5 things to watch coming out of the NBA All-Star breakBy: Greg Cassoli
The Boston Celtics are poised to resume their season after the NBA All-Star break. We’ve compiled some of the most interesting story lines to keep an eye on.The Boston Celtics stumbled into the NBA All-Star break, losing four of their last five games. No team in the league looked more in need of a little bit of time off.
The Celtics returned to practice on Wednesday and will look to regain their early-season form in the season’s final months. We’ve highlighted a few things that are worth monitoring as they attempt to do so below.
Defensive IntensityBoston’s biggest problems in recent games have come on the defensive end of the court. The Celtics have 106.1 defensive rating across their last 10 outings. That’s far from an abysmal mark, but it’s well below the team’s overall rating for the year of 100.9.
Boston doesn’t score the ball well enough to not have an elite-level defense. At least not if it wants to contend in a meaningful way. The Celtics weren’t getting the kind of defensive intensity that drove their early success in the lead up to the All-Star break.
Rotations were sloppy, energy levels were low and on-ball defense was lacking. It’s hard to stop a team when things fall apart at the point of attack and the defense doesn’t move with the requisite tenacity to make up for initial mistakes.
Take a look how the following sequence against the Warriors from the beginning of the year compares to the kind of thing that happened in the Celtics game against the Los Angeles Clippers, just before the break.
The difference is stark. The hope for Boston fans is that the Celtics were simply too tired to continue their defensive brilliance. That with a bit of time for recovery, and the return of Marcus Smart, the team should get back to its roots as a defensive juggernaut.
They’ll need to if they want to have any hope of making the playoffs.
Jaylen Brown: Pick-and-roll ball handlerThe Celtics have struggled to create offense at times this year. Not having Gordon Hayward available as a secondary offensive hub proven hugely limiting.
Kyrie Irving has been exceptional at creating scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates, but it’s hard to have an above-average offense with just one truly dynamic ball handler. It exposes the Celtics to stretches where no such player is on the court and cancels out any hope of leveraging the pressure that playing two high-level threats off the bounce simultaneously can create.
Just being able to throw the ball from one side of the court to the other with a pair players that are capable of attacking off the dribble, shooting or running a pick-and-roll places a ton of stress on an opposing defense.
Having another player capable of creating offense as a primary ball handler would allow Boston to expand the ways they utilize Irving, opening up an entirely new bag of tricks for Brad Stevens, in which Irving could function as a shooter, screener, or decoy off the ball.
The Celtics aren’t planning on getting Hayward back this year and have opted to experiment with some of the players that are available, as a means of attempting to identify a running mate for Irving.
Recently that’s meant letting Jaylen Brown test out the waters as a pick-and-roll ball handler. It’s come with mixed results. He’s averaged 0.74 points per possession on those plays, ranking him in just the 34th percentile league-wide.
Brown still needs to tighten up his handle considerably. He’s prone to turning the ball over when other teams clamp down on him with pressure.
Video Player: ssl.cdn.turner.com/nba/big/nba/wsc/2018/02/10/f80264bf-f738-ea84-08e8-faaf2cf1c81f.nba_1981861_768x432_1500.mp4?_=1It’s not all bad though. Brown has, at times, shown a feel for the game that appeared relatively nonexistent prior to this point in time.
Video Player: ssl.cdn.turner.com/nba/big/nba/wsc/2018/02/07/85bdc5d4-c5f5-5910-9e14-ffee5fb4b8ec.nba_1965878_1920x1080_5904.mp4?_=2That’s one of the more exciting things about young players. They practice and toil and get things wrong and then all of a sudden there are flashes of competence that grow into a new skill. Going through that process in the middle of a season is no small task, especially when your team is attempting to be competitive.
The Celtics don’t have any options to lean on outside of Brown’s development, however, and he’s definitely making strides. It’s unlikely he’ll become a maestro in the pick-and-roll before the year is out, but the fact that he’s growing in that domain at all is encouraging.
Greg Monroe’s fitBoston opted to use its Disabled Player Exception to sign Greg Monroe just prior to the All-Star break. Monroe has played in just four games with the team.
He’ll need some time to acclimate himself with the Celtics’ system, and it would appear, get into a little bit better shape.In theory
Monroe’s passing and ability to score on the block should help juice Boston’s offense, but his presence may mean a lot more time with Marcus Morris and Semi Ojeleye at small forward, both of whom project best as defensively versatile fours.
The
Celtics could opt to play Monroe over Aron Baynes or Daniel Theis, but those players have more than earned their minutes. Pairing Monroe with either will make for some dangerously immobile defensive frontcourt duos.
Finding the right lineup combinations to highlight Monroe’s strengths may prove challenging for Stevens.
Jayson Tatum taking on the rookie wallFor those unfamiliar with the NBA’s vaunted rookie wall, the concept is thus: because they’ve never played at NBA intensity for anywhere as long as an 82 game season, rookies are susceptible to drops in production late in their inaugural campaigns.
There isn’t a ton of data available that suggests the rookie wall is an actual phenomenon, but the concept that a rookie may see a dip in efficiency as their legs begin to tire with cumulative fatigue and the league grows more familiar with their game certainly seems somewhat reasonable.
Jayson Tatum appeared to have hit his own personal wall leading into the All-Star break, particularly shooting the ball.
Some of his month-to-month drop in production can be explained by a simple regression to the mean. There was no way that Tatum was ever going to maintain the 48.6% three-point rate he posted in the first two months of his career.
Tatum appeared poised to make up some of what he was likely to give back from beyond the arc with an ever-evolving ability to attack opposing defenses off the bounce, but his effectiveness scoring from all over the court has been minimal throughout January and February.
He’s stuck in something of a difficult position. Boston was supposed to be able to rely on Gordon Hayward for consistently excellent play, allowing Tatum to acclimate to the NBA before placing real expectations on him. That’s shifted with Hayward’s injury and Tatum has, fair or not, become critically important to Boston’s success.
The Celtics are substantially more difficult to defend with a shooter of Tatum’s early-season caliber spotting up around their primary actions. He doesn’t need to be quite as good as he was in November and December, but if Tatum can’t provide something close to what he’s shown to be his best, Boston will likely struggle to score.
Semi Ojeleye guarding every positionSemi Ojeleye has been miserable offensively, but he has the tools to be exceptional defensively. His combination of strength and quickness allows him to guard almost anyone on the court and the Celtics have been letting him do just that.
Here’s video proof.
That’s Ojeleye taking on a different defensive assignment on four consecutive trips against the Warriors. David West, Klay Thompson, Shaun Livingston and Andre Iguodala. He’d later go on to cover Kevin Durant as well.
There are very few players that can toggle between covering bigs, wings and guards the way that Ojeleye can. The Celtics are right to let him take on such a variety of assignments. It’s his biggest strength.
Ojeleye’s offensive limitations are significant enough that Boston should be doing everything it can to maximize his impact elsewhere. For now, that means asking him to switch assignments liberally.
celticswire.usatoday.com/2018/02/22/boston-celtics-5-things-to-keep-an-eye-on-coming-out-of-the-nba-all-star-break-jaylen-brown-jayson-tatum/
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58771281/usa_today_10452309.0.jpg)
