Skewered! How the Celtics' Horns Gored the Nets' Defense
The Boston Celtics consistently went to their Horns series in their latest win over the Brooklyn Nets.
The All-Star break has arrived. Back-to-back wins over the Brooklyn Nets allowed the Boston Celtics to head into the break on a positive note. In the first game, the Celtics’ near-unstoppable scoring took center stage. In Wednesday’s match-up, Boston made their presence felt on the defensive end.
Honestly, I don’t mind how the team gets its wins. I just care about stacking them up and creating some breathing room between them and everyone else in the Eastern Conference. The bigger the gap, the bigger the margin of error the Celtics have available to them.
Usually, when teams return from the All-Star break, they start tightening things up. Rotations begin to shorten. Players begin to ramp up their production and intensity. Everything starts being geared toward the playoffs. So, having some breathing room helps, especially if the Celtics need to rest some guys to keep them fresh — and I’m talking about outside of back-to-backs here.
Another thing that usually occurs after the All-Star break is that we begin to see coaches refine their playbooks. Some new actions tend to pop up. And some of the more successful aspects of the offensive system start to cement themselves as mainstays within the team’s approach. Boston has generally focused on principled offense (which I usually call a series) rather than a set of designed plays under Joe Mazzulla, and that’s been evident this season.
The beauty of having a series rather than a list of set plays is that it allows the players to make reads on the fly and flow into different branches of that series when the defense looks susceptible.
Over time, I’m sure we’ll look at some aspects of each of these series. Today, though, I wanted to focus on Boston’s “Horns” actions. In Wednesday’s game against the Nets, the Celtics were spamming their “Horns” series in the first half. They found consistent success, and at times, they looked unguardable.
The basic concept of a “Horns” action is that there are two players around or above the elbows while the ball-handler is situated at the top of the perimeter or toward the logo at half-court (or anywhere within that area.) It’s one of the more easy actions to spot. Here’s a screen grab of how it usually looks.
Or, it can look like this.
If both players stay on the elbows, I tend to class the action as something out of Boston’s elbow series. Horns, for me, may start on the elbows — like in the second picture — but will look more like the first picture as an entry pass is made.
If you’re unfamiliar with why this series works, here is a great video on the base concept of running “Horns.”
Ok, now that we’re all caught up, let’s dive into the different variations Boston went to against the Nets.
Horns, Ricky, Pick-and-pop into slip screen.
This play consists of three segments. It starts with a Horns action. Payton Pritchard feeds Kristaps Porzignis and then chin cuts (a non-ball side cut off an entry pass) off a Tatum screen. Pritchard then cuts back toward the perimeter, receiving another screen from Tatum. A cut-off screen and then back, while using the same screener, is known as a Ricky.
From there, the Celtics flowed into a pick-and-pop with Tatum as the popper. Porzingis faked a flare screen for Tatum and then slipped the screen to get open in the lane. Bucket.
When watching the clip, you can see that the Net's defense did well guarding the initial Horns action and the chin cut. So, the Celtics countered with Ricky, which still didn’t give them an advantage. However, the Tatum pick-and-pop got both on-ball defenders to momentarily commit to Pritchard, at which point, the defense went into rotation, thus creating the angle for Porzingis to slip his screen and attack in space.
Horns UCLA
A UCLA cut is a ball-side cut after an entry pass — Watch Derrick White to get the full gist. Here, the Celtics once again go to something out of their Horns series. You have the entry pass to Porzignis and a screen from Tatum. White rejects the screen to UCLA cut straight through the center of the defense.
Brooklyn has a helper rotate over, which gives White some extra work to do on the low block. White is a reliable scorer, so he finds a way to get his shot to fall.
Horns Flare
Horns entry to Porzingis. Flare screen from Tatum. Pritchard gets open but can’t get the shot to fall. Boston run another version of this via a ghost screen - we can look at that another time.
A pretty standard Horns action
Horns Flare, feed the post-up
Another example of a Horns Flare, this time, Pritchard feeds Tatum, who is posting up around the nail.
Horns, Chin Cut
Another Horns Flare, this time, attacking the close-out
As you can see, the Celtics went to their Horns series fairly often throughout the game. They found something that was working and looked to exploit it until the defense found ways to limit their success. That’s how basketball in the NBA works. Once you find something, you run it until the opposing team figures it out. Then you chip away until you find something new, and so on and so on.
We might not see that many Horns’ actions in one game for the rest of the season. Instead, we might see a bunch of slice — which I looked at here — or insert action name here.
Before I move on , let me know if you like this type of content and would like more of it moving forward.
Some more thoughts on Tatum’s MVP status
Yesterday, I sent out a thought piece on why Jayson Tatum should be in consideration for this year’s MVP. Not long after writing it, I hopped on an episode of the Green With Envy podcast to dive into this further, along with Will Weir and Greg Meneikis.
You can watch the full episode (and subscribe if you choose) here.
Tatum’s status as a potential MVP candidate will likely be a hot topic in the coming weeks. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the subject at some point, but for now, I think between yesterday’s post and this podcast episode, I’ve said everything on my mind.
Another question
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