The Miami Heat essentially forced the Boston Celtics into submission in Game 1 in their Eastern Conference finals matchup, riding a dominant third quarter performance to an unforeseen victory at TD Garden.
There are a millions ways to describe Boston’s performance from Wednesday night, most of which have actually been used by the Celtics. In what has felt like a mass admission of guilt, the entire roster has pointed to their faults following the ugly loss. Jaylen Brown didn’t like the energy put forth by Boston in the matchup, Marcus Smart admitted to a troubling season-long trend, Jayson Tatum knew exactly what went wrong in his postgame presser and Robert Williams III topped it off with message about the C’s habits.
Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla chose to take a simple route, saying his team “let go of the rope.”
“They switched defenses and switched more in the second half,” Mazzulla said following Thursday’s film session, per Taylor Snow of Celtics.com. “And switching defenses slow you down and you have to fight for your spacing, fight for advantages. You have to fight to create separation, and so being able to make the adjustment on how we play versus one defense versus a switching defense is important. So we just have to fight for that and we can generate those threes by creating separation, by creating advantages.
“… Letting go of the rope is something that if you don’t fight through spacing on every possession, you’re letting go of an opportunity to put ourselves in a good position and if we don’t pay attention to the tendencies and details we let go of the rope. So it wasn’t like we purposely did it. It’s just you have to understand the details are the most important thing and we do a good job of fighting for that through a lot of moments of the game. But we have to do it for 48 minutes.”
There are a couple of things that stand out from Mazzulla in that quote, as he mentions making adjustments based off the opposing defense and fighting for a full 48 minutes.
We’ll start with the comment about playing a complete game, as it seemed to directly contradict what he said in the immediate aftermath of Game 1. Mazzulla was quick to point out how the Celtics won the first, second and fourth quarters in his postgame press conference, pulling a page out of his predecessor Ime Udoka’s book. That mentality has possibly dissipated a bit as he saw how ugly that third quarter got for Boston.
The other notable thing Mazzulla talked about was adjusting to what the defense is doing. The Celtics very clearly didn’t do that, as they stuck with the same rotation in the second half and somehow played even more isolation offense. How could they have fixed that? What about actually utilizing Grant Williams?
Williams has played a total of 24 minutes since Game 3 of the Celtics’ second-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers, despite being one of Boston’s most reliable three-and-D guys off the bench. Mazzulla explained why, but it seems as though the Tennessee product would provide more problems for a switching defense than Robert Williams III has. Miami is able to switch on Robert Williams due to his inability to take the outside shot, which lets defenders sag off and help on the pick and roll. Grant Williams is a pick-and-pop option that just hasn’t been utilized.
If the Celtics hope to improve their 34.5% outside shooting mark, minutes for Grant Williams can’t hurt.
In deciding not to make any changes to the rotation or offense, it feels like Mazzulla would just be letting go of the rope himself.
