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The Celtics put Jrue Holiday on Embiid, and the defensive matchups were pretty interesting so let’s break down why they did it.
They would need to double Joel anyways, so, right here Jrue battles him and we got Porzingis as the roamer ready to come down and help.
And look how Philly responds. Oubre slides down low to take Brown with him and now he’s unable to split the difference if the pass goes over to that side. Instead- now the entire wing is clear for Harris.
Although Porzingis overcommitted here and on the swing pass we got an open shot for Tobias, the Celtics chose to live with that, and in this situation they got lucky with a miss.
You see that they were comfortable to just let Holiday fight with Embiid and Kristaps comes later on as help, but this time he’s just a step late and his punishment is this poster dunk right in his face.
Like, look at this, Jrue is literally in the paint pushing and shoving with a guy double his size.
And having Harris up top makes it more difficult for Porzingis as he’s all the way out here.
He commits to doing it on the dribble, and this could have been a pass to the cutter, instead it’s a tough 1 hander over 2 guys and Embiid misses. That’s a battle won for the Celtics.
And the task was slightly easier whenever Joel got the ball further out. Holiday is a master when it comes to the perimeter, so any time you start further out that’s just playing to his strengths, and the Celtics won a lot of those possessions.
But they lost a lot of them as well. Right here we got another David vs Goliath fight, and Horford doubles 1 pass away. And it’s off of Maxey, a 40% 3 point sniper. So we got an easy bounce pass, Brown is late on the rotation here and Tyrese knocks it down.
And things got worse when Jrue was out for a breather and Horford was matched up with Embiid. Not that he can’t guard him anymore, but Joel was focused on scoring against big Al and in this game shots were falling for him.
He finished the game with 27 points on 50% from the field.
On the contrary, when Boston guarded him with Holiday plus a second guy, Embiid knew that he would probably look to find one of his teammates.
The Celtics didn’t lose this game because of a big night for Joel or because the Sixers hit a bunch of threes off of his passes. In fact, the Sixers were 9 for 34, a horrific 26.5% from downtown. But having 13 more rebounds and 16 more points in the paint makes things a lot easier.
If they were going to give this up, Boston needed to shoot lights out and they didn’t. In fact they were horrible from the field- 39.6%. And there’s no way you’re going to win a game like this.
But even with all of that- they still got a chance to tie it at the end so I guess they can feel ok even in a loss.
And this creative defensive strategy that Joe Mazzula tried out against Minnesota as well looks pretty interesting, although in my opinion Porzingis has some work to do in terms of timing his doubles, and making better decisions when he’s in that position as a roamer. Something that Robert Williams was extremely good at these past few years.
On the contrary the Bucks defense at the start is horrible, and I talked about that plus a bunch more shocking things at the start of this season, so check out this video. Talk to you in the next one, peace out.