Zone defense has grown a lot over recent years in the NBA. Great defensive coaches have worked and manipulated zone defenses to make them effective in varying doses.
Still, zone, at its core, is flawed. It can be an effective tool for stretches but the best teams generally recognize it and pick it apart if it’s relied on too long.
“We can get any look against a zone in the NBA,” Grant Williams said after the loss to the Clippers. “When people play zone it’s because they can’t guard you in a man.”
That's the prevailing thought when it comes to zone defenses. Players on one team can’t guard players on another, so you play zone and have guys guard an area on the floor. It’s easy enough to pick apart, yet the Celtics seem to have more trouble than most teams with it in recent years.
The Clippers used their zone effectively in this one. They packed the paint and dared the Celtics to shoot.
The plan worked. The Celtics shot 4-42 in the game for 9.5%, yet they were worse in the second half when L.A. mostly used their zone defense. They shot 8.3% in the second half, 5.6% in the fourth quarter.
The goal of zone in the NBA is to throw the other team off, and that mission was accomplished Wednesday night at the Garden.
“There's a little hesitancy at times,” Ime Udoka said. “I think we turned it over a few times early passing up shots. The zone is doing what it's supposed to: it's making us shoot 3s and keep us from the paint.”
The zone presented a conundrum for Boston: Beating the zone generally means getting the ball in the middle of it somehow because that's a spot on the floor where everyone’s responsibilities overlap. Generally, by getting it in the middle, a team can run cutters along the baseline and pick the zone apart.
“Obviously personnel dictates some of what we can do as far as that,” Udoka said. “We tried to find guys in the middle, which we did quite a bit, and collapse the zone and then they'll go man-to-man, so that happened a little bit. But also getting the ball in the middle and they're taking that away and then you find the shooters wide open. It's hard to say what we could do better because we got wide open looks out of it. But it's also what the defense is trying to stress, or have us do, take away, obviously, paint touches. And so you can't let it become a mental thing and get hesitant.”
The Clippers knew Boston’s weakness is shooting, especially being short handed. They knew by going to the zone, they’d either live or die with Boston making shots.
“Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to dissect,” Grant Williams said. “We just didn’t knock down shots or make the easy reads. If you do it the right way you blow it out of the water. But if you’re not doing it the right way consistently you’re going to have problems…
“We have a little stagnation when they go zone, we slow it down, work it ourselves, where if it was AAU now we’re blowing that zone right out. I think we’re overthinking it a bit and have to play more together rather than attacking it 1 vs. 1.”
This is a constant problem for the Celtics facing zone defenses. The Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat have torn the Celtics apart with zone in the past. It’s especially tough without Jayson Tatum on the floor. His size and gravity at the free throw line forces a lot of overreactions.
There are gaps in zone defenses, and if the ball finds its way into those gaps either by pass or by drive, it generally draws two or more guys. Then the ball is kicked and the next player either shoots or attacks the gap again, forcing even more overreaction and then, hopefully, a cutting lane for someone.
“I think, a lot of times, when certain personnel is closing in on guys, especially in the zone, you can drive those guys,” Udoka said. “So, not to settle and those and really attack when certain bigs are closing out to the corner. I think we settled a few times. But you'll go back and look. Obviously, I'll take a look as well about the 42 of 3s, how many were wide open, great shots that we'll take. And I think a high number were. It gets frustrating at times, but you gotta stay confident with your teammate's confident and the work that they put in every day and look at it as a marathon and how we get to where we want to get to at the end of the season by being confident, knocking those shots down. Not passing up open ones and getting hesitant."
The Celtics got open looks. Amazingly open looks. The type of looks offenses dream of from 3. They theoretically could have pushed the ball more and tried to draw defenders again, but when the end result is this…
…why make another pass?
Maybe the answer in this one was different personnel, but if the answer to the Celtics issues is giving 40-year-old Joe Johnson extended minutes trying to guard Clippers shooters, then things are worse than we thought.
Playing Grant Williams more might have helped. Maybe Sam Hauser should have gotten a little more run. There's a push and pull with trying to find an offensive flow while hitting on defensive assignments that are working. In the meantime, the Celtics can probably expect more zone until they figure out how to make teams pay.
“It’s just a different look. It’s just a different rhythm,” Jaylen Brown said “I guess teams are daring us to make shots, and we got them tonight. We just didn’t knock them down. Next time we’ve got to knock them down. We should make teams pay for going zone, and things like that. We’re in the NBA, and we didn’t hit enough shots to compete tonight but we were still in the game. But we lost by 9 and we didn’t make any shots at all, so, yeah, I guess the zone, we’ve just got to make shots.”