The Boston Celtics were determined not to let Andre Drummond beat them Wednesday.
Unfortunately for Boston, everyone else on the Detroit Pistons did.
The Celtics bounced back from Tuesday’s ugly offensive performance but couldn’t hold up on the other end, allowing 119 points — the third-most they’ve surrendered this season — in a three-point loss at the Palace at Auburn Hills.
Head coach Brad Stevens’ club held Drummond in check by employing a strategy once reserved for Shaquille O’Neal. During a third-quarter stretch lasting less than a minute of game action, the Celtics intentionally fouled the Pistons big man — a career 39 percent free throw shooter — on three consecutive possessions to slow the game to a crawl.
Drummond made three of those six free throws but didn’t make another outside of that, finishing 3 for 10 from the charity stripe. He scored just 16 points on the night, three of which came on an absurd half-court shot.
“It slows down pace, but it was our only option to come back,” Stevens said of his decision to intentionally foul Drummond, via the Celtics’ official Twitter account. “It worked. Took the ball out of (Reggie) Jackson and (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s) hands.”
The ploy only proved to be a short-term fix, however. Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy took Drummond out to counter Stevens’ strategy, and Detroit’s guards took over down the stretch. Caldwell-Pope and Jackson combined for 26 of the Pistons’ 34 points in the fourth quarter, with both players hitting clutch free throws late in the contest to hold off the Celtics’ late rally.
Jackson finished with 23 points, while Caldwell-Pope poured in a career-high 31 points on 10 of 16 shooting.
“(Caldwell-Pope)Â got going at the end of the first half and didn’t cool down, and the shots he hit in the second half were very difficult,” Stevens said in a postgame interview aired on CSN New England. “Hats off to him.”
So does Stevens wish he stuck more to his original “Hack-A-Drummond” strategy that helped Boston get back in the game?
“There’s no way we could have,” Stevens said. “We kept fouling him until they took him out, so, to come back, I think we did what we needed to do.”
Thumbnail photo via Leon Halip/USA TODAY Sports Images
