The Celtics found their defensive identity again in win over Rockets

Marcus Smart has a history of getting under James Harden’s skin. Look no further than last December’s matchup with the Rockets in Houston. The hosts seemingly had a win wrapped up, holding the ball and a 107-104 edge with 20 seconds remaining. Harden was facing a trap from Smart and Avery Bradley near halfcourt and didn’t handle the pressure well. He tried to get free and connected with an elbow to Smart’s face in the process, giving the Celtics the ball and a chance to win after a flagrant 1 foul was whistled.



The script barely changed at the TD Garden this time around on Thursday night. The Rockets led in crunch time when Smart goaded Harden into an offensive foul yet again, this time not once but twice in the final seven seconds on inbounds plays. The miscues opened the door to a Celtics 99-98 win over the Rockets and put an exclamation point on a sensational defensive performance by the hosts in the second half against the NBA’s best offense and top scorer.

Harden shot a horrific 3-of-17 from the field after intermission and added five turnovers in 21 minutes, setting the tone for a Rockets offense that only mustered 36 points over the game’s final 24 minutes.

In order to erase a 26-point first half deficit for the comeback win, the Celtics needed to get back to their roots, and that’s exactly what they did against Harden and the Rockets.

Whether it was Smart, Terry Rozier, or Shane Larkin, Boston’s backcourt made a point of ensuring Harden was not comfortable in the second half. They picked up pressure in the back court constantly as the All-Star brought the ball up the floor, which wore down the veteran without the help of Chris Paul to take ball handling responsibilities off of him.

“Obviously for the second half it affected us,” Mike D’Antoni admitted after the game. “The only way to combat it is you got to go, and we just didn’t have the legs or the energy to be able to combat it. They were up in us well and we didn’t do anything to get around them.”

The Celtics guards fought hard through screens after the break as well, sticking with Harden as much as they could through countless pick-and-rolls. When a guard couldn’t make it around the screen, the bigs did their best to make the 32-point per game scorer feel them on the perimeter. When they forced a drive, plenty of help was waiting and Harden couldn’t find a rhythm around the basket. He was 0-of-7 inside the arc in the second half, which kept him settling for countless 3s during crunch time (3-of-10 in second half).





The Rockets followed Harden’s reliance on the jump shot by turning into a predictable offense overall. Double-digit scorers like Ryan Anderson and Trevor Ariza didn’t attempt one shot in the second half. Instead, the offense turned into the Harden/Eric Gordon show as the two guards attempted 27 of the team’s 36 second half shots, going a combined 5-of-27 from the field. They also took 17 of Houston’s 19 3-point attempts after the break, largely in isolation situations.

“We really guarded, we made shots as tough as possible,” Brad Stevens explained. “Then in the one or two circumstances, whether it was off of loose balls, offensive rebounds, kick-outs where they were wide open, the shots had a little bit more heat on them because you had felt the pressure the whole half instead of you know, you’re just playing free and easy, which they were in the first. They had us on our heels, we tried to be more aggressive defensively; I thought Marcus (Smart) was the key to that, kind of the head of that attack. But everybody added to it.”

Al Horford couldn’t help but rave about Smart’s impact within the team’s overall scheme after the win.

“It just shows the value of Marcus Smart for our group, what he does to our team,” Horford said of his defense. “It all started with him in the second half, in the third, picking up Harden, getting after him and just wearing him down. Staying after him. Smart's pretty banged up and he just kind of found a way to get out of his comfort zone and play as hard as he could. That fueled the rest of our team. I feel like Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris, it was just a domino effect. That's how special he is. When he plays at that level, we're just a different team.”





While Smart is deserving of the praise, one other player who was an essential defensive contributor late was none other than Jayson Tatum. The rookie learned quickly that he couldn’t afford to give Harden room to pull up with a long jumper early in the fourth quarter.



He was matched up against Harden on the perimeter in several switches after that 3 and used his length to contest Harden well, including on one pivotal block on the wing.



Harden was also forced to pull up from 30-plus feet in a potential two-for-one opportunity, but Tatum still managed to get a strong contest on it and grab a very long rebound in a crucial sequence.



Stevens has raved about Tatum’s ability to learn and apply something quickly over the course of the game. His defensive strategy against Harden was a pivotal component of that.

All things considered, the win was very nice for the Celtics to pick up in such dramatic fashion, but the important thing for this group was seeing the defense working again against elite competition. The league’s No. 2 overall defense had been middling for the better part of the last month (in the teens), which surely had to make Stevens wonder whether that hot defensive start to the year was a flash in the pan. The performance against the Rockets was proof that this group can still ratchet things up a notch on that end and slow down the league’s best even at the end of a brutal schedule stretch (16 games in 31 days).

‘There’s a reason why Houston’s hard to guard. You have to play with incredible multiple efforts,” Stevens explained. “And we didn’t (in the first half). So, there’s a lot of excuses that this group could’ve made, but they didn’t, to their credit. And that’s probably the most encouraging thing about tonight. The result doesn’t really matter; it’s the resilience that they showed, which they could’ve easily folded.”

Fittingly, it was Al Horford who finished the job on Thursday night with a go-ahead bucket, avenging his missed opportunity for a win  against the Rockets last December in nearly the same spot. A fun twist to an epic night that got this team back to what it does best.