Boston Celtics Need LeBron James to be a Jump Shooter

The Boston Celtics need to pick their poison carefully against LeBron James

The reality of what LeBron James has been this postseason is that he can pretty much do whatever he wants, whenever he wants it and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it. Teams can try to throw things at James to force him to play a certain way, but he can impose his will any time he wants and in any way he wants.

It may be too simple, it may be impossible and it may not work at all, but game one was a nice reminder to the Celtics that is James can get into the paint then he will score every single time. There is no hope of holding James down with strength on defense, and his combination of speed and power makes him the hardest player to stop in the paint.

The Celtics threw a bunch of different looks at James, but it was clear that any opening he saw he would attack. James is smart enough to know right away when he can blow by the player guarding him, and that will make sure the Celtics keep their bigs far away from James because he drove inside every single time.

The Celtics still have to deal with the reality that James has also been a deadly outside shooter in the playoffs, but the number one priority for the Celtics guarding him needs to be finding a way to stay in front of him, forcing him to take his talents to the mid range and three point game.

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Brad Stevens mentioned the trouble of trying to double him. Allowing any team to get wide open three pointers is a miserable strategy, and when you have shooters like the Cavaliers do, that is the quickest way to get blown out.

The Celtics will certainly be sending help over to James, but Stevens should now have a better idea as to which players are more capable of staying in front of James, which is the best way to try and keep James shooting on the outside.

It is fairly obvious now that Kelly Olynyk, Isaiah Thomas and Gerald Green will not matching up with James at any point. When James sees a player like that guarding him he will never hesitate, and the Celtics might as well just get out of his way and get up the floor quicker on the other end.

Jae Crowder should be able to do a lot better, but he has been a bit too slow and James could get by him too frequently. It was Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown that had any success keeping James on the outside. Maybe he was just trying to do other things, and it just so happened that they were on James when he decided to start shooting form the outside.

That being said, those possessions are all Stevens has to work with, and the bottom line is that they were able to stay in front of him. It is a whole other problem that James has Kevin Love and Kyle Korver wide open so often, but Brown and Smart have been the only ones that kept James away from the area he was most dominant.

The unfortunate reality is that James is having one of his best shooting seasons ever. James is unstoppable in just about every way possible, and he could easily take over the game shooting the ball any time. The Celtics need to pick their poison and tighten up how they defend James, but it may never be enough.

The Celtics need to make sure they do everything in their power to make things as hard as possible on James. Allowing him to blow by defenders and get in the paint is the easiest thing for him, and a lot more could go wrong for the Cavaliers if all those shots in the paint turn into contested jumpers for James.

The Celtics know there were a lot of problems in game one that need to be fixed just to keep in close in game two. It feels foolish at this point to expect James to have anything other than a phenomenal game, and there is not much anyone can do when the best player in the world is playing at this level.

It all comes down to the Celtics finding someway to disrupt something about his game. When James dominates he dominates in every facet of the game. James is not just the best player on the court, he is the best player in pretty much any aspect of the game.

The Celtics need to find a way to make some things more difficult on James, and maybe that will contain him enough to give their players a chance to win a close game in the fourth quarter.

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James has shown no signs of weakness and there may not be any better approach the Celtics can take, but Stevens will surely try to find something. After James did insurmountable damage driving to the rim in game one, the Celtics have no choice other than to do everything in their power for force him to be a jump shooter.

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