Attacking the Drop

The Boston Celtics found multiple scoring opportunities as the Portland Trail Blazers stuck to a drop defense.

I’m a bit late getting to this post today. My wife has been pretty sick this week, so I’ve been picking up some of the additional slack. I’ve got a Miles Norris’ piece in the works — so keep your eye out for that in the coming days.

Anyway…

After a mini-break, the Boston Celtics got back to business on Wednesday night. Even without Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, the team handled their business.

Props to the Portland Trail Blazers, they didn’t make things easy. Oh, and Toumani Camara is legit, guys and gals, I mean, he’s hella good.

If you’ve checked in on social media, sports radio, or even the major sports channels today, then you’ve likely heard or seen high praise for Derrick White and Payton Pritchard. It’s all well deserved. Those two guys crushed it.

One area that really impressed me was how the Celtics looked to attack the space created by Portland’s drop defense, either on initial attacks or on second side actions. So, that’s what we’re going to look at today, we’re going to look at 2 or 3 specific plays that stood out in terms of this approach.

In any given game, teams are iterating through countless ideas and gameplans. Once they find one that works, they will go back to it. Then, they will go back to it again. The cycle will stop once the defense adjusts.

I’m saying this to note that little wrinkles like this exist in a vacuum. They occur for a period and then fade away to make room for the next idea or the next wave of actions. And then, they might pop back up later in the game.

I mean, there was a lot of good stuff coming out of Boston’s “slot 5” series in this one, and the same can be said for the Celtics interior creation.

There’s always a wealth of things to explore. However, over the past few months, I've learned—particularly regarding my obsession with figuring out where to ‘reside’ on social media—that focusing on one thing at a time is more beneficial than spreading myself too thin.

I digress.

As you can see in the above image, White is coming off a screen, and for some reason, Shaedon Sharpe is the guy sagging off. Let’s break the play down a little more.

** The rest of today’s postgame analysis, including some deep dive film study, is for paying subscribers. Subscribe below to unlock this post, all paid posts moving forward, and the complete Celtics Chronicle archive.***