The Celtics’ Game 1 blowout was surgical. Limiting their turnovers to eight and Philly to 4-of-23 from behind the arc certainly helped, but offensively, Boston stuck to their core offensive principles en route to a 123-91 win over the 76ers.
There are 2,350 square feet from midline to baseline and head coach Joe Mazzulla maximizes every inch of it. On most offensive sets, the Celtics want to turn their halfcourt sets into 3-on-3 battles with shooters spaced out in the corners.
Conceptionally, Boston wants to force defenses to pick their poison between 1) a scoring ball-handler, 2) a scorer coming off a screen, or 3) a big man who can either pick-and-pop or roll to the rim. It sounds simple, but done with focus and precision, it has resulted in this year’s Celtics ranking amongst the most efficient offenses in league history.
Sometimes, it’s this easy. Derrick White, Jayson Tatum, and Nikola Vucevic are walking up the ball and preparing to run an action to either free up White or Tatum. Payton Pritchard and Jaylen Brown are flattened out to the corners. And without a single screen, the spacing does most of the work.
Sure, Vooch does get shoulder into Kelly Oubre and is ready to receive the ball from White for a possible dribble hand off or another screen. Paul George sees none of that — all his attention is on Brown.
But because of all the space leveraged by everybody’s ability to shoot the three, Brown has so much space to play in. A simple back cut and a perfectly placed bounce pass from White has JB rocking the rim to extend the lead to 25.
However, it’s not always that easy and that’s where Mazzulla & Co. have employed a series of DHOs, back screens, etc. to put teams in a predicament. One of the Celtics’ most used actions is the Spain pick-and-roll. Here’s CelticsBlog’s resident Xs and Os expert, Nik Land, on the action: “Spain or ‘Stack’ Pick and roll is an on-ball screen followed by a back screen on the on-ball screeners man.”
Again, we’ve got Tatum — Boston’s best player on the floor — and Baylor Scheierman, in the corners. Pritchard, Neemias Queta, and Sam Hauser creating an almost football-esque I formation, and in a way, it’s set up to run the ball.
Queta sets and flips a screen for Pritchard and as soon as he sees Dominick Barlow’s attention switch to Payton, he knows that he’s got him beat. Hauser sets a back screen with solid contact, Tyrese Maxey makes zero contact with Neemy, and Queta is free for the alley-oop.
Two plays later, a similar action. It’s a dribble hand off this time between Queta and Pritchard with Tatum setting the screen.
Queta is met by Quentin Grimes on the rim run, but the damage is already done. Mazzulla stresses the importance of creating 3-on-2s and 2-on-1s, but this is a 3-on-1 with Tatum drawing so much attention above the break.
Pritchard has three options here: hit the cutting Queta again, kick out to the now wide open Hauser, or eventually, take the easy layup himself. This is laser eye surgery for the Celtics.
Later in fourth and with the game in hand, it’s another Spain PnR with different personnel, but same result.
Jabari Walker does a good job positioning himself to defend Pritchard’s drive and Luka Garza running to the restricted area. Unfortunately, that leaves Jordan Walsh, a 38% corner three-ball shooter, alone for an open jumper.
The 76ers can certainly make adjustments in Game 2. The playoffs are all about moves and counter moves and counter moves to the counter moves. They could switch on the screens more or blitz and hedge the ball handler to blow up the movement. The chess match continues tonight at 7 pm.
