Boston Celtics: What Went Wrong on the Road Trip and How to Fix It

What’s Wrong With Celtics Defense?

In Utah and Portland, could not contain Rudy Gobert and Jusuf Nurkic, respectively, in the pick-and-roll. Both centers are too big for Boston to rely on its switch-everything scheme in pick-and-roll defense, forcing the Celtics into defensive rotations they are clearly not well-drilled in yet. Look how late Terry Rozier is to react here as Gobert gets an easy lob dunk.

https://twitter.com/utahjazz/status/1061132847333834753

And on the first play of this video highlight here, when Al Horford steps up to stop Damian Lillard and no one helps on Nurkic.

In the Denver game, Boston had similar, but different, issues in their pick-and-roll defense. Nuggets center Nikola Jokic is one of the best big man passers ever, with great touch around the rim and out to the perimeter.

Stevens judged that his guards couldn’t switch onto Jokic without getting toasted, so the Celtics went to a more traditional help-and-recover strategy against Denver. But because they were so anxious about letting Jokic get loose, Murray and, on this play, Gary Harris, was able to come off the pick with a head of steam and space to operate.

In order to improve their pick-and-roll defense when the opponent’s personnel doesn’t allow them to switch guard-to-big screens, Boston has to reinforce their rotations in practice and have all five guys locked in and working together on defense.

For most of their defensive breakdowns, and even some in the pick-and-roll, team-wide energy and focus are more to blame than anything schematically. For whatever reason, in these road game, the Celtics didn’t play with any urgency until they were down big and then it was too late (except against the Suns).