A couple of points. First as an old guy who loves defense, I thought Perk was awesome tonight both guarding his man and also in his team defensive rotations. There were times he guarded 3 different people on the same play and made the switches flawlessly. That is incredibly hard to do. Big Baby and Brown did pretty well defensively also.
Secondly the problem the celtics are having with the trap is their spacing. They need to shorten the spacing to allow shorter passes and after they are past the first wave of defenders, you THEN attack. Trying to do it with a single pass just gets it deflected. Basically they are using man-man spacing which doesn't work well with a zone because the first pass is usually off target because of the pressure. You have to give the passer more allowance for errors by making the pass distance shorter.
I disagree about trying to get layups against Detroit. They protect the basket very well. What you have to do is to be able to hit short jumpers like Rondo and Perkins did so they can't cheat on their defensive spacing. That way Pierce is man on man from 15 ft and KG is man on man from 12 ft
TP to you for your excellent post(from one oldie to another), with which I wholeheartedly agree!
Perk played his best game ever, rotating/switching, going out on the 15 area superbly, hauled down by boxing out HUGE and critical rebounds and two uncharacteristic face up jumpers too! Simply a very solid preformance from the 270lb man!
As well as you noted, solid contrubutions from the bench by BBD & P.J. as well as Poze playing big and solid minutes on "D", again! Cassell settled the team other than one forced pass resulting in a T.O. his shooting and threat helped spread the floor and spell Rondo.
However, I just needed to give you credit mostly for your inciteful and correct coaching perspective as to how to correctly pass out of the trap, which we will see again, IME!
I also like your seeing the importance of the 15 & 12 foot game, as we remember this is what was so very effective against Detroit in that game that BBD had the soft hands to catch and finish with Pierce and Garnett at the 12 foot area making the pass underneath the 'D'... Beautiful inside passing by pulling the D out to 12 foot needs to be exploited against Detroit!!!