The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Will Jayson Tatum & Jaylen Brown take Celtics back to Finals?

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Jason Timpf breaks down the Boston Celtics ahead of the 2022-2023 NBA season. How were the Celtics able to improve their roster this offseason? Will Ime Udoka's suspension have major consequences? And what steps must Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown make to take Boston back to the NBA Finals? #Volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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number two, the Boston Celtics. Before we get started, you guys know the drill, subscribe to the volumes, YouTube channels, so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT, so you guys don't miss show announcements. That's also where I clip NBA footage, since we're not allowed to use it on YouTube. A lot of the plays that I reference on the show, you can find them there. I also give little descriptions and stuff. I do my rewatches and film sessions, and stuff primarily through Twitter. So you're going to want to follow me there. Last but not least, if you miss one of these shows

and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. So in the top tier of teams, we had the clippers, the bucks, the Celtics, and the Warriors in that order. And I saw a tiny bit of a gap between three and four between the bucks and the clippers, mainly just because of health. I think of all of the teams in that top four, in that top tier,

they have the most health concerns. But it's strictly health with them. I'm not concerned about drama with them at all. They very well could have the most talented roster in the league. I think them and the Celtics have the two most talented rosters in the league. So it's not like a net situation where there's weird ego stuff going on or a Laker situation where there's a malcontent that they might have to deal with. No, the clippers just might get hurt.

and they've shown a propensity to do so. That's why I kind of have them at the bottom of that pack. The top three, the Bucks, Celtics, and Warriors, I view extremely close to each other. I don't view much of a gap between any of them. The primary reason why I put Boston over Milwaukee was this summer, those three teams all had opportunities to get better. And the Bucks basically stood pat.

And the Celtics went out and addressed their biggest weakness, which was ball handling with a very good player in Malcolm Brogden, a 20 point per game guy, a six assists per game guy who's extremely efficient, especially as a pull-up jump shooter and as a catch-and-shoot jump shooter. So they addressed a need. They got significantly better. When you were looking at Boston's closing lineups, there were concerns about that fifth man, right?

You're like, okay, I like Marcus Smart, Tatum, Brown, Horford, that's great, but are we going to play Rob Williams? Are we going to play Grant Williams? Are we going to play Derek White? Like, what are we going to do there? All three of those guys came with big pros and big cons. And now they have a surefire five-man lineup that they're going to be finishing games with. It's Malcolm Brogden in that fifth spot, a significantly better player than the other three players that we mentioned,

and something that actually makes the Celtics a considerably better basketball team, in my opinion. Now, the Warriors did not get better this offseason on paper in theory, right? In fact, they got a little bit worse with the loss of Gary Payton the second and with the loss of Auduporter Jr. We're going to address that a little bit more tomorrow when we're covering them. But the primary reason why I didn't drop them, in addition to the obvious basketball reasons, I think they're a smarter basketball team. I want to talk a lot about the Warriors tomorrow and what they do well. But the primary reason why I didn't punish them for the inability or unwillingness to go out and be more aggressive in the

offseason was the simple fact that they've got three rookies on the roster and James Wiseman, Jonathan Kaminga, and Moses Moody that should improve rapidly over the course of this year. Weissman didn't even play last year. We'll give them another option in the front court. And they have incredible player development over there. So I feel like they're going to make improvements simply through their player development and their young prospects that they have coming up. There's nobody in Milwaukee or in Boston that kind of fits that mold of young. player that could see sizable improvements this year. So I went with the Warriors at number one because I think that they are the best combination of talent, coaching, you know, personnel that

fits modern basketball. I think they're the smartest team. I think they're the most disciplined team. I think they're the most experienced team and they have the most continuity. That's why they're number one. We're going to elaborate on that a lot tomorrow. I had Boston over Milwaukee, even though they barely beat the bucks without Chris Middleton. Because first of all, I think Tatum's going to take a lot from last year and improve as a player. We're going to talk a lot about that today. And that Malcolm Brogden signing or trade, excuse me, significantly improved them in terms of their talent and their most important lineups that they'll go down with in playoff series.

So that just is to give you a little bit of background to where I kind of landed with that ranking. But again, as you guys know, I care less about that and more about the basketball and getting into the analysis and that's what we're going to do today. Also, just in general, when we're doing these rankings, so many different things can go one way or another. Injuries, obviously, can swing things a million different ways. Matchups can swing things a million different ways. Like, just in terms of maybe one team's weakness lines up with another team's strength

and you get beat, even though you might be the better team. That kind of thing happens a lot around the league. I don't think that the Dallas Mavericks were better than the Phoenix Suns. I just thought it was kind of a bad matchup. for them, for instance. So that kind of thing always plays the role. What we're really doing with these rankings is kind of just putting them in order of most likely. So just because I see the Celtics as the second most likely team to win the title or the Warriors at first or the bucks at third or the clippers at fourth doesn't mean that's what's going to happen. Anything can happen.

And obviously, like if things break right for the Brooklyn Nets, they could beat everybody. Even the Lakers have a very slim but puncher's chance to win the title this year. Anything can happen or just ordering them based on likelihood. So as you guys know, we're going to go over last year. I'm going to talk a little bit about the EMA Udoka situation. We're going to talk about what they did this offseason, what their depth chart looks like. Talk about what they do on the offensive end of the floor, what they do on the defensive end of the floor. Best case scenario, worst case scenario, and X Factor. Lots of different angles to go at with the Celtics team. I took my sweet time with this one and I'm going to do it again with the Warriors tomorrow. I watched the first three games of the NBA

this morning, this morning and yesterday. I wanted to get a good feel for how Boston got in the lead of that series. And then tomorrow I'm going to dive into the footage. This will be my like third or fourth time watching the finals, but digging into how Golden State came back and won. I have a I already have a good feel for it from when we were covering the finals, but I'm excited to dive into it again. So last year, the Celtics finished 51 and 31. They lost the NBA finals in six games. Like I said, we're going to spend a lot of time today and tomorrow rehashing the the 2020 NBA Finals. Just a super interesting series on so many levels, very high-level basketball, two very

different teams. I was watching Game 1 yesterday. Game 1 of the NBA Finals was just an incredible basketball game. I've really enjoyed re-watching it. They finished the regular season 9th in offense, first in defense, and second in net rating. From January 8th to the end of the season, they were second in offense. They were 4.1 points per 100 possessions better than everybody in defense. defense, and they were 6.3 points per 100 possessions ahead of everybody in that rating.

And then they went up two games to one in the finals. So from January 8th to game three of the finals, they were far and away the most dominant team in all of basketball. That's why I was so high on them. That's why I picked them in a lot of cases. But I learned a lot about them through the first three rounds of that playoffs. I learned about their weaknesses. And that was a big part of why I picked Golden State to win the finals. I think I picked them in seven and they ended up winning in six. But the reason why I picked them to win the finals was because I had a feeling of all of the teams, you know, like Miami, exploited their weaknesses to damn near steal that series. They came one shot away from stealing that series. And the Golden State Warriors were just a more talented

version of the Miami Heat. So I had a feeling that they'd be able to get the job done. That's why I picked against them. But I was a big believer in them up to that point because of how dominant they were. So looking at the Emey Udoka situation, you can, like, when you see a coach like Emea Udoca come in and fundamentally change a team in Boston that had been pretty disappointing over the previous year and a half, like, I get why you would think, okay, if EMA Udoca is out, this could be catastrophic. I get why you would see that. But what he did is super valuable, but what he's doing less so. What he did was he changed the psychology of the team.

He made them tougher. He made them more willing to fight. They became a very resilient team, which was, if you talk to Celtics fans, and again, I always encourage you, talk to the fans. Because, like, I do my best to cover all 30 teams. I do my very best. But there's no way in hell I can ever cover any of the 30 teams as well as one dedicated fan can, or one dedicated media member that covers one specific team. It's just the nature of the job.

I only have 24 hours in each day, and I have to sleep for a lot of them, right? But when you're looking at Celtics fans and what they thought about what they did over the previous few years, talent was never the issue, scheme was never the issue. Yeah, they had little nitpicky things like, oh, we want Jason Tatum to handle the basketball better, oh, we feel like we might need a point guard, that kind of stuff. But the largest thing that most Celtics fans pointed to was a lack of mental tough. When things got hard, they'd shrink away. They didn't have any fight. They didn't compete well enough to beat the tougher teams around the league, especially when they'd get into tough spots, especially when their back was against the wall. I may Udoka helped a lot with that. But the truth of the matter is, is I believe that stuff will stay.

Those are emotional changes. Those aren't basketball changes. Those are emotional changes. Everyone in that locker room grew up a lot during that year. but when we look at the basketball, they were actually a very sloppy basketball team. In the conference finals and finals, I thought Emma Yudoka went with defensive strategies that actively played into the strength of their opponents. That was a Miami Heat team that literally had one guy who could create his own shot consistently.

And instead of switching everything and trying to bait them into ISOs, they ran their drop coverages and allowed shooters that liked to shoot off the off of screens, guys like Tyler Harrow. Guys like Kyle Lowry, guys like Gabe Vince and guys like Max Drew's, he gave them good shooting opportunities that allowed them to linger around in that series because of a defensive scheme that played directly away from their weakness. And then with the Golden State Warriors, they played directly into their strength.

Steph Curry is the best off the dribble shooter ever, and they ran a drop coverage that bated Steph into taking off the dribble jump shots. And he shot, I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was in the mid-40. he torched them and they lost the series. So that was schematically something that I, and we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that conversation here in a couple of minutes. But those defensive strategies, I thought,

were indicative of IMEUDUCA not being up to the chess match of the NBA playoffs. They were really sloppy in execution. And this is stuff that points me directly towards coaching. In the first few minutes of game one of the finals, they failed to match up with Steph in a walk-up possession. He literally dribbled the ball up the floor, stopped at 25 feet, no one was guarding him, walked into a wide-open three. That's in the first handful of possessions

of an NBA finals game. That's not having your team ready to go. That's not them not understanding matchups or them not communicating well enough. That's on coaching and the level of discipline that they have. They botched a baseline out-of-bounce play where Robert Williams was hugged up on Kavana Loney and I believe it was Jalen Brown was guarding Clay Thompson or something. And literally Kivan Looney just set a back screen on Clay Thompson. Robert Williams just wasn't even paying attention. He just went right under the basket and laid it in. I'm literally watching this game and I'm like, the one team looks prepared and ready to go. And one team looks like they're trying to ride the strength of their talent to winning a playoff series against a team that that's just not

going to work against. Robert Williams and their scheme, does a lot of roaming. It's kind of the way they use him. And on tape, it looks really bad. The way that Robert Williams is just randomly doubling people without any purpose or leaving his man to overhelp when he doesn't need to. And they got absolutely torched on the backside of that by Kvon Looney. Again, we're going to get into that a little bit more later. The team frequently oscillated between playing a good brand of basketball and a bad brand of basketball, particularly in their driving kick game, initiating offense with the intention of drawing to help defenders and kicking rather than over penetrating and trying to score every time,

and then turning over the basketball. They just simply did not play well often enough, and they were inconsistent enough that it would lead you to believe that their coach didn't have them disciplined. Their defensive metrics, they gave up 1.3,4 points per possession and transition in the playoffs, which is absolutely atrocious. That's on coaching. What have I been saying this entire power ranking series? Transition defense, that's uncoaching. Defense of rebounding, that's uncoaching. They only rebounded 71% of their opponent's misses in the playoffs.

That's really bad. That would have ranked in the bottom five or six in the league during the regular season by percentage. So they're a super talented team. IMAUDoka made them a mentally tough team, but they're not an especially smart team. And they weren't a very disciplined team and they weren't a very detailed team.

and so as i don't think eme yudoka leaving for this season and potentially permanently is going to hurt them that much on the basketball court especially if mazula comes in and does a better job of holding them to a higher standard of a higher level of detail attention to detail or if brad stevens gets more involved in the day-to-day coaching or if they bring in an assistant someone like a quince knight or a frank vogel to help in that department i believe they could actually be a little bit better this year in that regard. I didn't factor that in when I was considering them when I was considering them in this power rankings list. I considered a lot of different things, but EMA Udoka leaving the team was not something I worked about. The only concern would be is if

somehow they descend back into a lack of mental toughness and things like that, but I just don't think that's going to be a case. I also don't think it was just EMA. I think it was a lot of Al Horford too. And I think it was a lot of Marcus Smart. And I think it was a lot of Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown just growing up and turning into solid veteran basketball players. So this offseason, they traded for Malcolm Brogden, the only rotation player they gave up in that deal was his Daniel Tice. This was a really smart ceiling-raising trade. It addressed a specific weakness, which was their ball handling,

which we're going to talk a lot about here in a minute. It's a very natural fit with the stars with their kind of like driving kick system that they like to run. He fills that fifth starter slash fifth closer spot that I was talking about earlier that was too inconsistent. They were really inconsistent with guys like, you know, Derek White and with guys like Robert Williams and guys like Grant Williams. You plug Malcolm Brogden in there.

That's five really, really good basketball players. Five, like not quite All-Star, but fringe All-Star level talents across the floor there. An outstanding shooter, looking at it, he only played like 35 games or something last year, so I looked at the previous season, 2021. He shot 44% on catch-and-shoot threes, which is a 67% effective field-go percentage.

that's amazing. He shot 40% on seven pull-up jumpers per game. As I've said, pull-up jump shooting is becoming one of the most important offensive skills in the league because it's the primary way you beat any coverage. The best way to beat, you know, pick and roll coverage is pull-up jump shooting. The best way to beat help defense that meets you at the rim is pull-up jump shooting. It's just a very, very important skill, and he's great at it. He averaged six assists to just two turnovers. He was one of only 12 players in the league last year, excuse me, in 2021, to average at least five and a half assists with less than two and a half turnovers. Marcus Smart was on that list as well, by the way.

But this gets the ball out of Tatum and Brown's hands more to start possessions, which is good. Let them catch and work with an advantage or work out of triple threat so that their ball handling weaknesses don't get exposed as much. It's just an increase in aggregate ball handling on the floor at any given moment. In the Celtics driving kick system, which is going to be one of the big themes of this show today, their offense is predicated on general rating high-quality spot-up possessions. They led the league in spot-up possessions generated per game. That's possessions where a guy caught the ball with a defender closing out at him

and he was able to score out of that play or take a shot out of that play. He's the reason why I have the Celtics at number two. I think he dramatically improves their ball handling. I think he fits great into their system. It raises the level of talent on the roster. The Buck state put, the Celtics got better. why I put them in at number two. They also signed down Danilo Golanari, but he tore his ACL likely won't play this year. So looking at their depth chart, it gets a little finicky because

there's not a whole lot of depth here. At the guard position, it's a lot of really good players, but not a lot of depth. At the guard position, Malcolm Brogden, Marcus Smart, Derek White, and Peyton Pritchard, on the wings, Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown, Grant Williams, and then a huge drop-off to the likes of Sam Houser and Justin Jackson, Biggs, Al Horford, and Robert Williams. If you look at their top eight guys, which is Robert Williams, you know, Grant Williams, Al Horford, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, Derek White, Marcus Mark, Malcolm Brogden, those eight guys are probably the most talented top eight in the entire league, in my opinion. But after eight, it's a pretty significant drop-off to Peyton Pritchard, and then it's an even bigger drop-off

to everybody else. They do not have depth. And eight guys is more than enough to win you a bunch of playoff series if you stay healthy. But during the regular season with guys in and out of the lineup like Robert Williams is expected to miss some time to start the season, in that case, being down to seven usable players and having to play lesser NBA players after that point, that could hurt them a little bit in the standings early in the... Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the Podcasts Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Cliver Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators,

and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space. For honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream,

this is right what you need to be. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking.

What the hell does George Bush got to do a little kill? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through. line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Season. I would not be surprised if they attempted to trade Danila Gallinari around the deadline in conjunction with one or two more minimum. contracts to try to bring back a usable rotation player to kind of bolster them, particularly on the wing. I mean, a guy that I'd look out for there is if for some reason, Jay Crowder doesn't get traded before Danilo's no trade timeline lapses. Once Danilo becomes available for trade, if Jay Crowder is still available, he'd be the kind of guy that I'd be looking at there.

So looking at the offensive end of the four, the most of their sets came out of three looks that I saw. They ran a lot of five out sets. They ran four low sets where you have one guy at the top of the key, four players along the baseline. And then they ran some horn sets. So out of horns, they run a lot of double pick and roll. They'll do it both ways.

Like they'll either have both bigs come up and set ball screens on both sides. And then Marcus Smart or Tatum or Brown will like pick a side to go off of. And then one guy will roll to the basket and the other will pop. Sometimes they both go on the same side and do the same concept. We talked about this a little bit yesterday with Milwaukee. The concept behind double pick and roll is you want your shooting. big to pop to the three point line and you're rolling big to roll to the basket. Generally speaking, both screen defenders will drop and usually get great stuff at the top of the

key. At the very least, if not a jump shot, you can quickly flow into a dribble handoff from there and get some good stuff. Also out of horns, I saw them run a lot of little interchanges before they'd run double pick and roll. So they'd have like Horford downscreening for Marcus Smart and Markis Smart would come up and then Smart and Williams would set the ball screen. And the big thing there is guards just don't know how to defend ball screen actions as the screener. I talked about this a lot when we talked about inverted pick and roll with the Denver Nuggets, but essentially when you turn a guard into a screen defender, they just don't have a lot of experience with that. More often than not, they just hug up to their man, and your ball handler

can get good advantages going off that. And there are four low sets. The most frequent thing they would do is have Tatum start on the block and have one of the bigs, either Williams or Horford, come and pin down for Tatum, and then have Tatum sprint up to the top of the the key. Now, Marcus Smart is up there with the basketball, and from there, they'll do a couple of different things. They'll either have Smart use Tatum as a ball screen, or they'll have Tatum come off of a dribble handoff. But almost every time they did that, it would result in a guard getting switched onto Tatum. And almost immediately, if Tatum had the basketball, he'd give it back up to Marcus Smart and then go post to the elbow, or if he set the ball screen and Marcus Smart came off to get the

switch, he would just run to the elbow. Now, the idea there is if Tatum comes off of a pin down at the block. His defender is now trailing the play. When his defender is trailing the play and he sets a ball screen, that forces the switch. Because now at that point, Tatum's man is trailing the play. He's not in position to do anything else at that point. Same thing with the dribble handoff. It just basically forces the switch on the screening action in that case. But all of it's designed to get Tatum at the elbow with a triple threat attacking a guard. That's one of the spots on the floor where he's pretty successful. They also run a bunch of stuff out of five out.

The main thing that I saw there was, like, actions that set up dribble handoff. So they'd have, like, Tatum and Brown on the wings, smart up top, and then Williams and Horford in the corners. They'd have them both come up and set flare screens, and then Tatum and Brown will come off, but then they'd immediately turn around and set another pin down, or they'd make a post entry to Horford on the wing, and then he'd go do a dribble handoff with Tatum. Again, all little interchanges that are designed to get that first drive, because this is a driving kick offense.

It is predicated on everyone's ability to extend the advantage and everyone's ability to shoot at the end of the play or to finish at the rim, whether that's as a cutter or driving all the way to the basket. But everything's designed to get that initial advantage so they can do their driving kick. As you can imagine, a pretty common theme around the league. But this is one of the better driving kick teams in the league. This team and the clippers are the two best that I've seen at it. A couple other offensive looks that I wanted to go over.

Transition ball screens. They'll do a lot, like, pointless ball screens just to get switches. The Clippers did a ton of this, too, on tape. But, like, you know, Marcus Smart comes up the floor, and they're not really running everything. The defense isn't set. The offensive players aren't even in their spacing yet, but Tatum's down the floor.

He'll just come instead a quick ball screen for Marcus Smart, get the switch, and then run down to the elbow. Or if it's a big man, like Al Horford, then they'll quickly run out and drag the big man out. and try to drive past him to the basket. The other thing that I've seen them do a lot is transition dribble handoffs with a double screen. So like Tatum and Brown will sprint the wings and they'll get to the deep corner.

And then Al Horford, like Marcus Smart will bring the ball at the floor. And what he'll do is he'll just pitch it to Al Horford at the top of the key. And then he'll run down and set a pin down for Tatum. And Horford will dribble into it like a dribble handoff. So it acts as like a double screen. But the last guy dribble hand hands the ball off off the dribble to Tatum. then he curls around that and he has an opportunity to get downhill. Again, everything is designed to start the driving kick.

That's the fundamental foundation of their offense. So in isolation, they were the fifth most frequent isolation team, but 12 most efficient. A consistent theme here, Tatum's numbers in isolation and post-up are actually not that great. He's more of a point forward than he is a scoring forward. He just doesn't know it yet, but we'll get into that here in a minute. So Tatum only averaged 0.91 points per possession in isolation. Jalen Brown was awesome. 1.04 points per possession. They were middle of the pack,

pick and roll frequency and efficiency team. They were fourth in post-up efficiency, which is really good. Jalen Brown and Al Horford are pulling the weight there. Once again, Jalen Brown, excellent post-player in terms of scoring efficiency. Jason Tatum, not so much. Off-screen actions. This kind of stuff reminds me of what the Chicago Bulls did. Again, when you're talking about having Tatum and Brown coming off of curling off of screens or dribble handoffs rather than just attacking with a live dribble. It just gives them more advantages. We talked about this a lot with the Chicago Bulls with Zach Levine and DeMarta Rosen. It's just easier to play basketball when your defender isn't set and up in your airspace to start the possession, but rather he's trailing the play or he's closing out at you.

The more advantage situations that you create, the better. Jalen Brown, once again, amazing off of screens. Jalen Brown 1.11 points per possession, which is in the 77th percentile. Marcus Martin, Derek White, both did really well in those situations this year. But spot-up is where this team is most successful, and that is the result of driving and kicking. They had the most spot-up possessions in the league. It's funny, too, like when I watch tape, and I, like, because obviously you guys know I use a big combination of metrics and film, right? Now the metrics that I focus on are possession by possession.

Like I don't ever look, I hate catch-alls. Like, I don't want you to tell me what, you know, what Jason Tatum's offensive real plus-minus is. Like, that just, to me, that's insignificant stat that accomplishes absolutely nothing. That's just my opinion. I think the game of basketball is way too complicated to simplify every single type of possession into one single number. But I love looking at points per possession on specific play types

because that's just the scoreboard. Like, if you run 100 post-ups, and you score 111 points out of it, then you averaged 1.1 points per possession. That's just the scoreboard. And I'm simplifying it down to that. Like, okay, spot up possessions, this is how many points you scored out of them.

That's how good you were attacking closeouts. That's just the scoreboard. There's some context on tape, right? Like maybe you're playing with better creators so you get better spot-up reps. Yeah, that absolutely is a factor. Maybe you're a post player, but you don't have great shooting around you,

so you're running all your post-up. steps in war spacing. Yeah, there is some context to there, but I at least can take scoreboard information from those numbers that I'm grabbing, whereas with the catch-alls, I don't get anything from it. But at the end of the day, like, I always think it's interesting when I see connections between what I'm seeing on tape and what I'm seeing in the numbers. When I watch the Boston Celtics, I think they're a great driving kick team. When I watch the LA Clippers, I think they're a great driving kick team. That stands out on tape. So when I watch the Boston Celtics, I think they're a great driving kick team. that stands out on tape. So when I go to the numbers and I see that the Clippers and Celtics are

two of the very best spot-up teams in the league, that tells me that my eye test is correct, which is good. And sometimes you need to go both ways there. Like if I'm watching, you know, Kendrick Nunn this year for the Lakers, and I'm thinking, man, it seems like he's struggling in pick and roll. But then I look at his pick-and-roll ball handler possessions and he's torching everybody, like he's averaging 1.14 points per possession, then that means I'm either not watching the film correctly enough, or I need to go back and look at it again and see if there's something that I'm missing there. You kind of use the two to help each other, if that makes sense. But their spot-up possessions are the result of driving kick basketball.

They were eighth in spot-up efficiency. This is where Jason Tatum was the most effective, finishing driving kick possessions. He had 1.12 points per spot-up possession, which was 79th percentile in the league. Jalen Brown, Marcus Smart, Grant Williams, Al Horford, and Peyton Pritchard were all over one point per possession in close-out situations. So essentially, they're really good at driving and kicking the basketball, and they're really good at finishing when they get those opportunities. That's why they were the second best offense in the league after January 8th. So looking at the offensive end of the floor in the playoffs, because this is where Boston had the most struggle in this playoff run. there were two specific areas that I wanted to look at,

turnovers, taking care of the basketball, and then their general offensive process, which we'll talk about in a second. Their inability to take care of the basketball and consistently make good decisions consistently undercut themselves in the playoffs in every single one of the series. They were talented enough to beat that Milwaukee team

in five games without Chris Middleton. They were talented enough to beat that Miami team in four games. They were talented enough to beat that Warriors team in maybe six years. games, right? But they were, but in all cases, it extended much further than it should. Seven games against the Bucks, seven games against the heat, three consecutive losses against the Warriors to actually blow that series. That's, that's where that offensive process stuff ended up biting them. Turnovers ignite the fast break, which they were such a terrible transition defense team,

like I said, and I shared those numbers earlier. Like when teams faced Boston set defense in the half court, they really struggled to score. They did. but when teams are able to avoid that situation entirely because you keep turning the damn basketball over and now they're attacking your helter-skelter bad transition defense they don't have to score against your half-court defense and they're going to kill you there also when you turn the basketball over it prevents you getting a shot on the rim it's like worse than a miss it's like a worse version of a miss they were 14 and 3 when they held their turnovers to 15 or fewer they were 0 and 7 when they went over 15 turnovers that's how much of a difference an indicator it was for them in their success last year.

And then simply, when I'm saying offensive process, I'm referring basically to the approach of their ball handlers. Like I said earlier, Jason Tatum is a point forward. He just doesn't know it yet. He's got a little bit too much of that Kobe Bryant mentality, like I'm this three-level score. And the truth of the matter is, is he's not that great creating his own shot in isolation.

He's not that great pull-up jump shooting. He's not that great finishing at the rim. His one real strength offensively where he actually excels compared to the rest of the league is three-point shooting. Pull up three-point shooting, catch-and-shoot three-point shooting. Everything else he does offensively, Jalen Brown's better than him. But Jason Tatum is actually a very good passer when he actually plays to that archetype. He is a point forward. He is a big forward that can score the basketball, but his main gift is the ability to create

advantages and get his offense moving with the pass. That's his best skill. They were 7 and 0 when Jason Tatum had at least 8 assists in this playoff run. They were 7 and 10 when Tatum had 7 or fewer. He too frequently lost sight of his best identity and played a bad brand of basketball for his skill set and hurt the team a lot. Check this out. In wins, the Boston Celtics had an assist to turnover ratio of 2.03. In losses, they had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.29. That's a 37% drop in assist-to-turnover efficiency from wins to losses. So to put it simply, when they drove the basketball to kick it to teammates to start the driving kick,

they kicked everyone's ass. When they drove the basketball and over-penetrated and tried to force the action for themselves, they turned the basketball over. they didn't get their driving kick going and they hurt their defense and they lost basketball games. And that's why you had like these really ugly stretches of basketball

but then these like incredibly dominant stretches of basketball. Huge runs in games. They blew out a ton of teams from January 8th to the end of the season. That game won to the NBA finals in the fourth quarter. When they got going on both ends of the floor

when they were really driving and kicking the basketball when like getting wide open catch and shoot threes, for Peyton Pritchard and Marcus Smart and Al Horford and, you know, Jalen Brown made a couple of tough ones, but it's a lot of driving kick in there. When they play that style and they're locked in defensively, they're damn near impossible to beat in those situations.

Moving to the defensive end of the floor. So their scheme, they switch one through three when Horford and Williams are on the floor and they switch one through four when they have one center on the floor. And then they run a drop with Al Horford and Robert Williams. Now, in their drop, they're supposed to be at the level of the screen. That's the way that drop coverages account for pull-up jump shooting in theory. But it's so much harder to do in theory than it is in practice.

Fatigue inevitably caused their coverages to fail against the teams like Miami and Golden State. So, for instance, if you run a drop coverage right and the guard chases over the top of the screen and you have a big at the level of the screen, then there is no pull-up three. And the more that the guard is attached to the backside, the more Horford or Williams can drop back and take away the roll. When it's run properly, it works great. The problem is, is when you get tired, it's very easy to get caught on a ball screen as the guard.

When you get tired and you're the big, it's very easy to run up maybe to the top of the key instead of to the NBA line. Maybe you run up between the free throw line and the top of the key. Like you just don't quite get high enough because you're tired. that's what happens. Whereas when it was switching, you offset all of that physical wear and tear onto mental focus and energy. And so that's the thing.

In theory, I get you Doka's game plan. Hey, we're going to be super physical on the ball. We're going to chase them over the top. You know, here's our big man waiting at the level of the screen. In theory, it makes sense. But in practice, it's just really, really difficult to execute. But yeah, so again, I'm talking a lot about bad Boston as it pertains to, as it pertains to this Warrior series, because that's why I have them at number two and the Warriors at number one.

But make no mistake, this is a very good basketball team, and we're going to talk about why here in just a second. So looking at their metrics, they were first in defensive rating, as I said, they were second in defending the paint, second in blocks per 100 possessions. Robert Williams and Al Horford just menaces around the rim at all times. they were 11th in defending the three, which is really solid when you consider how good they are defending the paint. Usually for teams that sell out to defend the paint, they're going to give up a lot of three-point shots, but they run around like crazy in rotation and they take that stuff away. This is a damn good defensive team, especially in the half-court. Their half-court defense held three of the four teams they played in this playoff run under,

I think they held, their overall defense held three of their four opponents to 110 offensive rating or less, and only the net scored more than that. And then in the half court, they stifled everybody. If you look up scoring against Boston in the half court on cleaning the glass, it's kind of frightening how good they were. Their areas for improvement, they need to be better as a defensive rebounding team and better as a transition defense team. That's on coaching.

I don't know if Missoula is going to fix that. I don't know if they'll bring in another assistant. I don't know if it was just a bad season for them. They're going to have to figure out those particular things. The other thing, too, is their offensive process is directly related to their transition. defense when they take care of the basketball, when they play driving kick basketball and generate good shots, they have an opportunity to get their defense set while the ball is being taken out of the basket. The two are very intricately related, but that's what's so cool about the game of basketball.

Tatum's rim finishing in particular really hurt them in transition defense. He missed 47% of his layups against Golden State. That's just really, really, really bad. The other thing, the other last area improvement for Boston potentially defensively is forcing more turnovers. They were a middle of the pack turnover team. With how athletic they are, they should be able to force more turnovers, turnovers playing the passing lanes and being more aggressive on the ball. Looking in defense on the, in the warrior series, Steve Kerr's plan, like what I'm going to do here too is I'm going to talk a little bit about the game plan that Steve Kerr used against Boston in, uh, in this particular segment. Tomorrow I want to focus on

some of the personnel things and the actual like just basketball technique things that golden state did to swing that series um steve curse plan was to attack boston's desire to not switch screens with their bigs this showed up in the numbers pretty crazy so the warriors attempted 21.7 pull-up jumpers per game in the regular season 21.7 that went up that went up to 28.2 against Boston. So they had a significant increase in pull-up jump shooting against Boston. They were spamming high pick and roll, even though they don't like to, to get Steph Curry pull-up jump shot opportunities because they knew that was the weakness in Boston's

defense. Their incessant desire to run drop coverage, even though it doesn't work against teams like Golden State, Golden State's a smart team. They're going to find ways to attack it. They massively increase their pull-up jump shooting volume. and then in percentage, the Celtics shot 28% on pull-up jumpers in that series, which is not a strength of theirs. The Warriors shot 42% on pull-up jumpers.

It's their strength. So it's easy to see how that ended up backfiring on them the way that it did. They also were dropping on off-ball screens, which I thought was really weird. Sometimes Rob would just hug up onto Looney while he was setting off-ball screens, and so there was just no help, and Clay Thompson and Steph Curry would just come flying off and get wide-open threes. Other times he'd just drop way back into the paint. Al Horford just ran like kind of like a modified drop coverage on off ball pin downs and stuff

and too often he was just way too low as Clay Thompson and staff would come running off for shots. Just a really poor, poor X's and Nose game planning from Boston in that series. The other thing too, and this is this is something that I'd like to see Boston address this year. And I talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the show. One of the fundamental concepts of Boston's defense is using Rob Williams, as a roamer. So they attach him to somebody that can't shoot, right? So Kevin Luni, for instance, in the, um, in the warrior series or put him on BAM at a bio in the Miami Heat series. But what he'll end up doing is he just kind of runs around and does whatever the hell he wants. Like,

you know, Dremont Green will catch the ball on the block and he'll just randomly run over and double, even though Draman Green's not going to hurt you out of the post, right? Or he'll randomly overhelp on a guy who doesn't need help on a drive because he's got it contained. And what ended up happening as a result is his man, is free to do whatever the hell he wants around the rim. Kavana Lune had 21 offensive rebounds in the NBA finals. And then just in general, his random double teams opened up those Golden State Blender possessions where it's pass, pass, pass, close out attack, close out attack,

lay up wide open three. You know what I mean? It got them into that Golden State chaos that is so difficult to handle. It did not look good on tape. So I'd really like to see Boston kind of rain in. um, Rob Williams this year and give him a little bit more of a structured role defensively, because I think even though you'll lose some of his highlight blocks and some of the crazy plays he can create, I think he actually does more damage than good when he's recklessly roaming around

like that. Um, looking back at their coaching staff for a second, this is an incredibly talented team that was unbeatable when they played well, but they frequently lost sight of their offensive identity and they were sloppy in the details of defense. So if they get somebody in there, whether that's Missoula or it's Frank Volga or Quinn Snyder that they add to the staff or it's Brad Stevens coming down in the end of the season. If they get someone in there that runs a little bit of a tighter ship on the details, they could become a very, very dangerous basketball team. I think coaching is actually a weakness on this particular roster.

So the best case scenario is that toughness lingers with Yudoka gone, that they still have that same mentality that they had from him, that Joe Missoula just does a better job of, coaching the details and the X's and O's. Maybe Brad Stevens gets involved, like I said. Maybe they signed somebody to the bench. Malcolm Brogden significantly improves their ball handling and decision making. You know, again, and with this Malcolm Brogden piece, it's the aggregate ball handling that helps with avoiding turnovers. The other thing, too, is just, it's just giving you another matchup opportunity. So if Marcus Smart, Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown, and Malcolm

Brogden are all on the floor. And they've got, you're playing a team like the Warriors last year, for instance. And they got Gary Payton the second, just like up in Jason Tatum, just like disrupting his handle doing all this crazy stuff. And they got Andrew Wiggins on Jalen Brown. And, you know, they've got, you know, Dremont Green, you know, guarding Marcus, my, I'm just throwing out random matchups. Maybe Malcolm Brogden, that fourth one, he has a better matchup.

Maybe he's getting guarded by a guy who struggles a little bit more in full court defense, like an auto porter junior or Moses Moody or something like. that, right? That's kind of where your advantage is. Particularly Miami did a lot of damage to Boston by full court pressure or attacking them right when they cross half court. Just increasing your aggregate ball handling helps in those situations. And most importantly, helping it so that Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown can attack with an advantage and with a triple threat rather than having to bring the ball off the floor and get to their spots. I think that the Malcolm Brogden addition is really, really going to help them. They need Rob Williams.

to be fully healthy for this playoff run instead of playing on a bulky knee, and he needs to find a more structured defensive role. Like I said, if all of those things go right, that edges them past Milwaukee to me, and actually it gives them a really good chance to win the title this year. The worst case scenario is that the loss of Yudoka's emotional leadership hurts the team in their toughness. Health issues, particularly with Rob Williams and Malcolm Brogden. Malcolm Brogden, I don't think, has played over 60 games in the last three years,

so that's something he's got to figure out. Rob Williams, obviously with the knee, he had to get another surgery. They're not very deep. Like I said, they've got a really talented top eight, but there's not a whole lot after that. And then maybe Brogden ends up not solving their ball handling issues. I believe he will to a certain extent, but that would be the worst case scenario is that their ball handling issues linger.

And then what will end up happening is if all those things happen, they'll just get beat by a smarter basketball team. They'll get beat by a team that's sharper in those details that's more disciplined and they'll end up going home unhappy. Biggest X-factor for this team is Jason Tatum. I had him sixth in my player rankings. because I think that he's potentially the best wing defender in basketball. I have never seen a basketball player do a better job guarding Kevin Durant

than Jason Tatum did in the first round of this year's playoff run. And then when he plays to his strengths offensively, when he plays point forward, he looks like a bona fide superstar. In wins in this playoff run, he averaged 28, 7 and 7 on 60% true shooting. that's LeBron James type of numbers. That's superstar stuff. That's how good Jason Tatum is when he has his head on straight. That's why I had him at number six.

The problem is, is he has these nights where he just loses sight of that. And he hunts his own shot, takes bad pull-up threes, doesn't look to be the facilitator and rather looks to be the score. In losses in this playoff run, he averaged 23, 7, and 5 on 51% true shooting. And like I said, seven and O when he had at least eight assists, seven and ten when he did it. So it's a legitimate thing with Tatum, his inconsistency. I would argue that the reason why the Celtics lost in this playoff run

was in large part due to Tatum's inconsistency. I think him getting outplayed so badly by Steph Curry was a huge part of why they lost in the NBA finals. So a couple of specific flaws that he needs to address to be more consistent. his rim finishing. Like I said, 53% in the restricted area against Golden State. The reason here is he hunts for fouls instead of going out strong. He sticks his arms out as far as he can and tries to scoop up to the rim

trying to draw that hack foul, but they just let too much of that stuff go during the playoffs. And so what ends up happening is he just misses all of his layups. Not only does that hurt him in his efficiency, it hurts the team in transition defense. When he smokes a layup, falls down into Camer Row, turns and complains to the refs while the team is running the other way. If he takes on the role of point forward rather than scoring wing and takes care of the basketball, focuses on creating the initial advantage, then he's a superstar.

Jalen Brown's the better pure score anyway. Jalen Brown's better in isolation by a lot, and Jalen Brown's better in post-ups by a lot. It's a more organic fit between the two of them if Tatum takes on more of that point-forward role and Jalen Brown takes on more of that scoring role. Either way, the ball ends up working its way back to Tatum anyway, and he's an excellent play finisher like we talked about earlier. So that's what makes him the biggest X-factor for the Celtics team in my opinion. He could be the sixth best player in the world or he could be the 16th best player in the world. That's the gap between his good and his bad. And he was the

sixth best player in the world for a good two-thirds of this playoff run. But it wasn't every night and he played poorly in the finals and it cost his team. So I don't see any scenario where he's not the X-factor. The way he plays will be the largest determining factor in the fortunes of the Boston Celtics this year. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Tomorrow, we're covering the Golden State Warriors. I want to dive a lot further into some of the things that they did really well against Boston from a personnel standpoint, basketball technique stuff that I find to be very interesting. A very deserving number one for me, and I'm excited to talk about them. I will see you guys tomorrow.

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