We've beaten the timeout thing to death but the insane shooting from Miami is just so atypical that it really ought to trump anything else in the discussion of the first four games. That and the fact that our defense last year was mostly predicated on the fact that Horford was the most ISO'd on defender in the league and in something like the 75th percentile defending them.
For all the talk about 'coaching differences' and defense, if we actually want to talk about this in an interesting way it's hardly a hidden mystery of basketball that last season opposing teams would look at our defense, make moves to get their point guard switched onto Horford... and come away with exactly 0 points for their efforts if their name wasn't Steph Curry.
This year, that wasn't the case.
One of the adjustments it looks like the Celtics made was no longer switching everything, so now Butler's defender (Tatum) is making an effort to stay with him instead of automatically switching.
Here's a video from Game 1 where a YouTuber breaks down the C's switching on Butler, around the 9:22 mark you see some switches where Tatum makes no effort to stay with Butler.
Now it seems like the C's are fighting through screens more, and only switching when necessary. This is making it harder on Butler, making him work more giving him fewer easy drives leading to fewer help rotations by the Celtics leading to fewer open Heat players leading to fewer made 3's. I haven't put the last couple of games under the microscope to verify all this, but I think this is part of what's happening.
That's a solid video! TP for that.
Yeah as a whole the league is moving away from 'switch everything' in general because it makes it too easy for the offense to pick and choose the matchups that they want, even against a great defense like we had last year - like Who(?) said earlier in this thread or another related one, the game is being refferee'd in a way this year that just makes the math work better for the offense if you switch 100% of the time.
These kinds of trends aren't as sexy, or as obvious, in a playoff series vs the regular season unless the difference is really stark game to game, but considering all modern NBA offenses and defenses are predicated on five guys executing conditionals (if this, then that) at the absolute highest level, it's can be more informative than talking about effort. But even with all that, Miami's shooting was unexpectedly great G1 and G3.
It's really a pick your poison thing - in a league where the three rules supreme, switching everything (assuming you have 5 players on the court who can defend 1-5) takes away open 3s that they get off screens as well as protecting the rim from any rollers. But the down side is that if you don't have those players on the court then you can pick a matchup you want and iso against them. At the end of the day it shouldn't be as simple as a conditional, there has to be some level of judgment involved to decide what to do and when.
When it’s Jimmy Butler, that’s a fairly easy decision. It’s not like he’s a Harden, Trae, Curry, etc. that will take the three if you don’t switch. He’s a subpar three point shooter and hesitant to even shoot the three. He’s the perfect player to fight through the screens with because (a) he likely won’t shoot the three and it’s a good gamble if he does, and (b) he WILL kill the mismatch with his elite midrange and penetration game.
Props to the coaching staff for finally making this adjustment, but to be honest it’s pretty ridiculous it took that long. Virtually every podcast and basketball personality was hammering the constant switching of White onto Butler as soon as after game 1, yet it took until this game until we thoroughly stopped this tactic.
If only the extreme drop coverage could be the next adjustment 🤔