Knowing that matchups and game plan are the most important things in the playoff let's analyze deeper into those staff. I won't mention the obvious problems that we all know : offense and second half, but what is every player ( and coach) contributing and how they matchup.
Knicks are starting with a very small unit witch is perfect for us and allow Doc to play 3 guards at the same time at some point. Felton and Prigioni are starting and we got Bradley and Pierce against them. Pierce vs Felton is probably a miss match because Pierce has size and strenth advantige but on the other side Felton is scoring.
B.Bass on Melo. Fantastic matchup for us. Bass did a great job in both games to make Melo take tough shots and miss them, using his strenth to keep him in front of him. No need for double team on Melo witch allow us guard the 3point shooters on the perimetar much better.
KG vs Chandler/Martin. It was hard for KG to score in the post so far and his mid range shots were not going in. It's been like that for 2 games so i won't analyze this matchup a lot i will just say: expect KG to feed from the crowd and have a great game 3.
Those are the most important matchups and i'm not a expert but here is some adjustments i would recommend.
1. I love our defense in the first 2 games. Bass on Melo and making Melo take bad shots and keep him out of the paint. I don't know if you noticed but in game 1 in quarter 1 when Bass was not on Melo he scored some 10 points in few minutes and the same thing happened in the 3th quarter in game 2 in the last few minutes when Bass was on the bench again Melo had a little scoring run. Green is not strong enough to stay close to Melo he get pushed. And with Bass we have Green,Pierce and Bradley running and guarding that 3 point line which gives us advantige. Melo and JR are fantastic scorers thet will score nodoubt in that but the only thing in the defense i don't like is how we guard Felton. What adjustments we can make on him? Pobably using Lee on him because Pierce is slow for Felton. If we limit him the defense will be flawless.
2.J.Green. No adjusments here i like Green's game but need to see more complete game of him. He scored 26pts in game 1 but still he can do more in terms of defense, rebounding, blocking shots and most important run in transition more
3. It was posted on Celticsblog front page. Pierce/KG pick and roll. We must see that a lot. That pick and roll will make Pierce a play maker and have 10ast per game but will create shots for KG and open space for Green, and also Bradley will be in the corner waiting.
4.Rotations. I love you Doc but you are stubborn, what doesn't have to be a bad thing but you are just too stubborn. Sometimes all the team needs is slight change doesn't have to be a major change. If i were a coach in this series i would play 3 guards a lot, same as Doc but i would do a diffrent rotations. What Doc is doing is he is looking for a hot shooter and leaves him a lot of consecutive minutes. Two games are proof that is not effective.
Example number 1: J.Green having great first half in game 1 scoring 20, not getting rest in that game and score only 6 in the second.
Example number 2. J.Terry making 3 3pointers in first half of game 2 and not scoring late in the game.
I would recommend more rotations and Terry,Crawford and Lee to play less concecutive minutes and rotate more.
5. And the most important adjustment we need to make is more transition offense. Why? It's logical that after getting so many stops and rebounds, more than we usually get, we have a lot of oportunities to run. Here is were we miss Rondo. Woodson is a very good defensive coach and i don't see other way to outscore them except with transition offense. I think it was second quarter when we made some concecutive fast break, transition plays. In game 2 KG got some 12 rebounds, we could have run in transition and attack early in offense all game long. Green,Bradley,Lee needs to run after stops and attack in the paint against Felton,Prigioni,Kidd,Shumpert. We did see Green a few times attacking in transtion but we need more much more point in transition.
Topic: Player and matchup analysis from first 2 games and adjustments for next games (Read 1495 times)