Evan Fournier nearly buried the Boston Celtics in last night’s double overtime thriller at Madison Square Garden. Fournier finished the game with 32 points on 13-25 shooting, including 6-13 on 3-pointers.
Of those six 3-pointers, four came in a two minute stretch from the end of the fourth quarter into the first overtime, a 14 point stretch that included a layup off an out of bounds that probably should have sealed the game.
We’ve seen Fournier get hot before in Boston, and it was frustrating to watch the Celtics botch defensive assignments as he was going off.
Turns out, the Celtics defensive continuity is still a work in progress.
“We switched from switching everything to switching one through four and guys got a little confused going under expecting (Robert Williams) to switch out,” Ime Udoka explained after the game.
Here’s what he means. This is the first 3-pointer in that Fournier stretch which started with Jayson Tatum defending him in the corner.
Tatum, confused, goes under the pick expecting Williams to switch onto the guard. You can see him look first to Williams and then to the bench in confusion. Then Marcus Smart gestures to him to remind him.
It happened again in the overtime to Jaylen Brown.
Williams turns right away and is very demonstrative about that not being his assignment. Brown, clearly confused, gestures back.
So let’s start with this: In normal man-to-man coverage, a player would normally chase that shooter over the top of the screen in order to keep him moving and run him off the 3-point line. When the person coming around the screen is a non-shooter, maybe like Smart or Dennis Schröder, the defense would go under the screen like this and dare him to shoot a pull-up.
When teams switch everything the way Boston had been doing it, the defender goes under to stay between the pick-setter and the basket every time. This is to prevent a slip, or when the pick setter quickly dives to the rim to take advantage of no one being in his path. In the switch-everything scheme, it’s up to the big to be the deterrent and get up on the shooter.
So Tatum and Brown both had it in their heads that Williams was supposed to switch out. He didn’t, instead hanging back and being responsible for keeping Julius Randle away from the rim.
With two guys hanging back and no one bothering Fournier, it was bombs away.
This is how it was supposed to look:
“Changing our coverage in overtime and the fourth quarter, we wanted to keep Rob on Julius Randle, and some of our guys just messed up the coverage,” Udoka said. “Have to be more communicative when we switch it up late in the game. Knew we made a few mistakes that kept them in the game in the first overtime.”
We can try to extrapolate the sequence of events after these miscues and say if they’d challenged the regulation 3-pointer better, Boston could have had the rebound and a transition opportunity with a three point deficit rather than setting up a halfcourt offense against a six point deficit with a minute to go.
Maybe Fournier doesn’t get unconscious from deep.
Maybe Boston gets out in transition up 121-119 in overtime rather than walking it up in a tie game.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
For all the lapses and poor shooting, the Celtics still had opportunities down the stretch to defend and win the game ... or at least grow a lead.
This is where not having everyone for the full preseason hurt them. Yes, Brown and Tatum should have been more aware of the switch in defensive philosophy, so this is on them to be more in tune with how things are going. At the same time, all they’ve known thus far is ‘everybody switch everything,’ so there’s a natural inclination to default to that at this point of the season.
Everyone has had moments when learning a new system when they’re told how to do something and they mess it up. I did it a bunch of times myself on this very site when we went through the redesign. I did it a few days ago, even though I’d done it right a few times prior.
The lack of practice and continuity will rear its head again tomorrow and a few times after that. The hope is that it doesn't cost the team too dearly. It did against the Knicks in a critical time. That's really unfortunate.
The good thing is that some of these mistakes are correctable. Even with Tatum’s rough shooting and other things that went wrong, simply cleaning up the communication and defensive mistakes could have won Boston the game.