What led to dominant Celtics defense in Game 1 win over Pacers?

The Celtics played one of their worst offensive games of the 2018-19 season on Sunday afternoon, yet they still managed to win by double digits. Those are two statements that have been true together all year long for this team.

The Celtics rode their offense to wins for most of the season, as indicated by their 0-9 record in games where they scored 100 points or less prior to Sunday. When this group had to get down and dirty in the regular season while the shots weren’t falling, they weren’t able to grind things out. However, that changed in an 84-74 victory over the Pacers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, which was a pretty impressive accomplishment when you considered all the lowlights for the Celtics on paper offensively. They shot a season-low 36.4 percent from the field, including just 37 points from inside the arc and managed just 24 points in the paint on 12-of-32 shooting.

That did not come back to haunt Boston in Game 1, largely thanks to a Pacers team that easily serves as the worst offensive squad among the 16 playoff teams in both conferences. They are devoid of dependable scorers and that reality was painfully on display in the second half of Game 1 when the Celtics limited them to a paltry eight points in the third period and 29 points overall in the second half, which turned a tight first half contest into a fourth-quarter blowout.

Yet, after watching the Pacers put together one of the worst shooting performances in a half in playoff history, the question is worth asking: How much of this was the Celtics playing great defense rather than a woeful Pacers offense having a bad shooting night? Boston had struggled mightily with their defense in the second half of the season (20th in NBA) before a late lineup change by shifting Aron Baynes into the starting five helped to settle things down and get them back on track.

Without Marcus Smart in the fold now, there was a legitimate concern the Celtics defense would see some more serious dropoff, but that was not a problem in Game 1. Were the Celtics able to flip a switch and amp things up defensively? How much credit should Boston get for holding the Pacers to eight third-quarter points. Let’s take a closer look at just how much credit the Celtics deserve for the shutdown performance.

Pacers third quarter shooting stats
2/19 FG, 0/8 3pt, 4/7 FT, five turnovers, eight points

Third quarter shot-by shot breakdown:

Bogdanovic contested 3 (Brown)
Collison missed open midrange jumper (Baynes lays off)
Turner missed open transition 3
Collison transition 3 (good late Tatum contest)
Matthews missed contested 3 (Irving got away with a foul)
Collison missed midrange jumper (Baynes lays off/Kyrie contests from behind)
Turner missed open midrange jumper off dribble
Collison missed open midrange jumper off dribble
Sabonis missed hook (good D by Morris and Horford)
Matthews misses open 3 off pindown (late contest by Jaylen Brown)
Evans missed contested layup
Joseph gets goaltended by Horford at the rim
Evans miss open handoff 3 (Tatum goes under screen)
Evans miss layup (Theis contests)
Sabonis misses putback in traffic
McDermott makes driving righty layup (Tatum fouls)
McDemott airball 3 off handoff (good contest by Tatum)
McDermott misses open 3 on left wing (no contest by Tatum)
Sabonis misses contested lefty layup in paint (Baynes)

Missed open shots: 7
Missed contested shots: 10
Made shots: 2



PROTECTING THE PAINT

The biggest thing that sticks out after watching the Pacers third quarter carnage is their shot selection. Indiana did not even attempt a shot in the paint until the 3:41 mark in the third quarter, instead settling for a mix of long 2s and 3s. The Celtics did an excellent job of making sure the Pacers top shooters (Bojan Bogdanovic, Doug McDermott) did not get much breathing room all quarter long. Instead, the C’s offered up the least efficient shot in basketball (midrange 2s) and the Pacers were happy to take the bait instead of attacking the paint.

“The biggest point we made at the break was protecting the paint,” Brad Stevens explained. “Not as much physicality wise, but more from just the standpoint of those roles that I talked about where they got down in the middle of us and on us and laid it in. You can’t give teams layups and you got to challenge shots as well as you can and then rebounding and owning your space on offense had been our number one and two emphases over the last four days.”

The Pacers finished with just 36 points in the paint, 10 points below their season average. Keeping that number so low even while the Celtics played Marcus Morris 29 minutes at the four was a big win for Boston. The Pacers length has produced easy shots on the interior in past matchups and the Celtics were determined not to let that happen in the second half.

“We were really connected, and we were really playing hard and we were really flying around,” Stevens said. “That doesn’t mean you always get stops and there’s probably some bounces that didn’t go their way. We gave up two or three, maybe four rolls and dunks/layups there in the 2nd quarter and we wanted to be a lot better at protecting the rim and the paint first.”

DEFENSIVE REBOUNDING

This had been a trouble area in recent weeks against the Pacers big front line, but the Celtics really keyed in on rebounding the basketball in the second half. Indiana missed 17 of their 19 shots in the frame but grabbed just two offensive rebounds on all of those misses. For the entire game, the Celtics grabbed 84 percent of all available defensive rebounds, a top-10 performance for them on the year for the glass. Hayward, Morris, Horford and Baynes all chipped in this area with seven or more rebounds on the day, ensuring the Celtics prevented easy putback opportunities from the likes of Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner.  

CONTESTING JUMPERS

There has been a debate all year long about whether the Celtics have a playoff gear. It’s hard to prove that is true but there is no doubt there was more attention to detail from a defensive standpoint for a few players known for their lapses. While the Pacers missed a number of wide open looks during their eight-point quarter, the Celtics did well to turn a number of wide-open looks into solid contests with strong closeouts.

Collison had a rough shooting night (3-of-11) all day long and while Kyrie Irving routinely got stuck on screens in the pick-and-roll, this is the type of contest from behind we saw little of during the regular season but it matters on plays like this. You can actually hear Stevens yelling, ‘Good Kyrie’ as he trails Collison from behind and contests.



Jayson Tatum also has had a habit of overextending on closeouts and fouling 3-point shooters at times during this regular season. He's been benched during crunch time of certain regular season games when these issues arise. He clearly has the length to bother shooters though and when that is used effectively, it helps turns the Celtics defense from good to great. He had two steals and a block in 33 minutes on Sunday and he looked like more of an asset than a liability on defense for most of 33 minutes with strong closeouts and extra efforts like this, helping to ensure the Pacers shooters didn’t get into much of a rhythm.

This could have been a wide-open 3 from Matthews but Tatum gets in his air space here with good hustle.



McDermott fires up an airball here as Tatum plays the handoff perfectly.



Irving had a feeling before the series that this type of effort would be on the horizon and he voiced that after scoring 20 points in the win.

“Defensively I knew that our length, our versatility were going to be a positive for us, especially in this series,” he said. “We know them very well. We’ve played them four times throughout the year. We know each other pretty well. So defensively I think we’re going to be in the right spots. It’s just matching that effort and being smart about it and who we wanted to gap off of and really focusing in on the game plan, just doing the right things.”

There’s no doubt that the Pacers will shoot better on Wednesday night and as the series continues but the defensive principles that the Celtics have been lacking for a few months now have started to re-emerge at a time the team desperately needs them. Without Smart in the fold, the Celtics are going to need a little bit more defensive energy out of around to make up for his absence and to match the discipline the Pacers are showing on that side of the ball, giving the game a feel of a 90s matchup full of handchecking and hard fouls.

“They just did a good job defensively and so did we,” Al Horford noted. “I mean, 84-74, that’s old school right there.”

“I think over the last few weeks, we've really tried to turn up our transition defense and focus on that a lot,” Aron Baynes added. “That sets the tone for our halfcourt defense as well. It's fun playing like that. You saw a lot of good emotions from our guys and we know when we play that style of basketball within Brad's system, it's going to be good for us.”

So while it’s unfair to expect the Celtics to match this type of defensive performance again this postseason, they can rest easier knowing they finally won a game they should have lost based on their offense. They are going to shoot much better than this for the rest of the series and if they start putting together a better effort on both ends of the floor, this series could come to an end quickly.

“It was a good combination of things,” Stevens said of the win. “It was hard, it wasn’t pretty, things went against us, even a couple of bounces went against us in the first half when they picked it up and hit end of shot clock plays or put-back. You gotta stay together and you gotta grind it out. So there will be games where we hit a lot of shots and it will make us look better than we played. Today we played a little bit better than we looked."