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.

Mar 20, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Hornets power forward Anthony Davis (23) rebounds over Boston Celtics center Kevin Garnett (5) during the first quarter of a game at the New Orleans Arena. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Tale of the Tape has returned just in time for the Boston Celtics playoff push. If you’ve followed Hardwood Houdini for a while, you already know about this segment. But for those of you who don’t know, Tale of the Tape is where we take a previous play ran by–or against–Boston and break it down to show you how it works. This week, we’ll be doing a horn set run by the New Orleans Hornets.

A horns set is when you have two players on each elbow–right and left. Its a very versatile set that a majority of teams in the NBA run. You can pinch the post through these sets, run players off of various screens, or have the players who are on the horns perform various screening action away from the elbow. Below is the start of the horns set that the Hornets ran. This is how the set starts off:

The basic structure of a horns set, again, will have two players in the high post on each block. The ball handler will be at the top of the arch and there are usually two other players stretched out into the corners for proper floor balance and spacing.

In this specific set, the ball will be entered to Anthony Davis. The post-entry pass will be delivered by Greives Vasquez and he’ll pinch the post and cut through the middle of the lane. What I mean by pinch the post is run as close to Davis as he can without touching him and using him as what is considered a post-screen. Davis will protect the ball while Vasquez is cutting in case his man, Avery Bradley in this case, decides to swipe at the ball.

If Bradley does decide to swipe, then Vasquez will be free at the rim and Davis can pass it to him from the elbow. Instead, Bradley sticks with Vasquez and follows him through the lane. Vasquez then sets a cross-screen for Eric Gordon coming from the corner. A cross-screen is a screen that’s set along the baseline or in the paint to allow the receiver of the screen passage into the lane without any contest. You can see these same principles used in your every day flex offense.

Here’s where Vasquez sets the screen for Gordon:

As you can see, Davis has faced up toward the hoop and is now in triple threat position. He can either pass, shoot, or put the ball on the floor from this spot. It isn’t likely he’s going to shoot so Bass should give him a bit more room here. Davis will eventually pass the ball to the cutting Gordon under the rim after he receives the screen from Vasquez. This gives him a wide open look under the rim that no coach ever wants to see.  Here’s what the play looked like at the end:

This was clear miscommunication by the Boston Celtics in this case. Courtney Lee fails to get around the Vasquez screen here and instead of Lee and Bradley switching assignments, they don’t communicate and are both stuck on one player. Lee is trying to get around the screen and Bradley is trying to stick with his man.

Another option would be for Paul Pierce to help off of the corner man–Al Forouq-Aminu in this case. Aminu isn’t a very good shooter and even though its a corner three attempt–the most efficient shot in basketball–I think you can risk him taking it rather than allowing guaranteed points under the rim.

The easier option, though, would’ve been for Lee and Bradley to just switch covers and save an easy two points. The Hornets aren’t a very good offensive team, so when you force them to reset late in the clock you’ll likely get out of the possession unscathed. You can watch the play in real time here:

The more creative the set the more effective. The proper use of personnel on the floor with trump great defense every time. That’s what we saw here with this Hornets set. Though, the defense wasn’t necessarily great, the Hornets used their pieces in the proper way and it resulted in a quick score for them.

Apr. 17, 2012; New York, NY, USA; New York Knicks small forward Carmelo Anthony (7) drives the ball around Boston Celtics small forward Paul Pierce (34) during the second half at Madison Square Garden. Knicks won 118-110. Mandatory Credit: Debby Wong-US PRESSWIRE

The Boston Celtics had a more than deplorable outing in Madison Square Garden last night. They allowed Carmelo Anthony to put up his second career triple double against them with 35 points, 10 assists, and 12 rebounds. The Knicks to hung up 118 points on them–defensively, that is an epic fail on Boston’s part. It was clear that their defensive approach to this game wasn’t going to work because the Knicks had 72 points in the first half of play.

The Knicks hit an astounding 19 of their 32 three point attempts on the night, and Carmelo was the match that sparked that flame. Steve Novak was eight of 10 from beyond the arc and J.R Smith was seven of 10 from the same area. In fact, the combination of Smith, Tyson Chandler, and Novak added 70 points to New York’s effort last night. The Knicks bench scored 55 points as opposed to the Celtics bench only being able to contribute two points to their effort.

Obviously, the Knicks aren’t going to get this hot every night. However, in reviewing the game, the Knicks had some great looks at the basket and capitalized off of those looks. Carmelo’s 10 assists were more deadly than his 35 points and that’s because of the way that the Celtics overloaded the defense to Carmelo. His assists ended up adding up to 27 points on the night, seven of which were three point shots. They were intent on keeping the ball out of his hands and in the end they should’ve capitalized off of all of his ISO situations by letting him go one on one and having help waiting at the rim.

Anthony drew constant attention from Boston’s help defenders by beating his initial defender. Instead of being disciplined enough to stay home on the shooters, Boston’s perimeter help collapsed on Melo allowing him to rack up his assists. You can see that in the example below.

Melo had beaten the initial defender in this screen capture photo. He managed to get into the paint and draw all five Boston defenders to him. Carmelo then threads the needle to J.R Smith for a wide open three in which he was able to even set up for. There was no contest. Here is the play in real time.

Overloading a defense on one key player poses a huge threat to the honesty of your defense. Players will automatically think “help” when seeing a player going to the rim. Melo saw this change in the defense and took full advantage of it. Take a look at the picture below. After receiving a screen, Mike Bibby tries to feed the ball to Carmelo Anthony. The ball is initially tipped by Carmelo gets it anyway. Once receiving the ball, three defenders have committed to Anthony; their backs are turned to Bibby and that’s what hurt them.

Here is the play in real time.

Here’s our last play for the day. The aforementioned Steve Novak went eight for 10 from three and Carmelo was a large reason why because of plays like this. Below, you can see that Melo has five defenders commited to him after receiving a tipped pass off of another Pick and Pop situation . Melo see’s this, and has the awareness to weigh his options. In this play, he has three definite options and a possible fourth. He can deliver the ball to Novak, Bibby, or J.R Smith. The fourth, and more difficult, option would be to deliver a pass to Chandler in the paint. Melo takes the easiest option in Steve Novak and Novak makes Boston pay.

Here is the play in real time.

Overloading too many defenders to a player is a very dangerous strategy for any defense to employ. Of course, again, New York likely won’t hit 19 three pointers in a game on a consistent basis. Its not every day that you survive a 43 point game from Paul Pierce, but the Celtics dug themselves into a whole that was simply too hard to get out of.

We’ll likely see adjustments down the stretch with the Celtics defenders. Normally, they do play help defense in a similar fashion, but they think more before they do it. If Boston has to key on a certain player once again, don’t expect this same effort out of them.