As Always, It Starts With Celtics Defense

Football and basketball alike. Just get stops, Pats.

if we don’t get the rebound. Its frustrating to watch that a good defensive effort gone to waste bec we couldnot control the boards. Besides, our trandition offense from a good defrndive stance is awesome as Rondo is able to create havoc. GET THAT REBOUND!

Our defense has finally gotten into gear as we are now rated #2 at DRtg (97.6 pts per 100 possessions) right behind Philly and we are #1 in opponent eFG%.

Those numbers don’t completely tell the tale, though, as they include the numbers from the first few games when we several times allowed teams to shoot close to 50% and were not playing anywhere near as well on defense. Basically over the last couple of weeks, we look like the #1 defense in the NBA right now.

Our offense still has some ways to go. We are still rated ‘average’ scoring 102.1 points per 100 possessions – a hair below league average. That, too, is somewhat deceptive as we have definitely been playing better overall on the offensive side as well.

But clearly, our offense has suffered the most from the inconsistent lineups that Doc has had to put out on the floor. Our defense has managed to show steady improvement regardless of personnel – probably because the new folks have begun to learn the system and make better defensive contributions even in the face of the injuries we have had. But our offense requires more sophisticated contributions by role players in our half-court sets and that is where we have been hurt first by Pierce’s injury and more recently by Rondo’s injury.

A lot of fans reacted to our winning streak with the suggestion that we don’t really need Rondo but that is foolish thinking, in my opinion. When we run the offense with Pierce at the point we basically cut the playbook down to about a 1/3. We got away with running ISO’s and an outside-in game for a stretch, but that would not work for long as teams would eventually scheme to take that away.

With Rondo back in the fold, a host of new ways to attack the post open up as was apparent in this Memphis game. Memphis is also a very good defensive team (currently ranked 8th in DRtg) and we managed to post 98 points in 90 possessions for a 108.9 ORtg. An important difference was our ability to consistently get into the paint throughout the game, inverting our focus to be inside-out, which is how Doc wants this team to play. Several times in the game the Grizzlies tried to double Pierce or Rondo on the perimeter in order to take away the slash, but with KG as the pivot we were able to pass between PP-KG-RR until one of the two had an open look to the basket, at which point he would be slashing, the defense would collapse and we’d generate points either at the rim or on a kick out.

Another part of our offense that has been inconsistent has been health on the perimeter game. Pierce was an obvious missing piece early, but so was Pietrus. Then just as we get those guys back and their games going, we lost Ray for a bit.

Having all of Paul, Ray and Pietrus (and to a lesser extent Moore & Dooling) all healthy is also a big part of helping our offense as their long range bombs really help to space the floor. With those guys all healthy (along with Pierce), we can ALWAYS have at least 2-3 scary-legitimate 3PT shooters on the floor to complement at least 2 slashers and our bigs. Defenses will not be able to keep 3 guys with feet in the paint with this lineup.

Another key improvement of note was Wilcox finally getting a chance demonstrate his ability to clean up & finish around the rim on offense. With the defense often collapsing on Pierce or Rondo, CW had some easy cleanup reads to either take the dump off from the attacker or to crash the board and cleanup.

If we can play that way on offense consistently, attacking and playing the inside-out game, our scoring differential should start to rise. It was horrible early in the year and has at least climbed to ‘good’, but it is a long way from looking like ‘contender’. Great Celtics teams of the past have posted an ORtg-DRtg net of at least 5 points and preferably much higher. In 2008 it was an awesome 11.3. We are currently at 4.5.

….thanks for the numerical insight.

I am a bit of a stat-geek, and I’d like to know how what our defensive rating per 100 possessions was for the last 10 or so games. I could only do manual computation (meaning I don’t have the stamina to re-compute for each game) and what I got was about 80 ppg for the opposition for the last 10 games. (again, that’s not per 100) That is a very encouraging sign tho. Very very very encouraging.