The Celtics begin a tough back-to-back tonight when they take on the Thunder in Oklahoma City. The Thunder will be without Kevin Durant, who manages to keep missing games against the Celtics. This will be the fourth straight Thunder/Celtics matchup he’ll miss… but the Thunder are 3-0 in those games. Here’s how to not make it 4-0.
1: Don’t let Westbrook pass
Westbrook is freakin’ monster out there. He attacks the rim with ferocity. And there is little that anyone on the Celtics will be able to do to stop him. That’s not an insult, though. There’s little most anyone can do to stop Russell Westbrook.
What the Celtics have to do, though, is limit him. We will accept that his scoring will be hard to stop. But Westbrook has become a triple-double machine. If they can prevent Westbrook, the NBA’s current assist leader (10.9 per game) from feeding his teammates and raising their games, the Celtics will have more of a chance.
1A: DON’T LET WESTBROOK GET TO THE RIM!!
Look at his heat map:
He likes to dunk. If you noticed from those videos, a lot of his big dunks come off of steals, so, as usual, a key for the Celtics is to protect the ball. But it doesn’t matter where or when… if there’s even a sliver of a lane to get to the rim, Russell Westbrook will find it, and he will embarrass you. Let him take those top of the key 3’s… I can live with that.
2: Attack Enes Kanter
If there’s a soft underbelly to OKC’s defense, it’s Kanter. With him on the court, opponents have an offensive rating of 106.4. With him off the court, it drops to 100.6. Put him into positions to make decisions… spread the floor with shooters on his side.. run pick and rolls with his man… whatever you have to do make him have to defend.
3: Get those defensive rebounds
OKC has the highest offensive rebounding percentage in the league… and this is why a defensive liability like Kanter is in the game. He’s second amongst NBA regulars (6 or more games played) with an offensive rebounding percentage of 17.9%. The offensive rebound has lost some value over recent years in the NBA, but that doesn’t mean good offensive rebounders aren’t valuable. And when you’re facing a team as good as OKC, you can’t ruin a defensive stand that forced a miss by giving up an offensive rebound.
4: Make your shots
ANALYSIS!
But seriously, the “shoot poorly but play staunch defense to hang around until someone gets hot” stuff isn’t going to work against OKC. But this is more than “hey ya humps, make ya shawts, will yaz?”… Making shots is about good shot selection and running good, clean offensive sets with crisp cuts and good passing. If you can’t push the pace, guys need to be fully engaged on offense and not have those lazy isolation possessions or those stretches where they make lazy passes that get picked off.
The Celtics will need to play almost perfectly to win this game. But they do have the ability to do it if they do those four things.
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