Not what we expected
I did not have a loss to the Miami Heat on my Bingo card
If you had told me last week that the Boston Celtics would be tied 1-1 heading into the Kaseya Center, I would have assumed Jimmy Butler had miraculous recovery from his MCL injury. I would have guessed the Miami Heat were fully healthy and that Erik Spoelstra did Erik Spoelstra things.
Turns out, one of those three things were true. Also, it turns out that I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Yet, here we are. The Heat suffered a 20-point loss in Game 1. Spoelstra made some adjustments and, boom, tie series.
Obviously, I’m oversimplifying here. But the general point I’m making is that the Heat will always have an advantage when it comes to the coaching battle. I don’t care what team in the Eastern Conference you’re pointing toward; Spoelstra is the better head coach. We knew that coming in. We’ve known that for a while now.
The difference is that coaching can only get you so far when the opposing team is wildly more talented. That’s the common consensus, at least.
Under no circumstances should a Heat team missing their star player and two key rotation pieces be tied up after two games. Their win can be broken down into two easy steps.
Miami hit over 50% from deep.
Miami limited the Celtics’ perimeter offense and took them out of the system, which makes them a dangerous threat.
Again, I’m oversimplifying. But this is a fair TLDR version of the events we witnessed last night (or, in my case, this morning.)
The biggest change Spoelstra made was on the defensive end. He had his team switching every action, and he adjusted the pick-up points to be higher up the floor. Suddenly, the Celtics struggled to generate consistent offense, and their .5 decision-making had gone out of the window.
Miami didn’t leave any space for shooters to attack. When the ball was swung to a second or third-side action, the defense quickly rotated and closed out on shooters. Their switching also limits Boston’s success when mismatch hunting. I have some thoughts here, but first, let’s get into our usual game recap.
Celtics lose to Heat 111-101
🚑 Injury report (Boston): Luke Kornet — Calf
🚑 Injury report (Miami): Jimmy Butler (MCL), Terry Rozier (Neck), Josh Richardson (Shoulder)
⭐ Jayson Tatum had some solid stretches of basketball. He had 10 straight points in the opening quarter to help the Celtics keep pace with a Heat team that was knocking down every shot that left their hands.
Interestingly, Joe Mazzulla moved away from Tatum operating as a primary ball-handler in this one. He did a bit more work off the ball as a screener and floor spacer. In Game 1, Tatum’s triple-double was integral to the team’s success. His playmaking was rather muted in this outing. Hopefully we see him initiating more of the offense in Game 3.
I would be remiss not to credit Tatum’s defense here, too. He led the Celtics in terms of impacting shooters. He ended the game with a 20 DFG%, holding his matchups to 2-of-10 from the field and 2-of-7 from deep, giving him a 28.6 3DFG%. Solid work from Boston’s star player, especially considering the rest of the Celtics’ primary rotation was hovering around the 50% mark.
Statline: 28 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block. 50 FG%, 33.3 3P%.
⭐ Jaylen Brown was a bright spot in the second quarter, he went 6-of-10 from the field with three straight 3s giving him some momentum. Brown is at his best when he’s being used as a featured scorer within the Celtics offense. He has the athleticism to pressure the rim, the mid-range game to counter how the defense looks to cover him, and is a reliable catch-and-shoot weapon when working off ball.
He ended the night with 33 points to his name. Still, I can’t help but ask why he’s not being given a license to cook in the opening quarter. He was stellar in the opening exchanges throughout the regular season. We all know Tatum is better when he is allowed to grow into games and focus on creating for others in the early exchanges.
Don’t get me wrong, it was nice seeing Tatum operate with a sense of urgency and aggression in his play. I just wonder why they’ve moved away from an approach that was bringing so much success.
Statline: 33 points, 8 rebounds, 1 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, 56.5 FG% and 44.4 3P%
⭐ Al Horford was his usual self. I’ve liked that he’s visually holding his teammates accountable over the last two games. If he’s not happy with what he’s seeing on the court, he’s waiving his arms around or getting in guys’ ears. You can see a good example of this in the clip below, where he’s questioning Brown’s decision to drive out of the corner after Horford found him with a nice pass out of a ‘Blind Pig’ action.
I like Horford showing some leadership early in this playoff run. His career is on its back nine. He wants a championship. He’s seen this team grow into the juggernaut it currently is. He’s going to let guys hear it when he’s not enjoying what he’s seeing. The Celtics need that.
Statline: 6 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, 66.7 FG%, 1-of-1 from 3.
🗑️ Payton Pritchard ended the game with no shot attempts despite being on the court for almost 20 minutes. He struggled with how high up the court the defense picked him up. He couldn’t break through Miami’s physicality on their rotations, and he differed to much.
Boston needs Pritchard to be the version we saw in the season's final weeks. That version gives the team a significant boost off the bench. Pritchard is one of the Celtics’ best pull-up shooters. He’s a weapon in transition. And he has the speed and shiftiness to manipulate the defense. They need more from him. It’s one thing to go scoreless; it’s another not even to take a shot.
🗑️ The Celtics perimeter defense was not what we’ve become accustomed to throughout the season. According to Second Spectrum (as reported by
on Twitter) the Heat found themselves wide open on 23 of their 43 3-point attempts last night.
I want to look at Boston’s defense in this game a little closer, but that will be something for tomorrow or Saturday morning and could potentially be a video post…who knows?
Figuring out Miami’s switching
Every action has a reaction, right? Well, when teams are switching with the intensity and aggression that Miami was last night, you can throw a couple of reactions into the mix to try and counteract what they’re doing on defense.
One of the quickest ways of blowing up switching coverages is throwing in some slip screens.
If Miami wants to switch actions, their trigger will likely be once contact occurs on the screen. By slipping before the contact is made, the defense usually gets a little stuck, allowing the slip-screener to either roll hard to the rim, provide some secondary playmaking or offense in the short roll, or flow into another screen (such as a pin-down or flex action).
Luke Kornet is arguably the Celtics’ best slip screener out of their big men. He found success with that action throughout the season. Assuming he’s still on the injury report when these two teams face off on Saturday, I would personally be hoping to see some inverted screening with Tatum and Brown operating as slip-screeners.
Speaking of inverted screening, Boston has also attacked switching defenses in recent months. Throwing a Derrick White or Jrue Holiday screen into the mix is a great way to create a mismatch…Figuring out how to attack it quickly enough that the defense doesn’t recover is another question entirely.
When running inverted actions, the defense is put into rotation. Everything tends to speed up a little. As you can see in the above clips, you can still slip these actions, or secondary plays can come out of them. Either way, it punishes the initial switch or creates a miscommunication that generates opening to exploit.
The Celtics have enough high-IQ ball handlers to take advantage of momentary lapses such as these — especially if the Heat are slow to adjust.
Another way you punish switching is by running ghost screens. Again, the principal here is you create confusion on the trigger point. If the switch is supposed to occur on contact, but the screen doesn’t create contact, do you still switch? The Celtics have seldom used ghost screens as an individual movement — instead, they’ve run a bunch of “Chest” actions or “Ram Ghost” sets.
The play below is a “Wide-Pin Chest” action.
The Heat played Boston’s wide pin-downs and Zoom actions incredibly close yesterday.
Now imagine Brown had ghosted the screen rather than chased the DHO from Pritchard and the mess that would have put Miami in due to the aggressive nature of their coverage. It’s quick little alterations such as those that can create high-quality scoring opportunities.
Mazzulla will have ideas on how he wants the Celtics to counter the Heat’s aggressive defense. He’s proven himself to be a high-level coach at the NBA level and guided the team to the best record in the NBA. I have no doubt that we will see some changes in how the Celtics counter the Heat’s defense. I would hope that we also see some more dribble-drive penetration, though — that was lacking in Wednesday’s outing.
Required reading
One of the best things about Substack, is that there are a plethora of talented writers releasing amazing stuff every day.
of released this awesome takeaways article from last night’s game that is both insightful and entertaining, it’s 100% with the read (and the subscription).
Drew Carter stopped by
My co-host, Will Weir, was joined by Drew Carter yesterday for a wide-ranging discussion, including Boston’s playoff chances.
Will and Greg will also be going live later today; you can set notifications here. To confirm, I will not be on that live stream…But Will and Greg always do an awesome job!
Wrapping it up
I’ve done a lot of statistical and video dives recently. Tomorrow, I feel like an opinion piece is in order. I’ve made today’s post open to all subscribers. The rest of this week’s content will be for full subscribers only. If you want to upgrade to get the full catalog, you can do so here; And if you’re new here, and want to test out the free subscriptions, the same button will help you do that.
Catch everyone tomorrow!
Thanks for the shout, Adam! I wish I'd thought to talk about ghost screens as a counter to Miami's switching, it's not something I see Boston do a lot of (as you noted). It's a sound idea, and if they do more of that, it'll be on the ballhandler to get the ball out quicker than they do in the clip you have here.
Can't imagine Boston's offense looks like that again in Game 3, but Miami's defense will change, too. We'll see what Mazz and Spo cook up for each other!
Great breakdown and analysis!
Although this loss is somewhat of a surprise to probably every C's fan, and I know this wasn't an opinion piece but here's an opinion no one asked for haha. I don't see it as a massive concern or shock if you look at more than just the game itself.
The whole month of April has been basically a write off of unserious basketball for the Celtics (well the "starting 6" anyway). In isolation this game showed excellence from Spo, resilience and execution from the Heat and possibly, just possibly, a bit of finding their feet from the C's.
It's easy to think the C's were already in playoff mode after game 1, but it's also likely it looked like that because the Heat are shorthanded, off the back of 2 play-in games and the C's are just that damn talented! But realistically, before game 1, the starting 6 hadn't played in well over a week and the team hadn't had a meaningful game in about a month. My hope is they are still ramping up to playoff mode, shaking off the rust, and will start to find their groove in game 3.
If the C's come out and gentleman's sweep the Heat with an average margin of 20+, game 2 will be seen as nothing more than an anomaly. Game 3 will go a long way in telling us if that's possibly the case or not.