Yesterday, the Celtics made it official. Kendrick Perkins won’t be playing in game seven tonight against the Lakers. Kendrick Perkins is very important for the Celtics on the defensive end, and the numbers prove it. According to raw +/-, the team is about 8 points better per 100 possessions with Perk on the floor versus with him on the bench, and it is performing better on both sides of the ball with Perk in the line-up (according to BasketballValue via CelticsHub).
On the defensive end, Kendrick Perkins is the anchor, allowing for the rest of the team to play against more favorable matchups. Kevin Garnett on Andrew Bynum is rough, but Kevin Garnett on Pau Gasol (the matchup when Kendrick Perkins is in the game) is much more manageable.
Perkins is also one of the reasons why the Celtics are so good at defending the pick and roll:
Perkins hedges out real hard here, but the Celtics probably gameplan it this way to get it out of Kobe’s hands. The Lakers actually counter with a nice play, a quick pass to Gasol who then hits a rolling Bynum (trying to take advantage of Perkins’ hedge). However, Perkins is able to get back, use his body, and force Bynum under the basket. This is something that Kendrick Perkins does very well.
Rajon Rondo is easily the key to the Celtics offense. If he is playing well, then the Celtics are really tough to stop, if he isn’t playing well then the Celtics look average at best. In game six, the Lakers were able to slow Rajon Rondo and as a result they were able to hold the Celtics to just 67 points. Here is how they did it:
Ignoring Rondo In The Halfcourt
The Lakers were able to stop Rajon Rondo in the halfcourt by basically ignoring him as his defender (Kobe Bryant for the most part) played about 10-15 feet off of him the entire game, whether he had the ball or not. It was as if the Lakers were saying, “If Rajon Rondo beats us with jump shots, then so be it.”
The above play is a perfect example of the Lakers’ strategy working as planned. Here, the Celtics run a screen and roll with Rajon Rondo coming off of a screen set by Kendrick Perkins. The Lakers switch the screen, and Pau Gasol ends up being forced to cover Rondo. This is usually a point guard’s dream, and the way a point guard normally attacks this is by pulling the ball out and then just blowing by the big man covering him. In fact, Rajon Rondo does try to do this, but Pau Gasol doesn’t take a step in Rondo’s direction and he stays in the paint. Rondo is basically left with only one option (the pass to the mismatch isn’t there because Gasol is clogging the passing lane), and that is to take an awkward jumper that he misses.
Rajon Rondo’s offensive rebound late in the fourth quarter with the Celtics up by ten points was a pretty big play. Instead of getting a defensive rebound and having the chance to cut the lead down into single digits, the Lakers were facing a 12 point lead with the Boston crowd going nuts. While this was a great individual effort by Rondo, the Lakers (more specifically Lamar Odom) are responsible for this play:
The Boston Celtics get the ball in Paul Pierce’s hands so he can initiate the offense. Once he gets the ball, the Celtics run a pick and pop with Ray Allen as the screener.
The Lakers are going to have to get on the same page when it comes to defending the Boston Celtics in the post. There were a few situations in the second half where the Lakers tried to front the post, however the lack of ball pressure lead to easy baskets for the Celtics:
In both of these videos, the individual parts of the defense aren’t the problem. Kobe makes the correct decision in playing off of Rajon Rondo to prevent him from penetrating and the fronting of the post in itself is a decent strategy. However, you can’t do both at the same time. This is because if you front the post, you are basically daring the offense to throw a pass over the defenders head. Give a guy like Rajon Rondo 10 feet, and he is going to make that pass 9 out of 10 times.
In the end this is all about communication. If the Lakers get caught in front of the the Boston’s big men, they have to let Kobe know (because he can’t see it as he is focused on the ball and his man) so he can put pressure on the basketball. I think being in front of their home crowd, the Lakers are going to be able to communicate easier and you won’t see mistakes like these.
Kobe Bryant’s third quarter in game five was truly amazing to watch. With that being said, I have to agree with Matt Moore who wrote at ProBasketballTalk that this run ruined any chance the Lakers had of winning. They Lakers played their best basketball and were most competitive when they were passing the ball around and having contributions from all players. However, where Moore blames Phil Jackson for this run (for essentially allowing Kobe to go off), I want to give the Celtics defense credit.
When you are dealing with a superstar like Kobe you always here of two defensive strategies. You can double him and force the ball out of his hands and let his teammates beat you, or you can let Kobe get his but not let anyone else go off. The Boston Celtics decided to go with the latter and it worked for them. Think about it, during Kobe’s spectacular run, did you see a double team? No. In fact, the Celtics didn’t overreact and completely change their defensive strategy:
This is Kobe’s first basket of the third, and it is a pretty good look at the Celtics’ defensive strategy. Kobe gets the ball in the corner and starts to back Ray Allen down as no double comes (Paul Pierce fakes a double and stays with his man). Kevin Garnett eventually brings a double, but only when it is apparent that Kobe is going to take a shot. They force Kobe Bryant into a tough shot, but he is able to knock it down.
I briefly mentioned this on Twitter last night, but I wanted to expand on it today. Paul Pierce’s sweet spot is that right elbow, everybody knows this. However, last night in game 5, Paul Pierce was ale to get to his spot at will:
Pierce attempted 11 shots from that right elbow area and he made 6 of them, and his six makes count for half of his total makes for the game. Just by looking at the shot-chart, it is no surprise to find out that Paul Pierce had his best game of the series. If the fans know that this is Pierce’s sweet spot, the Lakers have to know about it, so I think it is safe to assume that one of their goals when defending Paul Pierce is to keep him out of this area. The Lakers failed to do this last night:
The Celtics found themselves in a pretty interesting situation up five points with around 40 seconds left. Taking the ball out of bounds, they had four seconds to advance the ball from the backcourt (where they were inbounding it) past the halfcourt line in four seconds. The Celtics could have advanced the ball with another timeout, but because they only had one left, Doc Rivers decided to draw up a play for the Celtics to quickly advance the basketball. As Trey Kerby so accurately described it, it was basically the NBA version of the “The Annexation of Puerto Rico.” However, the Lakers made a few mistakes that aided to the play:
As Kevin Garnett gets the ball to inbound it, Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce switch places. They don’t set a screen, they just switch. It looks like the first option was Rondo curling towards the basketball (trying to get it to him in a dead sprint so he can just run it across half court) and Paul Pierce was the second option curling out towards the halfcourt line.
Most undersized post players have a hard time scoring against this Laker front line. In fact, we even talked about how the Utah Jazz were having a tough time finishing against the Lakers’ big men earlier in the playoffs. However, the one player who hasn’t seemed bothered by the long arm of the Lakers is Glen “Big Baby” Davis. Davis has been the Celtics’ best player off the bench this entire series, scoring 10.25 points per game on 51.6% shooting, and maybe most importantly, Davis has only had 1 shot of his blocked during the entire series. This is pretty significant considering that he had the largest percentage of his shots blocked in the NBA during the regular season (out of players who played 10 MPG for over 40 games).
So how has Glen Davis been able to finish at the rim this series?
No Wasted Motions
When you are smaller than the defenders who are playing against you, you can’t wait for them. What I mean by that is if you have a step on them (or have them out of position), you can’t wait for them to recover, you need to attack. No extra dribbles or meaningless pumpfakes:
Lamar Odom (Glen Davis’ defender) needs to hedge out on the screen, and that frees up Davis for the roll. Paul Pierce hits him and Davis makes the catch and goes straight up with it before the help defense can make it over. If Davis takes a dribble or makes a pump fake there, he loses his advantage and the defense would be able to alter the shot. However, by going quickly, Davis catches the defense off guard and is able to finish with the And 1.
Usually those in game coach interviews don’t really provide any input, but in between the 3rd and 4th quarter of game 4 Doc Rivers provided some insight into why the Celtics offense once again became stagnant in the 3rd quarter. “We have too many guys trying to do things off the bounce,” Doc said, and he was right. So how did Doc address this? Well, he put 5 guys on the floor who don’t really have the skills to do anything one on one effectively. You had 4 bench guys (Tony Allen, Big Baby, Nate Robinson, and Rasheed Wallace) and Ray Allen (someone who is more comfortable moving without the basketball than running ISO stuff), and almost instantly you saw the Celtics offense open up and become more effective:
Boston’s offense was amazingly patient, and the play above is a perfect example. The Celtics run through the entire set as Nate Robinson enters the ball to Ray Allen then cuts through and comes all the way around to receive the handoff. Wallace then sets a downscreen for Ray Allen who gets a screen from Big Baby. After the screen Big Baby cuts through the lane as the ball gets swung back to Nate Robinson. Robinson hits Big Baby as he is rolling through the lane. What all this ball and player movement does is open up the lane and gives Big Baby an opportunity to work one on one. Against two bigs, Glen Davis isn’t all that effective (he out-muscles one, but the other big man gets the block). Against one, he can use his body to get the ball up on the rim, which is what happens here.
If the Celtics go on to win the NBA Finals after tying up the series at two last night, Rajon Rondo’s steal is going to be one of those plays remembered for a long time. When Paul Pierce missed a jumper with about 45 seconds left and when Kobe grabbed that rebound with the Lakers down 6, you just had a feeling that Kobe and the Lakers would somehow find a way to comeback and win the game. The Celtics defense prevented that from happening:
As Kobe grabs the rebound and starts downcourt, Ray Allen (Kobe’s defender) quickly finds Bryant and gets in front of him while backpedaling.
