Boston Celtics: Who Will Stop Victor Oladipo?

The Boston Celtics need to figure out how to slow down Victor Oladipo to beat the Indiana Pacers

The Boston Celtics are struggling over their last six games, and they look as vulnerable as they have been all season long. They are visiting the Indiana Pacers tonight, which will be the most difficult opponent they have faced since they started struggling.

The Pacers are an inspired and well functioning team, with a lot of different ways to hurt an opponent. The main focus, however, will always be Victor Oladipo, who is looking at his first all star appearance and a most improved player of the year award.

Oladipo has made the Pacers quickly forget about losing Paul George, and he really has been one of the best players in the Eastern Conference this season. He has improved every facet of his game, and has been a truly complete player all season long.

His three point shooting has sky rocketed to over 43 percent, with a career high 47.8 percent from the field. He is just under 25 points per game, and is sitting at four assists per game. He is a dynamic play maker that can attack any way he wants this season, and he has more than shown the ability to take over games on his own.

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He will be the most difficult matchup for the Celtics, and will have to be their focus. The Celtics love to use their versatility to throw different looks at players, but this one really should come down to Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown.

The Celtics take pride in their ability to have bigs that can guard smaller players, and guards that can cover bigger players, but this is not one they want to play around with. They do not want to take risks with the way Oladipo is playing, and Smart and Brown are perfect size matchups.

Oladipo will not be able to shoot over either of them, he should not have the speed to blow by them, and there is not enough of a strength advantage to over power them.

Smart and Brown are the two best individual defenders on the team, and they should spend the majority of the game on Oladipo, and they will be the key to getting this defense back on track.

Myles Turner will present his own problems to Al Horford and the undersized front court, but he is not going to be the one to destroy the game. The Celtics can withstand a good game from Turner, the way they withstood Marc Gasol going off.

Oladipo is the player that gets the offense functioning and Smart or Brown are the only players that the Celtics can trust to disrupt that. Oladipo is playing at a level where you cannot expect him to be completely shut down. He is going to be making plays, but the key is making sure that they are not able to function at their best as a unit.

They have great team ball movement, but Oladipo instigates a lot more than anyone else, and the Pacers should not have enough options they can depend on to beat the Celtics if he is not at his best. He is too important to this team to have a bad game and beat the Celtics, even if they still are not back to playing at their best.

The Celtics had a bit more time to game plan for this matcup than the last, but Oladipo is going to be their biggest challenge since they started rotating wins and loses. The Celtics know that they need their defense to reach their goals this season, and they need to be confident in Smart and Brown’s ability to contain a player like Oladipo.

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Oladipo has truly been one of the best players in the league this season, but that is the standard that needs to be held by Smart and Brown. They need to be able to go out and handle the most difficult matchups in the NBA, especially in a game where that one matchup is by far and away the biggest battle in this game.