I watched GSW vs Boston and they never switched. GS hedges and recovers presumably to protect curry
I just don’t understand why we let Boston switch into Luka every time. Feels like we never did that before against Minnesota, OKC, or in the regular season
I never once saw us try drop, hedge. I do understand not blitzing or trapping
by jamaica1
8 Comments
The Warriors had better defenders with Steph being the lone “liability” and even then he’s still ok for a guard at keeping people in front of him. But Klay, Draymond, Wiggins, Looney are all very good defenders who can fight over screens and recover if needed.
The philosophy all season has been funnel the players into Lively/Gafford and suffocate the paint. It didn’t matter against Minnesota, OKC or LA because we could hide Luka & Kai on someone who wasn’t a 3pt threat like Zubac, Giddy or Anderson. With Boston playing 5 shooters it was more important to switch everything to minimize their advantage of spreading the floor away from Lively/Gafford.
Boston was a true 5 out, all 5 guys were good 3 point shooters. OKC had guys you felt ok about ignoring a bit at the 3 point line.
OKC is a worse 5 out team, but more importantly is a much worse 5 out driving team: Luka could defend Dort (or Isaiah Joe) with a strong close out without being concerned he could drive since he actually couldn’t, but every player on Celtics is an above average driver.
Since Dort is not much of a threat in PNR, OKC didn’t use him in that play and Celtics’ every player could create a shot off setting a pick, so they constantly ran a play with a player Luka guarding as setting the pick as White/Jrue/Brown are much better at creating offense as a screener than anybody on OKC or even Wolves.
Also, don’t confuse this Boston team with the 2022 team: they played Timelord (classical 5 without shooting ability) and Smart (who would be the worst shooter among the current top-8 in minutes Boston) extended minutes, so they were not really as good 5-out offence: frankly, both Jrue and White are better than Smart offensively and the gap between Timelord and KP is astronomical offensively.
because the only similarity is that both teams have a good 3 point shooter.
okc had other players that weren’t tho, boston has 5 good shooters that you cant let shoot 3s
OP has a point, to me it also felt kind of weird that Luka who had to carry the offense also had to guard 2 all-star players like Tatum and Brown.
I don’t feel our defense was the problem, aside from the rebounding at times.
Boston was better than us. Their seventh best player is better than our third best player. Time to move on.
Boston had Marcus Smart now they have Jrue Holiday
Mavs beat Boston if they still had Marcus Smart