How Gordon Hayward's court vision picked apart the Bucks defense

The pick and roll is the simplest play in the NBA, yet it’s run more than probably any set in the league. The goal is to put pressure on a team’s defense and force them to make a choice. Pressure the ballhandler? Switch defenders through the pick? Hang back and concede the jump shot to protect against the drive?

The Bucks opted for the latter option for most of the Celtics’ 117-113 win on Thursday night at the TD Garden and the hosts punished them to the tune for a franchise record 24 3-point makes. With slow-footed bigs like John Henson and Brook Lopez attempting to guard Al Horford and other Boston shooters, a barrage of open looks was found all over the floor.

“Well I think – obviously, since the second half of the OKC game, we’ve played pretty good offensively,” Brad Stevens noted. “We’ve gotten good shots. We’ve generated good ones. Tonight, we didn’t settle as much; we still had some possessions we’d like to have back but I thought that we, you know, we took what the defense gave us. We got to the second side of the floor and we found open shooters.”

Still, as with any play, it takes good execution to find the right timing of a pass to the right player in the right spot. For the first few weeks of the regular season, the C’s starters struggled on that front, largely due to a lack of cohesiveness and familiarity. While there has been plenty of improvement from the starters there during the team’s four-game winning streak, one other dynamic was at play during Boston’s record-breaking night: Arguably the team’s best passer (Gordon Hayward) found the ball in his hands much more.

Stevens has been cautious with going too much to the former All-Star in the early stages of this season to run the offense. That’s an understandable strategy given the talent in the team’s backcourt and the fact that Hayward is on a 25-minute limit and is still trying to get his rhythm back after a year layoff. However, the reins were loosened on Thursday night as Hayward came out hot in the first quarter on his way to a season-high 18 points. While the made shots were encouraging, it was Hayward’s playmaking as a ballhandler that helped unlocked the best night of offense all year for the C’s against what had been a top-five defense in Milwaukee.

While Hayward’s season-high five assists may not look overly impressive in the box score, the route in which he got them is worth noting. Nearly everything came in the pick-and-roll, which allowed Hayward to repeatedly break down the Bucks’ defense.

Improved Timing

An early sign of progress of how far Hayward’s passing touch has come since the start of the preseason can be seen at the start of the second half. Back in North Carolina in September, Hayward threw an errant cross-court pass to Irving in the corner that prevented a wide-open corner 3 look.



The placement of those passes is essential for any shooter to succeed since a smooth motion is needed to maximize efficiency. Fast forward to Thursday night and you can see Hayward make the same exact read off the pick-and-roll, except he’s able to deliver the tough pass with precision this time.



His timing is almost just as good here with finding Semi Ojeleye on the wing. Watch how Hayward waits to make the pass until Ojeleye’s defender commits to him. He squeezes the ball pass Middleton’s outstretched hands, setting the stage for an easy look for 3 that Ojeleye drills



Even when Hayward doesn’t get assists, he’s still planting the seeds for them. By breaking down the offense on this pick-and-roll with Baynes, the big man is able to make the extra pass to a wide-open Marcus Morris for a corner 3



These are the type of plays that a healthy Hayward pulled off regularly in Utah over his final three seasons there. He averaged a career-high 5.1 assists back during the 2013-14 season.

“I think Gordon’s really good off pick-and-rolls,” Stevens said. “Obviously, he’s a great passer off of those, and so we’ll just keep feeding all those guys in those different spots. And as the season goes along and I get more comfortable with the team we’ll add more to try to take advantage of that.”

Hayward himself acknowledged on Thursday night just how useful those kind of pick-and-roll reps are to find his own game again.

“That definitely helps,” he said. “It’s something that I’m used to doing. Making plays for others is something that I really enjoy doing, too. I thought tonight I got the opportunity to do that a little bit more.”

Kyrie Irving chipped in with a season-high seven assists himself and noted just how much better the passing looked from both himself and Hayward as they took turns leading lineups together and apart from one another.

“I think before we were not necessarily being aggressive in reading and reacting,” Irving said of the team’s early offensive woes. “Now we’re just playing off one another and reading and reacting. So we have options. We understand what our offense is. And I think we’re dialing into what we’re all capable of doing out there.”

With 30 assists on 41 made field goals as a team against the Bucks, the blueprint that Stevens had for this versatile offense this summer is starting to come to life. While Hayward may not be back to himself from a physical standpoint for a little while now, his court vision and passing touch are rounding into form already and that’s something Stevens will be able to lean on all year long to get the kind of quality shots the Celtics feasted on Thursday night

“It’s an ongoing process, last game wasn’t that great, tonight was a little bit better,” he said. “I’ll watch this one, just like I watched the last one, try to improve on the things that I didn’t too well, keep doing things I did.”