball up. That’s it.”

In a pinch, Rivers has also run his offense through Paul Pierce. That may not be as advisable now, with the Celtics captain often struggling to set up his own shot, let alone that of others. The exception was his triple-double in Sunday’s double-overtime win against the Miami Heat, his first since December 2010.

But dipping into some of Pierce’s old point forward role may be inevitable.

“I don’t worry, and we don’t really,” Rivers said. “It turned out that way the other night, but at the end of games I don’t like it. We’ll do that because our guys will naturally throw him the ball. But I don’t think Miami worries about running too much offense through LeBron (James), I don’t think the Lakers worry about running too much offense through Kobe (Bryant). Just go down the list. So why should we worry about running too much through Paul?”

If Rivers’ odd backcourt collection of combo- and 2-guards do their job, he won’t have to worry.

Here’s another old-school idea: the notion of starting a fast break with an outlet pass instead of a Rondo dribble.

“The advance pass. We go back to the old Celtics when Danny and DJ were there, and we just advance with the pass,” Rivers said. “They couldn’t advance it with speed — tell Danny I said that — so they had to use the pass. The pass is faster than the dribble anyway. The key is we actually have to get the ball first. That was the problem with Miami. They got offensive rebounds and they were small and we were small. I thought our small lineup was a better rebounding lineup, and it turned out not to be.

“If we can rebound and make the quick outlet, the right outlet, and then not turning the ball over, we’ll be better.”

Rivers also doesn’t anticipate a problem with his starting lineup, which now includes rookie Jared Sullinger and Lee.

“We should improve (ball and player movement) anyway,” Rivers said. “That part honestly isn’t much different. If you watch our second unit, that’s what they were doing. I don’t see a lot of change there. The first unit was watching what we were doing. It was a no-point-guard system with that unit. It was becoming very successful, and now the entire team is doing it. We did it once with the entire team against Miami, and now we have to get better at it.

“That won’t be a problem for the first unit. I don’t think it’s that big an issue. We work on it and work on it. The thing about the second unit is that they’ve been working on it. The difference is that it will be done full time now.”



bob


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Hurray! It's about time. Having seen the Celtics starting in the late 50s and beyond this kind of BB has always been my favorite. And yes I know they had Bob Cousy, but he was a completely different kettle of fish compared to Rondo.

Berlin,

Actually, he was a completely different OCEAN of fish.

Sam

Sam,
I stand corrected.