Kristaps Porzingis Brutally Honest About Celtics Plan To Attack Trae Young

Even with a record of 22-29, the Hawks have an explosive offense that can go off on any given night, so the Boston Celtics decided to exploit Atlanta’s defensive liabilities.

That included attacking Hawks guard Trae Young on every possession.

“We tried to, of course, attack Trae a bit more,” Celtics center Kristaps Porzingas told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “Look for him, put him in situations and take advantage of those mismatches.”

Porzingis added: “And he was guarding (Derrick) White, which was already a tough task for him. And then on top of that, we put him into actions and pick and rolls, and he has to switch, and it just puts them at a disadvantage. We did that and got off to a good start.”

The Celtics held Young to 20 points with the Atlanta All-Star connecting on 8-of-25 shot attempts in the game. Young added 10 assists, joining teammate Onyeka Okongwu (19 points and 10 rebounds) as the only two players to register double-doubles in the game.

Porzingis said Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla gave the team a goal of holding the Hawks to 25 points in at least one of the quarters in the second half. Boston did just that by sacrificing their own offense to limit Atlanta’s chances and hold them to 23 points in the third.

“The game kind of slowed down a little bit,” Porzingis said. “I think we did a really good job of stopping some of their actions. And to be honest, they’re a really good team offensively.

“Trae being the head of state, throwing those lobs and getting those guys involved. It’s tough to stop them. I think their coach was doing a really good job of making them dangerous offensively so it was on us to kind of figure it out defensively so we could get that separation.”

The Celtics came away with the 125-117 victory, with Porzingis leading all scorers with 31 points. White added 21 for Boston including an offensive outburst in the fourth quarter to help seal the win.