Boston Celtics Learn to Win Without as Much Isaiah Thomas
By John Eyler
The Boston Celtics turned to the others to get a game five victory
With the offense going through Isaiah Thomas the Boston Celtics took down the Chicago Bulls. The same formula worked for two games against the Washington Wizards. Then the Wizards went to work on Thomas. On the offensive side the Wizards found multiple ways to isolate on Thomas, exposing him and scoring over him at will.
On defense, Washington denied him penetration. They focused on that exclusively and it worked. They decided to force the rest of the Celtics to beat them and two games later the series was tied.
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens had to make some adjustments to get the Celtics back to the win column. The problem was new. To date no team had really figured out a way to slow down, much less take advantage of Boston’s budding superstar. Add to that Boston’s ball handlers had become turnover happy in his short absences. What to do.
What became obvious in game five was that the Celtics were going to rely on their defensive prowess to energize their offense. Thomas sat while Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier took on additional minutes and the Celtics created turnovers and started grabbing rebounds. That led to easy baskets and open shots.
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The other adjustment for the Celtics was to go to Al Horford in the low post. With Horford getting the ball deep the Wizards had to collapse and that created open shots for Avery Bradley and Jae Crowder. These two adjustments were the secret to Boston’s game five victory.
Hard to imagine the Celtics winning by minimizing the role of Thomas, but there you go. He still got his, drained some daggers and caused hurt, but going forward the recipe that won game five will be repeated. Washington has no mismatches when Thomas is out. Brown and Rozier add sufficient pressure to keep Washington’s scorers in check. Horford can dominate the Wizards bigs in the post and his passing keeps all the Celtics players active in the offense.
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None of these adjustments seemed obvious going into game five. They were possible because the Celtics have depth and athleticism. Not many teams can match Marcus Smart, Brown and Rozier off the bench. Those are three great young talents and they are paying dividends now.