How one unique film session helped propel Celtics to statement win over Lakers

In the aftermath of the Celtics’ 139-107 victory over the Lakers on Monday night, there was a constant theme all around the locker room.

Boston was in danger of dropping down to the No. 6 seed at the beginning of the night with a loss to the class of the Western Conference and while no win over LeBron James or Anthony Davis can ever be expected even when the team is at its best, a sloppy performance would be unacceptable after three straight ugly defeats.

“We needed to play well,” Brad Stevens said. “That doesn’t guarantee results. ... That doesn’t guarantee you’re going to make shots and things are going to go your way. But we put the ball in the basket quite a bit.”

“We needed it,” Kemba Walker said. “This is a really important game for us, and we treated it like it.”

With Walker and Jaylen Brown back in the lineup after injuries kept them sidelined on Saturday night and a day off taking away a fatigue problem, there would be no excuses for this group on Monday. The good vibes of a hot start and surprise 10-game winning streak had faded away with six losses in the last eight games. The Celtics were losing to both good and bad teams while looking like a punchless group at times on both ends. In response, Stevens put everyone’s feet to the fire in a film session on Sunday to address the defensive slippage. Every single play in the session was sent focusing on the defensive end with the entire team taking accountability in the setting directly, according to players.

“It was eye-opening for us,” Semi Ojeleye told BSJ. “Everybody involved in the play spoke about what we did wrong and what we didn’t do. We tallied up if we did our job or if we didn’t. If one guy didn’t do it and then as a team we didn’t do our job. It was all defense, no offense. We know it’s on both sides of the ball but it starts right there on defense.”

The response was dramatic. The Celtics came out with some of the best ball pressure and intensity that we’ve seen all season on the defensive end. They doubled up the Lakers when it came to deflections (27-12), and used active scrambling defense to catapult the offense to easy looks in transition. The Lakers had six turnovers in the first quarter alone and were not ready to handle the intensity the Celtics came with to end their slide.

“I think, for us, it was probably our ball pressure,” Walker said of the difference. “Where we allow teams to operate their offense when we're good and when we're bad. When we're really good, we're up on the basketball and teams are operating from pretty far out. When we're bad, it's obviously the opposite. Tonight, we really did that.

“We pressured the basketball. Those guys were operating far out and we were just scrambling. Helping each other, talking, running all over the gym, just making a lot of hustle plays. We were playing the way we know we can play.”

The head coach agreed with that assessment.

“I think that we’re a fast team,” he said. “We’ve gotta take advantage of some of the things that we do best, so, making things tough, pushing guys out, making them stay farther from the rim is what we’ve gotta do to speed the game up and use our advantages. We did a good job of that tonight.”

The adjustments did not just come from an effort perspective either. Stevens tightened up his rotation with a fully healthy team except for Rob Williams, playing a playoff-style eight rotation that relied on size and experience off the bench in Enes Kanter, Marcus Smart and Semi Ojeleye. The added minutes were spread around the majority of the team’s core and the entire group played at a level on both ends the Lakers couldn’t match.

“We needed everyone today, but I thought Jaylen played well,” Stevens said. “Gordon’s early buckets settled us down and Jaylen kind of took off after that and made some good plays, and Tatum came in for his second stint and was great. Kemba was steady all the way through. But we needed everyone’s energy tonight.”

With no signature wins for this group against Christmas and a loaded top half of the Eastern Conference tightening things up in the standings with every day, there was relief at this kind of a win but also a hope that this would not just be a flash in the pan. It’s easy to play hungry against the Lakers on national television but maintaining that mindset will likely be the difference in how this season unfolds.

“We have to hold ourselves accountable to play with this type of energy and this type of effort every night,” Brown said after scoring 20 points and dunking on LeBron. “It just can’t be against the Lakers, we got to get up and play like that against Memphis in a few days. We got to be able to be resilient, humble, poised, and continue to move forward.”

While the team's focus was on defense in the film room, offensively, there was no denying how much of an impact playing with a full cast of characters had as well. The Lakers had the size advantage almost everywhere on the floor but the C’s made them pay by attacking in transition, driving and kicking and crashing the offensive glass from the corners en route to shooting a red-hot 55 percent and 16 offensive rebounds on the night with five players in double figures.

“Just much more dynamic,” Tatum said of the lineup look. “I feel like we’re tougher to guard when myself, JB, Kemba, Smart, when everybody’s out there. It makes it tougher for the other teams to guard and it makes it easier for all of us with so many guys that can do so many different things out there. Hopefully we can continue to stay healthy. Obviously we’d love to have Rob back, but we’ll keep it rolling until he gets back.”

The win improved Boston’s original starting five to just 8-5 on the year in games they've played together but a lot of their best wins (Milwaukee, Toronto, Denver) feel like a distant memory now in the wake of an ugly 2020 before Monday. This one was needed not just to stop the bleeding but remind everyone what can happen when this group is locked in.

“A reminder of how good we can really be and how good we really are and how we were playing earlier in the season.,” Walker said. “That's how we were playing. We had great energy, pressured the basketball, just having fun, playing with enthusiasm and passion. I think we got away from that a little bit.”

“I think it put us in a mode of urgency,” Ojeleye told BSJ of the response. “When you have those low times, you have to get back to winning as fast as possible.”

With just over two weeks remaining until the trade deadline, this is a crucial evaluation stretch as the front office debates how much to invest into this group. Everyone played well on Monday night against a contender but there are still holes that remain in this group that will need to be addressed by the front office in order to get by the Bucks and Sixers of the world. The core showed in this one that they can play with the best though when fully engaged.

For one night, things couldn’t have gone better. Consistency was apparent on the offensive end (33+ points in all four quarters). No LeBron-led team had lost by 14 or more all year and the Celtics doubled that. Stevens had been speaking about the desire to get this group playing like they did against the Spurs in a blowout road win in November and he did just that.

“Well, I mean we’ve had good games since then,” Stevens explained of the comparison. “It’s just we’ve had guys out and I think that again, I want to see if we can play well with a sustained period with more bodies available and then we can gauge where we are, how good we are and all that stuff. But there’s still a lot of unknown. This is one game. Just like I think we didn’t overreact to losing the Phoenix game, we’re not going to overreact to winning this one.”

“Things are going to get tough but it’s about how you respond through adversity,” Smart told BSJ. “We had really been playing bad and it’s been showing. All we did was play with the energy that we should have been playing with during all these other games and the outcome was different for us.

“Best game we played all year. We played a full 48 minutes and that’s all you can ask for. “