Marcus Morris is a direct answer to Cavs

[Dino Pitino]

Nobody is stopping LeBron James

Certainly not a slowish PF

What should we believe, you or the stats? Tough call.

[SHAQATTACK]

we did ko against cavs mssing TT..

when he returned we were destroyed .....we had no answer , got destroyed rebounding

Zeller.  Ko and poor old beat down Amir were worthless against team with bigs

[hwangjini_1]

we did ko against cavs mssing TT..

when he returned we were destroyed .....we had no answer , got destroyed rebounding

Zeller.  Ko and poor old beat down Amir were worthless against team with bigs

ha!!!! the celtics have the "killer kiwi" down low now. 

[GreenEnvy]

We got maybe the best Lebron defender in the league. Takes the sting out of losing the best on-ball guard defender in Avery. Versus the Cavs, getting Morris is a two-way upgrade over Avery.

Yet Avery was responsible for our sole win against the Cavs in the ECF.

All in all, I like the moves. We can throw different looks at LeBron and hopefully Morris can allow others to stay on their shooters.

If Jeff Green is their only move, we definitely closed the gap IMO. Just need to worry about Kyrie with no AB. Love scorched us this time but he doesn't scare me.

[SHAQATTACK]

Morris had the best defensive year of anybody on LeBron .......thats a huge help on a guy that has thrived on the Celtics tiny finesse team for years .

These guys will not stop Lebron ..who will be a year older btw with more mileage than ever.

but they will surely make life ruffer on Love, TT and LeWhiner than past years .

Bank it .....LeBron is gonna have to pay to attack the paint this year

[Dino Pitino]

We got maybe the best Lebron defender in the league. Takes the sting out of losing the best on-ball guard defender in Avery. Versus the Cavs, getting Morris is a two-way upgrade over Avery.

Yet Avery was responsible for our sole win against the Cavs in the ECF.

All in all, I like the moves. We can throw different looks at LeBron and hopefully Morris can allow others to stay on their shooters.

If Jeff Green is their only move, we definitely closed the gap IMO. Just need to worry about Kyrie with no AB. Love scorched us this time but he doesn't scare me.

Avery was partially responsible for the one win, I'd give more credit to Smart in god mode. Now with Morris, we can hopefully get more than one win. Four would be noice.

[IDreamCeltics]

Did you see the stat where Marcus Morris was a "lebron stopper"?  last year Lebron averaged something ridiculous like 36ppg against other defenders but only 20.5ppg vs marcus morris.

TP for finding that stat.
Kendrick Perkins used to be our Lebron stopper strangely enough.

The common denominator is that Lebron isn't as effective when he can't penetrate at will.  Morris was a much better Lebron stopper in Detroit where he had Andre Drummond protecting the rim.

Andre Drummond really isn't a very good rim protector tho..

I kind of know what you're saying, his effort is extremely inconsistent and he's wasting his gifts trying to score points instead of trying to be the next Bill Russell, but teams tend to drive on proven rim protectors less and pull up more. 

I couldn't find any rim protecting stats for 2016-2017 but I did find this link for stats from 2015-2016.  If you look at Opponents Rim Attempts against per 36 you'll see he was the 7th ranked Center in the NBA that season in that category .

http://fansided.com/stats/rim-protection/ 

His backup that year was Aaron Baynes who had a similar (but not as good) impact in deterring attempts at the rim was the 11th ranked Center in terms of opponent's field goal attempts at the rim.

Unfortunately that site hasn't posted the rim protecting stats for the most recent season so I can't really say without question those guys had the same impact last season, but I did look up opponents points in the paint for last year and Detroit ranked 10th in the league as a team.

https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/opponent-points-in-paint-per-game