Celtics are built to switch, but they're not quite getting it right

The first batch of game film of the season is like a bite of pizza after a diet. Yeah, I got by on what I had and I’m probably a little healthier for it, but damn it’s good and all I want is more. 

We don’t have much to sink our teeth into, though. We only saw about 25 minutes of basketball from the main Celtics players (and none from the projected Maine Celtics players), and head coach Ime Udoka made it clear that his combinations were more experimental at this point, so there isn’t much to go on at the moment. 

We’ll get more on Saturday when the second preseason game provides our first chance at some repetition; maybe similar groups of players on the floor or offensive and defensive principles that persist. We’ll also get a look at how real (or how concerning) some players’ performances really were. 

For now, we have a little bit of game footage on an off-day with no media availability to ask about what we saw. So let’s CSI this thing and try to piece some of this puzzle together. 

Really the main thing I was watching for was the defense. This Celtics team has a very high defensive ceiling based on its talent, and going into the game I was wondering how Udoka would use the team’s length and versatility. 

Boston switched everything all night. It seems that Udoka’s goal is to play a sort of man/zone defense. It’s not a full man-to-man because guys tend to end up in the same area when they switch even off-ball screens, but it’s not a zone because the players are assigned to whichever player they switch onto, and that can take them anywhere on the court. 

It’s possible Udoka spent the night determined to switch everything in order to gather information about each player’s ability to do it. Since the results of the game don’t really matter, preseason games are essentially glorified 48 minute drills against a live opponent. He very easily could have taken the switching to the extreme just to gather data. 

At its best, switching can create a barrier around the perimeter that limits dribble penetration. With the rules heavily favoring offensive players, it’s been tough for even the best defenders to adequately limit attacks from the perimeter. Switching effectively prevents players from turning the corner and forces more jumpers. 

The key here is “switching effectively.” This is not it:

It’s a little lazy, and it leads to a wide open 3-point attempt. Another danger of switching is that it leaves defenses susceptible to slipping screens, which means a player goes to get a pick for his teammate, but then immediately cuts to the basket (slips) to take advantage of a natural gap that occurs during the switch. 

So immediately we can see that Boston needs to work on two things: They need to make sure they’re very active on these switches and up on their guys while also working on their positioning. 

Juancho Hernangomez should be a step closer to the lane in this scenario. He was too close to his man in the corner, even with Orlando overloaded on that side. If he was a step or two close to the lane, that pass (a) might not have been thrown or (b) would have been thrown much shorter, allowing Hernangomez to get in between the ball and the hoop. With no one at the rim, a lead pass put Orlando in a position to catch and lay it in had the foul not been committed. 

Positioning is part of repetition. The Celtics need to build muscle memory in practice to immediately react to certain things they see. It’s imperative Boston gets this down because defensive positioning is crucial in a switching scheme. 

No defensive tactic is perfect, so teams will do what’s best with their personnel. Switching leaves teams vulnerable to slips, but also back-cuts and creative screening of players’ own men (basically, if the guy guarding you is about to switch onto your teammate, screening him amounts to a normal screen that can free up the ball handler). 

All of these things can be mitigated by having players in the right position behind the action. The goal is to deter the other team from driving and give your defensive teammates a chance to rotate back onto a player. 

Switching as much as Boston did will also put a lot of pressure on the bigs to keep up with guards on the perimeter. Robert Williams did not do that well last night. 

Bigs tend to lay back against a guard in these situations, which leaves open the possibility of 3-pointers. Williams is so freakish, though, that he can play at what seems like a good distance while still getting up to block a shot, which he did a couple of times in this game. Still, Williams needs to be more aggressive on guards to avoid giving up these open looks. 

Williams looked slow in this game, which means he was probably thinking way too much. Nothing slows down a basketball player quite like having to think about where to be rather than reacting. 35-year-old Al Horford looked much faster and more spry than Williams because of his experience and understanding of the concepts. 

What this all amounts to is that the Celtics will need some time to really develop the cohesion they need to execute this level of switching. Of course, we still have to wait and see just how much of this the Celtics will ACTUALLY employ during the season, but no matter what percentage of the defensive possessions involve switching, Boston will have to work pretty hard on getting the timing and execution right.