Five ways C's can fix brutal crunch-time playoff woes

https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/what-celtics-can-do-next-season-improve-brutal-crunch-time-performance?int


MY NOTE:  Posting this a week or so late, but still relevant to way forward...


Five ways C's can fix brutal crunch-time playoff woes


SEP 30, 2020


BY CHRIS FORSBERG
CELTICS INSIDER



Maybe it’s fitting that the Boston Celtics’ season ended in full on crash-and-burn mode during the final minutes of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The Celtics were up six with under nine minutes to play but, with their season in the balance, went into panic mode while Miami rallied back to tie the game. Instead of working to generate good shots, the Celtics settled for a string of contested 3-pointers, all while Miami turned those misses into transition opportunities and the Heat’s lead snowballed to double figures in the blink of an eye.

Just like that, the Celtics season was over.

The sequence accentuated maybe the most troubling part of Boston’s playoff stay: The Celtics routinely wilted in crunch time against quality opponents and an inability to catch themselves whenever things went sideways ultimately delivered their demise.

Consider this: Starting with Game 3 of the Raptors series, the Celtics played nine crunch-time qualifying games with the score within 5 points in the final 5 minutes of play. Boston was 2-7 in those games with a net rating of minus-26.7 in nearly a full game worth of crunch-time play (42 total minutes).

Boston’s offensive rating in that span was a ghastly 92.1. Its defensive rating was an unsightly 118.8. The Celtics simply were not a championship-worthy team when the lights were the brightest.


Brick the Landing

Celtics' crunch time three-point shooting percentage during the regular season.
36.4%

Celtics' crunch time three-point shooting percentage during the playoffs.
17.2%

In the immediate aftermath of their disappointing exit, the Celtics didn’t have many answers for why they so routinely came unglued. Most players punted on trying to identify the root of their crunch-time struggles. Boston coughed up double-digit leads in Games 1 and 2 of the series and, when Miami dominated the late-game moments, it put the Celtics in an 0-2 hole that essentially forced them to be perfect the rest of the way.

“We gotta grow. We’re going to have to figure out how to win those games down the stretch,” Kemba Walker said after Boston’s Game 6 loss. "But we got time. We’re about to be outta here but, at some point, we’re going to look back at this and just learn. It’s all learning experiences.”

Every great team knows how to close games and understands what players should have the ball in their hands in those instances. The Celtics too often seemed to lack a confidence in those moments and that wasn’t exactly a new issue in the postseason.

In 42 crunch-time games during the regular season, Boston had a modest 23-19 record, the 12th best winning percentage in the NBA. Their net rating was plus-4.4 in those games, also ranking 12th out of 30 teams.

Boston was able to maintain a similar net rating in the conference semifinals against Toronto, in part because of their defensive efforts against the Raptors. But the wheels came off completely in the East finals.



The Celtics were 6-7 in crunch-time games overall during the playoffs, but three of those wins came against the wayward 76ers during a first-round sweep. Outside of Walker, Boston’s core players really struggled to consistently score the ball in crunch-time situations during the postseason. Take away Walker and the Celtics were 23 of 64 shooting (.360) and 3 of 22 on 3-pointers (13.6 percent) during those crunch-time moments.


So how can Boston improve? A few thoughts:


PLAY DEFENSE

As poor as Boston’s shot selection tended to be in crunch time during the postseason, much of the team's troubles started on the defensive end. Instead of clamping down like they so often did in the Toronto series, the Celtics watched Miami consistently generate points and that put even more pressure on Boston to answer.

The Celtics can weather rough late-game offense with stops, particularly if they can aid transition opportunities. But when this team was taking the ball out of the basket frequently in the conference finals, it had no chance.


STICK TO THE GAME PLAN

Part of what makes the Boston offense so good is that the team has multiple threats and the Celtics put a heavy emphasis on moving the ball and finding the best shot. Boston too often gets away from what works, especially as leads are slipping away.

The 3-point barrage at the end of Game 6 ran counter to coach Brad Stevens’ series-long plea to attack the basket. Instead of getting back to basics when things go sideways, these Celtics too often resort to isolation-heavy hero ball and that’s far from the strength of this team.


ESTABLISH A LATE-GAME HIERARCHY

As much as the Celtics rely on an offensive democracy, there also has to be a clear-cut pecking order in terms of who the Celtics are trying to get the ball to in crunch-time situations. Marcus Smart took the same amount of shots (6) in the fourth quarter of Game 6 as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

With the season on the line, the Celtics would probably prefer their young duo (and Walker, who had a team-high 7 fourth-quarter shots) get those looks. Smart should be trying to make his impact on the defensive end.


FIND THE RIGHT CLOSING LINEUP

If Gordon Hayward had been closer to full health then maybe Boston’s “Best 5” center-less lineup could have been more effective in crunch time at the finish line of the season. But that lineup struggled much of the season and the Celtics simply have to balance whether it’s better to have a big like Theis out there to at least create a threat around the basket while allowing Tatum and Walker to be the clear-cut offensive focal points.


BE TOUGHER, MENTALLY (AND PHYSICALLY, TOO)

The Celtics simply didn’t respond well this postseason when they hit turbulence. Maybe Stevens needs to be quicker with timeouts and find a way to steady his group before things snowball. Celtics players have to be able to brush off bad possessions and not let misses impact their effort at the other end of the floor.

When teams push them, they need to push back. The Celtics seemingly have the personnel to thrive and yet they rarely did this postseason. Ultimately, the team needs to let the disappointment of what happened against Miami fuel them to be that much more focused in crunch-time games moving forward.


bob
MY NOTE:  It's not my job to decide what we should read or not read, I just post everything that isn't obvious complete garbage, let you make your own decisions and sometimes add some thoughts of my own at the end so as to not interfere with your thought processes before you're done reading.  Having said that I am surprised to read such a bunch of banal tripe from Forsberg, who is normally fairly insightful.  This reads like hospital food tastes.  "Play defense"?  No, really?!  "Establish a late-game offensive hierarchy"?  What a shocking thought!  "Be tougher mentally"?  What a novel idea.  Freaking duh.  

My points:

1.  Play better perimeter defense.  We allowed Miami players like Herro and Butler to come off of screens at the arc and penetrate.  Once that happened, and our baseline defender rotated to pick them up, Bam got a free run at the rim and a likely dunk.  If you're going to switch on high screen-and-rolls then do it with conviction and drive the ball back above the key, if possible, but certainly above the frito line.  Don't get caught in no-man's land mid-paint, then you're toast because your man is already rolling.

2.  Take open 3s, but create them with movement.  We were giving the ball to Tatum just over half court and letting him go one-on-one.  That not only took the shot clock down it also made it easy for the defense to prioritize itself.  We have all those shooters for a reason, and it isn't so that 3/4 of them can be decoys.  This could have/should have been corrected with the return of Hayward, but he didn't have a good EC Finals series.  It also could have/should have been corrected by a Kemba who used his speed to force the defense to move and then dish.  Ditto.  Instead it was Tatum who was doing it because they started overplaying him when he had the ball, which was on a ridiculously high percentage of our crunch time possessions.

3.  A late game hierarchy should be that the open man takes the shot.  Our lack of ball movement and of players moving off-the-ball screwed this up.  Any player who cannot hit an open shot is either out of position or shouldn't be on the floor.

4.  Our best closing 5 is/will be match up based.  That's because we have the luxury of having 4 players who can matchup with anybody who is not a big and our center is the pivoting piece in the puzzle.  If we upgrade that position, question answered and problem solved.
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5.  The best way of being tougher mentally is with experience.  Our bench is young, and cheap.  When Riley traded for Iggy I thought he'd lost his mind.  I was wrong.  I've been saying all along "give me the veterans with the 1000 yard stares over the young pups who are just sooo excited just to be here", and then I promptly forgot my own principle.  We need to sign a solid "been there, done that, got the scars to prove it" veteran for the MLE.  I'm done with the youth experiment.  Grant is doing well, considering, I admittedly have a blind spot for tweeners, but the rest?  Take'em.  Gimme a Gerald Green over a Carsen Edwards, a 29 year old Cory Joseph with 7 years of playoff experience over Tremont Waters.


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Without looking, I felt we never really lost many if any leads during the regular season. I thought we had finally put that past us. Definitely a sign of maturity in the NBA. We used to blow those leads all the time.

Then we get to the playoffs and it's like they've mastered the technique on not only how to blow a lead but how to blow a lead and give the game away. Complete reversion to the past.

That was disturbing. The 3-chucking at the end is/was the icing on the cake. I flashed back to the 2018 ECF vs. CLE. And here we are again 2 years later. 2nd verse same as the 1st.
Something's gotta give. We can't go back to the ECF next year and have this happen one more time. That will do it for Brad if that happens.

Then we will have to deal with maybe the same thing in the Finals? How much rope do we need for a championship? Our past history indicates no one wants to see us in the Finals. 17-4 speaks for itself. But will Brad screw around for the next 4-5 trips there trying to get over the hump?

In the meantime, we will just have to hang on to the Celtic mystique of the Finals and hope the Celtic Pride switch goes off like it did 17 out of 21 times before.

db