Apr 5, 2013; Boston, MA, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving (2) shoots the ball against Boston Celtics power forward Chris Wilcox (44) and point guard Avery Bradley (0) during the second half at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

The Boston Celtics lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers, but this is common when a team is missing its best two players–really, its best four. There’s really no positives coming from this loss in the thick of the playoff race, but Boston played well enough defensively against Kyrie Irving to not get blown out.

Kyrie Irving had one of the worst nights of his career last night against the Celtics. He only made 4-20 shots last night and scored 11 points because of the defense that the Celtics played last night.

When Irving had the ball in his hands, the Celtics were aggressively playing him with ice traps–also referred as downing the ball. When teams do this defensively, they create a sixth defender out of the boundaries of the floor. They’ll play the ball handler toward the sideline, baseline, or the halfcourt line in an effort to force a turnover or a bad shot.

Its an overall frustrating thing to ball handlers around the league. They’re hounded and forced to go into one area and if there teammates aren’t in the right position, they’ll have very little options. Kyrie Irving fell right into this trap when the Cavaliers faced the Celtics.

In the video below is a common ice trap. Notice how the defense plays Irving.

Once Irving comes down the floor and gets a screen to free him up going to the wing by Tristan Thompson, Brandon Bass switches onto him until Terrence Williams is able to fight through the screen. For extra help, Jeff Green is probing in the middle of the paint in case Irving tries to attack the rim.

Irving is forced to the baseline because he has no angle to get around Bass. Williams recovers and comes to help Bass and forces Irving to pick up his dribble. His teammates are in no position to come and get the ball and Irving throws an arid pass. There’s the turnover that the Celtics were looking for.

They were playing Irving like this all night and it had a residual effect on his play all night long. We’ll use this transition opportunity the Cavaliers had as an example. The Celtics force Irving into another difficult pass because of the threat of another ice trap along the sideline. Take a look at the video below.

In the video, you can see the Celtics defense communicating that they’re going to force Irving to hug the sideline and try to force him to dribble out of bounds. Irving sees this, and he has the right idea. The Celtics are doing their work early and so does he, unfortunately.

Irving is about to attempt a bounce pass from just pass half court all the way to the top of the key. This is a very tough angle to complete a pass at and very few point guards in the league can do so–Irving is not one of them. So the Celtics rush Irving into another turnover by forcing him to make a decision quickly and on the fly. Something that most of the point guards in the NBA are not able to do.

In this final video, we see that the Cavaliers have countered by not having Irving bring the ball up the floor. Instead, C.J Miles does so and he gives the ball to Irving. Take a look.

Irving gets the ball receives a screen from Tyler Zeller, but instead of attacking down the middle or making a pass, Irving goes back toward the sideline and ends up taking an awful shot that gets blocked by Avery Bradley.

The Celtics traps and angles of their defensive attack forced Irving into a lot of bad plays, bad decisions, and bad shots. Unfortunately, like Irving said, they had a great team win and came out on top. If Boston could play this type of defense with a full roster, they’d be one hell of a team to try to stop in late April.

Jan. 16, 2013; Portland, OR, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving (2) signals a play during the fourth quarter of the game against the Portland Trail Blazers at the Rose Garden. The Cavaliers won the game 93-88. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

Rajon Rondo fell just two assists shy of a triple-double and the Boston Celtics fought hard all night, but it became apparent in the fourth quarter that the night belonged to the masked man. Kyrie Irving put on a show.

And let’s not act like it’s easy to score 40 points against a backcourt of Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley. Irving is a legitimate superstar in the making, and the Cavs are a much better team than their record indicates.

However, the Celtics should not lose to a now 11-32 team. Let’s take a look at the post game grades for the Celtics players and see where things went wrong in the 95-90 loss to the lowly Cavs at “The Q” in Cleveland.

Point Guard: Rajon Rondo

Rajon Rondo did just about everything he could with Kyrie Irving, but there was really no stopping the one-and-done Duke product. Irving hit an array of jumpers, got into the paint, and was just on fire in general all night. It’s a small sample size to start making statements like “Kyrie showed Rondo why he should be starting for the East in the All-Star game,” but it’s definitely an indication that Irving belongs there as a reserve.

Offensively, Rondo had another very strong game, though he did miss 10 of his 17 field goal attempts. Rondo finished with 17 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists. But his strong play wasn’t enough to offset a horrible game by Paul Pierce (more on him later of course).

It’s hard to give Rondo an A when he shot below his average field goal percentage and gave up 40 points, but the man did almost net a trip-dub.

Grade: B+

Shooting Guard: Avery Bradley

Avery Bradley continues to make an impact far beyond what the box score tells. Though he shot just four shots, he made two of them and finished with seven points. But Bradley had a number of nice defensive plays, including a shot he pinned on the backboard in the fourth quarter.

Ideally, No. 0 begins to chip in more offensively to take his game to the next level, but his defense has revitalized the C’s and Bradley took Dion Waiters completely out of the game, as the rookie found out what good NBA defense was all about. Waiters shot 3-of-12 from the floor, scoring just seven points, which is half his season average.

Grade: B+

January 20, 2013; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Boston Celtics small forward Paul Pierce (34) dunks the ball against the Detroit Pistons in the second quarter at The Palace. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Small Forward: Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce appeared to be moving in slow motion the entire night. That helps explain why he had his shot blocked three times and turned it over an additional four. He hit just 3-of-15 from the floor, and save some decent passing (seven assists), he never found his groove the entire game.

It’s a little early to throw in the “Pierce is washed up and done” argument, but if he continues to play like he did tonight, then that has some merit.

After all, players do sometimes mysteriously fall off in mid stream without a steady depreciation in their abilities.

Pierce averaged just 12.3 points per game over the last three heading into tonight’s stinker, so we’re not ruling that out as a possibility. Yes, players do have bad games and even bad stretches of games, but watching Pierce tonight indicated he may be falling off precipitously.

Grade: F

Power Forward: Brandon Bass

Brandon Bass played a quiet and decent game. He hit 4-of-7 from the floor and finished with eight points and seven rebounds. Bass was overshadowed though by Jared Sullinger off the bench (more on Sully later).

It’s hard to call Bass’ game tonight much more than mediocre, considering he did still receive 27 minutes and he also allowed Tristan Thompson of the Cavs to have a rather big night (21 points and nine rebounds).

Grade: C -

Center: Kevin Garnett

Kevin Garnett struggled with his shot tonight, and wasn’t particularly aggressive on the boards. Tyler Zeller cheated off of Garnett on offense several times to swat shots, and KG didn’t penalize him by cutting back door and finishing hard.

KG should have dominated Zeller tonight, but that wasn’t really the case. Either Zeller is a far better player than most have been led to believe up until this point, or KG just had an off night.

At this point, it’s unclear as to which it was. It’s not that there’s a lot of shame in a 16 points, five rebound night, but KG was up against a rookie, so he should have done a lot more to exploit it. Had this came against Anderson Varejao, he likely would have received a much more favorable grade.

Grade: C

Jan 22, 2013; Cleveland, OH, USA; Boston Celtics power forward Jared Sullinger (7) blocks a shot attempt of Cleveland Cavaliers center Tyler Zeller (40) in the first quarter at Quicken Loans Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Sixth Man: Jared Sullinger

Sully received the most minutes off the Boston bench tonight, which makes him the honorary sixth man. It’s a role we may see more with Sully starting to come on at a time when most rookies are fading due to the “rookie wall.”

Sullinger had a double-double, but fouled out. He finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds (five offensive) and scored at several points when the C’s were in need of a basket. He’s getting better and better, and that “steal of the draft” label that was thrown around when he fell to the No. 21 overall pick now seems to really be looking as though it is the truth.

Bench

Outside of Jared Sullinger, the bench shot 6-of-17 from the floor and grabbed only six rebounds in 54 combined minutes. That’s failing pretty hard, notwithstanding the fact that Courtney Lee played some nice defense for stretches of the game. That’s not going to make up for 3-of-9 shooting, nor for the absent play of Jason Terry and Jeff Green. Leandro Barbosa has fallen entirely out of the rotation and did not play.

Grade: D -

Following a 15 point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night, Doc Rivers claimed his team just wanted to win easy. Although not a glowing remark for his team, it should not get much easier than tonight for Boston.

The Celtics take on the Cleveland Cavaliers (10-32), who have the second worst record in the NBA. Making matters worse for Cleveland is the fact Anderson Varejao was ruled out for the season yesterday after doctors discovered a blood clot in his lung. Varejao was the Cavaliers third leading scorer, and was leading the NBA in rebounds per game with 14.4.

Boston will look to snap a three-game losing streak against the wounded Cavaliers. During the Celtics skid, they have averaged only 88.3 points per game. Boston’s offense should see improvement tonight, as Cleveland allows 100.6 ppg.

The first time these two teams met this season, the Celtics were also riding a three game losing streak. Boston took the first game 103-91 back in December, led by Paul Pierce who scored a season high 40 points. As a team, Boston shot an efficient 59.7 percent from the floor.

Keys to the Game:

• Will the Celtics play motivated? Rivers clearly had a problem with his team’s effort in the Detroit loss and called them out for it. Now it is up to the players to respond to their coach’s criticism.
• Slow down Kyrie Irving. He has scored at least 20 points in all four career games against Boston. Despite Avery Bradley suffering from a rib injury, he will be responsible for containing the explosive Irving.
• Boston will need to get their offense going. There has been very little rhythm in the past three games. Cleveland is not a good defensive team by any stretch. Rajon Rondo should be able to get into the paint and create easy scoring chances for himself and others.
• The Celtics need a spark from the bench. Cleveland is not a deep team and players like Jeff Green, Jason Terry and Jared Sullinger should all have matchup advantages when playing against Cavalier reserves. Two of those three players need to have good games, relieving the burden placed on Pierce and Kevin Garnett to score.