Karalis: Celtics slow defense hurt them too much to overcome Brooklyn Nets superstars

In case you weren't aware of this before, the Brooklyn Nets are really good.

You can be as mad as you want about how they were constructed. You can hate Kyrie Irving forever for ditching the Boston Celtics and sending both franchises along their current paths. But no matter how much Haterade you want to drink, it doesn't change the current situation.

The Celtics walked into Brooklyn rested and ready to take on, perhaps, the leading favorite to win the NBA championship this year. And they mostly did a good job, but to paraphrase Miracle Max, mostly good isn't all good. Mostly good means slightly bad.

"That’s your margin when you play these guys. Just super low," Brad Stevens said after the 121-109 loss. "We just have to really, really cross all T’s and dot all I’s when you play against these guys on every possession."

The Celtics didn't do that, and against these Nets, it's just not going to be good enough to win.

Forget for a minute that they didn't have Kevin Durant. The combination of Irving and James Harden is enough to frustrate even the most cohesive of defenses. When the defense they're facing is a step slow, then the gravity of Brooklyn's superstars can rival the pull of a black hole.

"We tried to go zone, we tried different things out of the zone, we tried the run and jump, we tried to trap the ball screen a little bit, and I thought they did a great job of spacing and making us pay with their shooting around those guys," Stevens said. "You have to pick your poison a little bit, but credit all those different guys that made big, big shots for them. That’s a big reason why I think they’re so unique. They’re one of the better shooting teams that’s ever been assembled around those special one-on-one players, and those guys are special shooters too that you’re rotating to as well."

It seems like every blitz was met with a counter, and every counter turned into three points. Whenever the Celtics built a lead with a stretch of great defense, the Nets pounced on mistakes and kept things close enough for their stars to take over late in the game.

Here's a great example.



Harden gets doubled by Grant Williams and Jeff Teague. Jeff Green does a perfect job getting into space for Harden to get rid of the ball while Landry Shamet relocates from the right corner up to the break. Green finds Shamet, and the late contest from Kemba Walker does nothing to disrupt the shot.

There is so much wrong with this play from Boston's perspective. Teague is horribly slow at getting over to Harden. It's a terrible double team. Coming off a pick-and-roll, Teague and Williams need to blitz him strong or not at all, because all this did was give Brooklyn an easy paint touch. That collapsed the defense and it allowed Shamet to get a good look, even though the pass was a little off.

Double-teaming a player requires precision. The Celtics were very much not precise. Here is another egregious example:



Jaylen Brown might as well have sent Irving a text message saying "comin 2 dbl u ?." They were practically staring at each other when Brown made his move. There was literally nothing surprising about this.

Of course, Green got the ball, whipped it over to Shamet, and Daniel Theis, who had to account for a man standing under the basket, had no chance at getting to the shot.

"I think we gotta get in their air space a little bit more when we're closing out and we're scrambling off the double team," Jayson Tatum said afterward. "Think they were a little too comfortable early. When somebody's comfortable, it's kind of easy to see the ball go in."

Of course, even when the Celtics did get the first part of it right, Irving is so good that he can still make a play.



Marcus Smart had Irving measured. Now, there is some question about him leaving a shooter like Joe Harris to try to make this play, but (a) Irving is just a wizard with the basketball and he makes a pass to Harris that most players wouldn't and (b) Kemba Walker is a little out of position after a switch and, thus, a step slow to recover out to Harris.

“We were slow in our rotations. Just a half a second," Smart said. "If you’re a second late they’re going to make you pay. Brooklyn did a really good job when we went to double those guys of finding the open man and knocking those shots down. We’ve just gotta continue to work on it and get our rotations right just a little bit quicker. We’ve gotta be a step quicker than what we were tonight.”

The Celtics did a lot of things right in this game. It was a two-point game with just a few minutes to go before Irving and Harden poured it on. Superstars like them will always find one last push down the stretch. Boston's inability to defend possessions like these prevented them from building up leads big enough to, maybe, offset that closing kick.

Yes, they still need help, health, and some good luck to make a deep playoff run. But cleaning up flaws like these will go a long way in making them better team before all those other things happen.