2010 Finals Game One: The Boston Celtics Bang Their Heads Against the Wall Over and Over and Over Again: Lakers 102 Celtics 89

The Celtics had better learn quickly that they won’t be able to beat the Lakers in the 2010 Championship by trying to score in the paint all of the time. The Lakers have all the tools necessary to keep the paint very, very well defended. Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum are the mainstays of a dream paint defense. But Pau Gasol and especially Andrew Bynum are not great defenders out in the open floor. Once the Celtics stop their obsession with running everything into the paint (assuming they ever do stop bumping their heads against the Lakers’ wall in the paint over and over and over) they will need to run a little and pass a lot if they want a chance to beat the mighty Lakers. They will need to space the floor and they will need to limit the number of isolation dribble drives and the number of defended isolation pull up jumpers.

The Celtics, who up until now in this year’s playoffs were outstanding at sharing the ball and making sure the offense is a team effort where no one is selfish, looked quite a bit different in this game. We know the Celtics are not selfish and yet they looked kind of selfish in this game. Too much of the scoring was in isolation. And just three players made virtually all of the 19 Celtics assists! Rondo made 8 assists and Nate Robinson and Paul Pierce made 4 assists each. So the Celtics had what we call good playmaking identity (which is a very big part of a great offense) and so Rondo certainly set the playmaking stage correctly, but the Celtics didn’t have enough offensive flow to go along with Rondo’s set-up. In other words, the Celtics did not correlate with Rondo by keeping the ball moving and by correctly mixing out of the paint with in the paint shots. It was too easy for the Lakers' defense in this game.

While we preach all the time that the guards should make about two thirds of the assists, we definitely don’t want to ever see the forwards make virtually no assists at all because they are isolating in the paint all night.

THE CELTICS NEED A LOT MORE THREES
One of the main payoffs for keeping an offensive flow going is that you get to attempt and make open threes. But the Celtics attempted only ten threes in game one and made just one of them! Ray Allen was hammered with foul calls and played only 27 minutes. But even for that number of minutes he should have made more three attempts than ne did, which was just two! Paul Pierce was 0 for 4 on threes, but even if he had made two of his, the Celtics would still have made only half of the absolute minimum number of threes they need to make in a game (which is six threes) to give themselves a chance to beat the Lakers in LA. To make at least six you generally have to attempt at least fifteen. Almost eighteen is the standard or average number of threes that NBA teams attempt in games.

Ten three attempts is not close to enough. During the 2008 Championship series versus the Lakers, the Celtics made eighteen or more three attempts in five of the six games. In one of the games, the Celtics made just fourteen three attempts. This underscores the fact that if you only attempt ten threes you are starving yourself of them.

In this year’s playoffs so far the Celtics have been averaging only about sixteen three-point attempts a game and they have been succeeding with that. But neither the Magic nor the Cavaliers had the ultra strong paint defense that the Lakers have, so the Celtics are going to have to loosen up and attempt more than sixteen threes a game (at least seventeen a game) not fewer than sixteen, and certainly not ten a game, which is suicide.

Not attempting enough threes is exactly what you don’t want to do versus the Lakers. The Celtics most likely can not win a single game in Los Angeles while starving themselves of three-point shooting, and they may not be able to win more than a game or two in Boston by doing this. They or anyone else who is afraid of attempting threes could be swept by this version of the Lakers.

The Celtics need to make sure that primary three-point shooters Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rasheed Wallace are on notice that they need to not be shy about attempting open threes. Wallace is more of a long shot and is much more inconsistent from long range than are Pierce and Allen.

2nd squad point guard Nate Robinson is an excellent three-point shooter and Doc Rivers is going to have to play Rondo and Robinson (two point guards) at the same time for more than he would like, and for more than we would normally recommend. Rondo is not a good three-point shooter but he is a very, very good rebounder, which reduces the disadvantage from playing two point guards. In fact, Rondo in 2009-10 has been overall just as good a defender as Kobe Bryant, so it’s not as if you are going to have two weak guard defenders out there while Rondo and Robinson are out there. Tell Rondo that when Robinson is out there he’s going to have to crash the boards and double down on his defending.

When you are playing one of the best paint defenses of all time, you have to do things you normally would not want to do, and playing two point guards for 10 minutes a game in a seemingly hopeless game in LA is one of them.

Finally, Michael Finley, who Doc Rivers is trying to avoid using, is a bad defender but an outstanding 3-point shot maker. When the Celtics fall behind by more than 15 points in LA, they need to seriously consider playing Finley for 12-16 minutes to see if Finley can get them back in the game. So what if Finley misses his threes and/or is burned defensively? You were not going to win the game with no Finley anyway. And if Finley backfires in a game that you were almost certainly going to lose anyway you can bench him for the rest of the series.

The standard number of three point attempts for a game is almost eighteen and the Celtics need to loosen up and attempt a rock bottom minimum 17 threes in all games or they will go down hard in this series as they bang their heads against the wall over and over trying to do the impossible: beat what is by a wide margin the best paint defense in basketball by running the overwhelming majority of plays into the paint.

The Celtics are apparently confusing the “toughness thing” with running plays into the paint all the time. George Karl does this but we hope the Celtics are not dumb enough to fall in this trap. The Celtics need to not be foolish and overboard about the “toughness thing” and they need to realize that in basketball toughness is much more a defensive concept than an offensive one.

The Celtics should not be thinking that you can not have a great and tough defense just because you attempt twenty threes in a game and/or just because you play small for eight or ten minutes in a game so that you can make some threes. Stay tough on defense but stop being obsessed with being tough on offense and start being obsessed with playing the Lakers the smartest way you can.

The Celtics in this game also looked uptight while they were obsessed with running everything into the paint, as if they knew that what they were doing was not going to work. They were right, it doesn’t work! Along with mixing the offense up and getting it to flow more, they need to loosen up to beat the Lakers in this series. It’s really the same thing said two different ways. Getting the offense well mixed and flowing automatically eliminates the uptight problem. Also and similarly, attempting and making enough long range shots is one of the best ways to prevent a team from getting all uptight.

In the playoffs so far, the Celtics beat the Heat, the Magic, and especially the Cavaliers with an outstanding offense balanced between outside and inside scoring. There has been a lot of passing and a lot of good flow. They mixed dribble drives, catch and shoots, pick and pops, pick and rolls, fast breaks, baselines and threes. The Celtics did not become obsessed with scoring in the paint all the time like they did in game one of the 2010 NBA final. In this game, the Celtics made it look as if you get three points from scoring in the paint and two points from scoring from beyond the 3-point line, but of course it is the other way around.

The Celtics had better learn quickly that a lot of toughness and hustle, but not much flow, can not beat the Lakers this time. That combination may have worked to some extent in the 2008 series but it won’t work this time because the Lakers are both tougher and more skilled in defending and especially in paint defending this time. The Celtics will need toughness, hustle, AND flow to beat the Lakers this time.

Rondo is more than capable of leading the flow but he is going to need teammates to be in the flow a lot more than they were in this game. Rondo can’t pass to himself and, unfortunately, he himself can not reliably make threes. The Celtics need to stop being afraid of running against the Lakers the same high quality Rondo offense that played a huge role in sending LeBron James home early and in getting them to the NBA finals.

In basketball as in life, don’t ever stop doing the best stuff you did to get where you are.