Through seven games played during these early stages of the 2021-22 season, it’s not hard to see just how disappointing the Boston Celtics have been.
Dropping five of their outings, three of which were OT defeats, and having a plethora of their players underperform, for the average Cs fan the start to their supposed bounce-back campaign after enduring such an underwhelming 2020-21 run has been truly abysmal.
However, this is not to say that all hope is lost on the year. Despite their lowly start, there’s still plenty of time for the shamrocks to figure things out and, in turn, thrust themselves up the Eastern Conference standings.
Of course, this shift in production will have to be a result of quite a number of internal tweaks and shakeups.
Should the Celtics actually wish to turn their season around and recapture their old winning ways, we here at HH believe there are 4 glaring weaknesses that they must fix:
Weakness Boston Celtics need to fix No. 1) Defensive switching
When it comes to the term insanity, a popular example people like to use is the famous quote stating that the definition is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
If this were to be the actual delineation of the term, then by all means this coaching staff is clinically insane with their constant calls for the C’s defense to switch everything.
Through seven games, not only can we confidently say this is not a good scheme to run for the team but, frankly, it’s just flat out not working.
By going with this method, we are constantly seeing Boston optionally pushing themselves into mismatch scenarios, ones where we see guys like Robert Williams III out on the perimeter covering a Fred VanVleet or Dennis Schroder being backed down in the paint by a Montrezl Harrell.
Both of these scenarios actually happened, and are just a few examples of this switching method negatively impacting the shamrocks.
This form of defense is incredibly exhausting, both for fans to watch and, more importantly, the players to run, leading to significant levels of fatigue which, in turn, is likely a major factor in their tired legs early on in games as well as their current standing as the league’s most foul-happy squad (22.3 personal fouls called per game).
With this in mind, if Udoka relented on his desire to switch everything, perhaps his players will have the energy necessary to stay consistent from start to finish on both ends of the ball.