We miss Rob quite a bit. Rim protection is severely lacking without him. Al seems a step slower, Kornet never did protect the rim, nor did Vonleh really. Grant is too short to do this, which means we should give Kabengele some run.
Mazullo seems to like small ball and the results have not been good. He also routinely plays several poor defenders together whereas Udoka tried to hide them
I don't think Maz likes small ball so much as the makeup of the roster requires small ball.
Joe Maz said this sir:
"“I liked the idea of it. I liked the skill, I liked the speed and I liked the basketball IQ that was out there with that (small) lineup,” Mazzulla said. “If there’s opportunity presented to get to something like that again I think we try it.”
https://www.clnsmedia.com/celtics-going-small-and-embracing-flexibility-in-preseason/That tells me he is itching to play small ball. And we just got to the NBA finals with double big lineups. We got murdered with Grant at the five spot. Now you could be right, it could be more personnel.
But I think some coaches who were guards like smaller lineups as a source of personal validation, and sympathy for their position.
Other teams are driving the rim constantly with Rob gone. They're going to challenge us all year until he is back or we prove we can stop it. Some of our guys are not natural rim protectors and they are going to have to do it taking charges, good positional defense and banging to protect the rim. Of course, they will get called for fouls but you have to do something to keep people off the rim. The defense of the perimter will have to be that much better to stop penetration.
Rob is a great goalie type of center but we don't have that right now.
