Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to the Low Post Hoop Collective Finals crossover from the parquet, Brian Windhorst. This is a special place for you because you've spent so much time over the years writing about the Corner 3. Oh, yeah. We're in the corner. You've written a lot about this corner over the years. Yeah, I have. And...
The Celtics made a lot of threes. They did. Not just from here either. Huh? Not just from here. No, from everywhere. Taking game one by a lot. They went up by a lot early. Got dicey for a little bit in the third quarter. Then they hit a lot more threes. And the game really can be boiled down to...
in before garbage time 16 of 41 from three both makes and attempts monster numbers for the Celtics against the Dallas team that has a really bad choice to make of protect the paint or allow open threes they really did neither in this game particularly in the third quarter 14-0 run that blew the game back open and Dallas was 5 of 24 16 of 41 5 of 24 and it has to start with Borzingas any analysis of the game has to start with Borzingas
has to start with him monster first half posting up switches the Mavs switched a lot he posted up so it makes some tough shots uh made a trail three made a three in Luca Donchage's face blocked shots there was the sequence when he made a trail three blocked Kyrie Irving Sam Houser hit a three and the place was going bonkers what a return for KP against his former team and I think you felt like
just how different the floor is, how much more open it is for Boston. Yeah, I don't know who made the decision to bring him off the bench. I'm sure they had a lot of conversations about that. I'm sure there was, like, strategies and meetings. But however that got decided, boy, did it work. Because I was – first off, the Celtics come out on the floor for pregame warm-ups and no KP, no Porzingis. And, like, not, like, 30 seconds later. Like –
Six minutes later, he comes out. So you're like, wait a minute, is he actually playing or what's that story? Like, who knows? He's probably getting some last minute treatment or whatever treatment. And then he comes out and you're like, wait, wait, what's this guy's kind of weird. The crowd went crazy. It was crazy out here. But that decision to bring him off the bench and when they brought him off the bench, it was like perfect.
Like it worked out perfect. I don't think they could have dreamed how what kind of an impact he would make and the way he came in and did it. And I think, you know, you just felt the impact of his extra bit of shooting against Dallas and over and over again. And really in that third quarter run was 72 64 then boss one on a 14 or run.
They would run a Tatum Porzingis pick and roll or a Brown Porzingis pick and roll. And they were switching those plays because they're just afraid of Porzingis pick and pop threes. And Porzingis had established himself as like, I can score in the post. Those buckets kind of went away in the second half because they were tough shots. I think Dallas was happy with those shots.
But the other end of that switch is Tatum or Brown attacking a big man, lively, Gafford, whoever. Or when they started hunting Luka, too, which was a big part of the Celtics game plan. We're going to make you work much more than the Wolves did. I know that was one of emphasis. And they would drive and you can't.
You can't let them beat you at the point of attack and load up into the paint as aggressively as the Mavs were because it's just too easy for Boston, and the looks were too easy. They got threes, they got drives, they got offensive rebounds, and a lot of that was Porzingis' spacing and the fact that the Mavs decided we're switching against you because we're scared, and the Celtics exploited that switch on both ends. When the game, again, 107-89 was the final game,
But when they took out everybody, Boston's offensive rating was almost 120 according to Cleaning Glass, which is elite, elite, elite. They just played really well. Dallas defense didn't really get settled. Yeah, I sort of think that there were sort of two factors in the game. Obviously Porzingis individually, but as a team. Celtics make seven threes in the first quarter. I know they're a high volume team, but even by their standards, that's wild.
They take 15 threes in the first quarter. Again, very high-volume three-point shooting team. Even by their standards, that's wild. So that early three-point shooting, of which Porzingis played a role in, gives them a cushion. Then the rest of their game, because they really didn't shoot the three-pointer that well after the first quarter. They were just sort of average to below average after the first quarter. Then the rest of the game was about their, in my view, was about their defensive strategy, which is that they really played Lucas straight up,
just they were very comfortable in switching they had no problems having al horford switch on to him they dealt with it i mean yes he al had some problems here and there but for the most part the damage was not severe right but they didn't they were not afraid of that they were totally comfortable having any of the bunny on the court dealing with luca as a result
He didn't have the space. There was a few times where they brought an extra body to help, but they did not do any doubling, which was not a surprise. We knew they wouldn't. And as a result, Luka was not able to get the ball as easily and freely to his shooters. And he has one assist. And not only that, I'm not even going to focus so much on the one assist as much as I want to point out that he only generated six assist chances. Wow.
So his teammates are one of six off his passes, only six assist chances. And that obviously was, they'll do better in that obviously going forward. That's the Celtics game plan. That's their ability to trust their five guys out on the court. And, you know, the reason they went on that 14-0 run to take back control of the game was because they stopped Dallas from scoring. Dallas didn't score twice.
Obviously, 14-0. But Dallas just didn't score for like five minutes after that. They tightened up their defense, and Luka wasn't able to make an impact. And to your point, Boston tried a lot of different things against Luka. They switched, as you mentioned, with Al. They were...
Let's see how he lives with that. We'll help a little bit off Derek Jones Jr. if he's on the floor. They dropped a few times, just like the Wolves did. Sometimes they kind of had a higher drop. Sometimes they went up to the level of the screen with their big men, which is not quite a blitz, but close. And we'll figure it out from there. But sometimes they would see Borzingas' guy or Holford's guy coming up to set a screen for Luka, and another Boston defender would yank Luka.
Porzingis out of the play halfway up and so they could switch it. So they did a lot of stuff, but the one thing they didn't do except I think one time was blitz. And that's core to Boston's philosophy I think in this series is...
come hell or high water, we are not blitzing. Do you know the numbers that they had coming into this game on the double team, the blitz, whatever you want to call it? Luka versus the blitz or Boston? No, no, Boston for the whole season. I mean, I know that they were like the second fewest double teams or blitzes in the whole league, I think. I don't remember the exact number. It was something like 963 screens that they faced this season. They doubled blitz, whatever you want to call it, 11 times.
11 times. Which is interesting because the whole debate in the Minnesota-Dallas series was Minnesota needs to blitz, Minnesota needs to blitz, Minnesota needs to blitz.
And the Celtics clearly do not agree with that. And I think the reason they don't agree with it is we're just not going to make it easy for him and we're not going to make it easy for his teammates to get involved. They just don't want to do it. And today it was totally fine, partly because Kyrie was 6 of 19, which we should probably talk about that. Yeah, Kyrie did not have an impactful game. I don't think the environment here – well, we'll see what he says. He hasn't talked yet. But I don't think it was like he felt intimidated by the environment. I didn't feel that at all.
I just feel like he had a lot of shots that were by his standards normal that just missed. He kept throwing up his left-handed shot, and they just kept missing. Missed a wide-open pick-and-roll three when they dropped back on him. Dallas missed just off the top of my head. Luka missed a three on an out-of-bounds play where they totally lost him.
Washington missed a corner three on an out-of-bounds play where he just wasn't paying attention and they inbounded. Boston wasn't paying attention. They inbounded it to P.J. Washington. Luka missed an open three, a decent three over Peyton Pritchard on his switch. Like, Dallas missed some good looks, which always happens, but some of those will go in. Boston may not make it. Like, game two is obviously going to be a war. Dallas is going to come out, like, throwing every punch, but that's game two.
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can keep this... Luca's never had this few assists in his career in a game where he's played 35 minutes. The six assist chances that you just dropped blew my mind. That was a stunning number. They just didn't even generate chances. That is clearly going to be Boston's game plan. So the issue now is going to be what's Dallas going to do about it? Is Luca going to turn up the heat and try to force the action a little bit?
Are they going to try some different actions? I'm sure they'll try some different actions. But were there any lobs tonight? Well, that's what we should talk about because two things happened. Number one, as all of us predicted would happen, the Celtics put Tatum on Gafford and Lively and put Porzingis on Derrick Jones Jr., sometimes P.J. Washington.
with the directive of if you wanna if you're gonna run pick and rolls with lively gaffer we're just gonna switch they're not gonna get the lot if you wanna hunter big man you gotta use another screener if that guy rolls he's rolling into lively tatum lucas guy everybody's gonna be there there's gonna be too much traffic and the other thing was whether poor zingas was on the screener and every time dallas got the cross match of a boston center on their centers they went right to the luca
Gaffer, Luka Lively, two-man game, that's their bread and butter. We got the big man in it, we're going to go for it. Or whether Porzingis was on the back line, you felt his impact in the paint playing two. Like there was a possession in the first quarter where Luka ran a pick and roll. I can't remember if they dropped or whatever they did, but Porzingis was on Derrick Jones Jr., rolled to the rim,
Luka played with the ball in the middle of the floor, slipped a pass to Derrick Jones Jr., and Porzingis, playing in between them, got back to the rim, and Derrick Jones Jr. missed like a really hard up and under. Like you felt 7'3", who's walking by us right now. You felt 7'3". Average performance. Not bad. Versus 6'10", or whatever Al Horford is. Like you felt it. Luka felt it. It felt different. Let me just say, when you are sitting and a guy 7'3 walks past you, it's a long way up there.
That's true. That's all I'm going to say. But, yeah, the lobs just were not there. There was another one where Jalen Brown retreated. Jalen Brown broke it up from behind on Lively, I think. Lively. How do you remember all these possessions like this? Because look at my notes. Look at my crazy notes. But, I mean, I understand that. But it was a 29. You're talking about possessions when the game was like 27 points. Well, look, I'm...
I'm focused. I'm laser focused. I'm laser focused. No, I'm not a savant. I have to take detailed notes because I'm such not a savant. I need to remember them. I think there's some savant action going on there. Like, I'm like, really? You're talking about something in the second quarter. The second quarter, I zoned out for about six minutes. Wow. Yeah. What were you thinking about? I don't know. I saw you in Skittles back there. Was Skittles get to your brain? No, I was just like, meh. And then in the third quarter, I rejoined the action.
because there was a nice run. That actually run, I think Dallas will try to build some stuff off of that. They were able to get a little bit more diversity in their offense, and that's what they're going to need. They're going to need diversity in their offense, which is obvious when you look at the way this team goes. But the number that it was, it was just, and if you listen to any of the Hoop Collective, I freaked out about it. I talked about it on TV all day today. Luka's teammates shooting 57% off his passes today.
It's a jaw-dropping number. It's an unsurvivable number for the opposition. The Celtics had to address it. They obviously are a good defensive team. They weren't going to allow that. One of six. But in that spot, they were able to get a little bit more diversity of their offense. The ball moved a little bit better. Not from Luka. They were able to generate some shots. And I'm sure they will try to build on that third quarter run. Luka played pretty well. Like, he...
The Celtics didn't give him a lot of the matchups that he wanted. I think he got Derek White on him just a couple times, and once he bullied him in the post like you knew he would and drew a foul. But that third quarter run when it was 72-64 to...
86-64. I'm going to go back and watch that tomorrow, but in real time, that felt really problematic for Dallas. Like, Boston's offense felt way too easy. Tatum and Brown were able to get whatever matchup they wanted, which was either a center or Luka. Maybe they just have to be better about not switching Luka onto those guys. And they were able to drive, and the help was just too extreme for
off four really awesome shooters and the kickouts were too easy and even kleba whose minutes we should talk about he couldn't keep those guys in front of him like that was a i'll watch it again tomorrow but i watched that i watched that run and i was like man it's never i'm surprised how easy this seems for the celtics offense right now well when they made their comeback they slowed the game down dallas they slowed the it's easier to slow the game down when you're
getting make the other team take balls out of the basket but they slowed the game down when the game was higher tempo in the first half it didn't favor Dallas at all I mean they were not getting back and finding all the Boston shooters most of those three-pointers maybe not most a lot of those three-pointers were transition baskets so I think that Dallas had more success when they slowed the game down and you know I'd have to go watch it again but I feel like
That was actually something that they should look at because then you get Luka going into his Luka stuff and you have more of a chance. They just also need other guys to, like P.J. Washington missed all his threes. Josh Green, I kind of don't remember anything that Josh Green did in the game. I remember something he did. He had a rush of blood to his head in the first quarter and tried some crazy dunk from the dotted line with Porzingis hunting him.
It was like, I mean, it was a... Or Zingas' rim protection. I thought, do you think you're Michael Jordan? I mean, what was that about? I mean, that was sort of summed up... How about Jalen Brown's rim protection, too? Jalen Brown's getting up there for, like, those look like center block shots, not like chase downs. He's, like, at the rim just swatting shots away. And, like, coming across the lane to do it. I mean, he had a high-quality defensive game. I think, just in general, the Celtics are going to grade out very well defensively. And I'll bet they're, you know...
Only the coaching staff would know but I'll bet their game plan discipline scores very very high points because of how they were able to control Luka keep Luka in front of them and stick to the other players. The Kleba thing the reason we should at least mention it is someone asked me before the series
We'll know the Celtics are in a panic mode when they start blitzing Luka, if they ever start blitzing Luka. What's the equivalent for Dallas? What's the thing that they will do that will say, uh-oh, they're pivoting away from what they want to do? And I couldn't really think of a good answer because they're kind of a steady team. They can do a lot of things pretty well. But the only thing that came up in my mind was if we see Kliba at center a lot, no Lively, no Gafford,
I'm not going to think that's a panic move because it's a look that's been good for them in the past. And with P.J. Washington, they can kind of play a little bigger even with Kaliba at the 5. But it's not how they got here. They got here with those two big guys, Duncan protecting the rim, getting offensive rebounds. They got a few tonight, but not that many. Part of it was lively, was in foul trouble. But they went to Kaliba at the 5 fast, fast.
didn't really work all that well and I'm not sure they can like out perimeter Boston so that's that was it was just interesting to me how quickly they went there
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I wouldn't be surprised if Kliba doesn't get a lot of minutes unless they need them. One of the things you see in series, the rotation gets shorter. They had some success without Kliba. Kliba became more important in the last series because of the injury. Why am I blanking?
The injury to Lively. Lively, the head injury. They needed him a little bit more, but before that they were getting along just fine without Maxi Kliba. He is a guy who can stretch the floor and he can defend multiple different positions because he can play four or five. But if Kliba minutes don't go well, that's an easy cut.
We saw Tim Hardaway Jr. get back in the rotation. Boston was anticipating that. I know that because they think Dallas is going to need to overcorrect on shooting. Didn't really work out. Just look at Boston's stat sheet. Like 10 points for Horford, 22 points for Jalen Brown. How many different guys made two threes for Boston? At least two threes. Tatum, Horford, Holiday, White, Brown, Hauser, Porzingis. Seven guys. Come on. That's the Boston formula right there.
Seven guys make multiple threes. You're not beating them. No one had more than 22 points like it was a very evenly distributed scoring game. I know, I mean, you know, what were, Tatum was 15, what was Tatum's stats? Tatum was 16 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 6 turnovers, 6 of 16 from the floor. He had a quality game. Yeah, he was like... Well, that's the thing, people look at Tatum's stats and they try to like focus on it. Okay, there's 6 turnovers.
If you're a Boston fan, you're just going to have to breathe through the Tatum and Brown turnovers. I've seen so many turnovers in this building between these guys the last five years, I don't even know what to say. But Tatum came out with a rebounding mindset, which is important because he's defending the bigs. He came out looking to rebound, and he came out looking to pass. And we were setting up his teammates well.
for some of those threes and he was leading that part of the reason why they were able to get out in the break was because he was rebounding so well. He was rebounding and then outlet passing. I think he had a very effective, especially first quarter, even though nobody would know it by looking at his score. - Just looking at the numbers, nobody really, neither team really got any traction in all the supplementary categories. Low turnover game, 11 for Dallas, 12 for Boston.
10 offensive rebounds for each team, that's not really much at all. 12 made free throws for Dallas, 13 made free throws for Boston.
All of those being even, and some of that was baked into the series. Like these are low turnover offenses who don't force turnovers on defense, all that. All of those being even, like if Dallas can't scrounge out an advantage somewhere in there, particularly offensive rebounding, if they're going to put wings, Boston, on the Dallas centers, that feels like advantage Boston. If it just becomes like who shoots better and more threes, you know. Yes, but isn't that the way a lot of Boston games go? Yeah.
You know, I mean, I don't know what. So they were 7 of 15 in the first quarter on threes, and they were 16 of 41. Still 11 of 27. I'm sorry, 9 of 27. So not 33%. Yeah. So, like, you know, that's not. That first quarter they were just white hot. Porzingis was out of his body. Like, you know, I think Dallas can look at that and say, let's prevent that from happening again and feel okay about their chances of giving themselves a
Better opportunity game two. I did think it was interesting, apropos of like nothing, that the first Dallas possession of the game, they posted up Daniel Gafford on Tatum. Obviously anticipating that would be the matchup. Like, let's just see what happens if we dump the ball to Daniel Gafford who never gets posted up. They got a Derek Jones Jr. three out of it. It was just, it was two teams like looking at each other face to face and be like, yeah, we know you're going to do that. We're going to try this. Let's see how it goes. I will say this, as long as you can talk about the very early stages of the game. I think Dallas started the game out like five of six.
and they were up by like one or two points because Boston had taken like nine threes already and made like three of them. Dallas had a couple early turnovers, like Luka dropped the ball out of bounds or whatever. That was indicative of the way it was going to go, that even though Dallas was playing well, the three-point volume was so high.
that Boston was able to withstand it and then it started to snowball. A couple of pick sixes on Luka in this game. Jalen Brown got one, Derek White got him from behind. Kyrie threw a pass 45 degree angle, diagonal backwards at one point. Not everything went great for them in that first half. Hauser's minutes were good for Boston. Hauser made a three-pointer.
where the ball came in at his shoulders and he redirected it like it was a touch pass and it went in. I was like, oh my God. Do you want to try to recreate that after we're done? I think it was in the other corner. I can be the shooter. How many times will it take me to hit a no-dip corner three? A hundred times? And I'm not a bad shooter, but that's a really hard shot. Oh, you're not? No.
What is not a bad shooter? I mean at this advanced age the only skills I offer and pick up are a good outside shot and I'm a good passer. I can't do it and I can't and I will not do anything else. If you ask me to play any kind of defense or get rebounds it's not going to happen. You know what I'm good at? Fouling. Hey look someone's got to play. I will foul you like nobody's business.
Are we missing any subplots from this game that we should hit? I don't think so, and I have to go anyway. Brian Windhorst, Hoop Collective. You're going to preview every game on the Hoop Collective. That's right. So you're going to turn this around real fast. Not that fast. We've got two days off, but Sunday there'll be. There'll be off days, but yes. And you're going to be all over TV, all over the series. Great job, as always. It's good seeing you. Thanks for the compliments, and it is good to see you. How many years have we been doing this? I don't know.
I mean, we did it. Good answer. That's a good podcast right there. I don't know. We did it before the pandemic. Then during the pandemic, we still did it. We had some guests. Yeah. We had Steve Clifford. He had been fired by the Hornets. He was still wearing Hornets gear. It was...
Because he knew he was going to go back. Yeah. Don't throw away your gear. It's Drew Holiday. Good game for Drew Holiday. Just another quiet Drew Holiday game. That's what he does. Beat the hell out of P.J. Washington on one isolation. It's like, how does he bully these bigger guys? It's incredible. Okay, Brian Wynors, you've got to go. Thank you. Low post hoop collective will be back in like 96 hours or something. Thank you to Jackson and Adi who are on site here. And we've got a whole setup here. We're on the parquet. It's nice. I think it's on YouTube or something too. I don't know if it really is, but I think it is. Good night. Godspeed.