The Celtics are getting some serious practice time in at the Auerbach Center, getting their plans in place for Game 1 of their opening round playoff series against the Brooklyn Nets.
“Today was a hard day,” Ime Udoka said after Thursday practice ended. “We got a good amount of scrimmaging in, not only ourselves but duplicating some of their plays. We got a scout team out there running the Brooklyn sets.”
There's a lot of preparation over a few days for a Nets team that relies on a fairly simple strategy.
“It’s not the most difficult thing,” Udoka said. “They want to find the matchup they like and isolate there so that's nothing tricky as far as that. There are some sets where they've hurt us and other teams with and we want to take them out of those.”
This is the issue with Brooklyn. Fundamentally, there isn’t a lot of mystery to them. Offensively, the Nets basic goal is to get Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving mismatches they can exploit. Boston’s defensive goal has always been to draw teams into isolation basketball so they're not hurt by ball movement.
So what happens when the thing you want to do defensively is also the thing they want to do offensively?
“They're going to isolate a lot and make some tough shots,” Udoka said, “but it's the easy looks that they get and what they get from (Seth) Curry, (Patty) Mills, second-chance points like (Andre) Drummond and (Nic) Claxton, and Bruce Brown's energy. So it's other things you can take away because they're going to make tough shots.”
This is ultimately going to be the plan, but as Mike Tyson once said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Durant and Irving can deliver some vicious uppercuts during a game, but how Boston responds is going to be the key.
How can Boston avoid being drawn into answering Nets runs versus playing their game? How can the Celtics avoid rushing in an attempt to make a shot that answers Durant or Irving versus staying disciplined?
"Understanding who they are and who we are,” Udoka said. “They have two extremely high-level scorers that have seen everything -- seen every coverage and every scheme and still do it at a high level. You gotta understand they're going to make tough shots. They're going to go runs. Moreso it's continue to do what we've done every year. Understanding how we're going to attack them. The type of shots we want to give up and the amount of work we want to make them have.”
Still the mental challenge of this series is likely to be where it’s won. The Nets bludgeon teams under the sheer force of their top scorers. Boston’s best chance at weathering storms is to compartmentalize each possession and not get caught up in how big a particular run is getting.
“That’s what they are known for, they are great scorers,” Daniel Theis said. “So we can’t just lose focus on that and lose sleep over if they make contested long twos over one or two people, so I think that’s the main part. Keep doing what we’re doing, we believe in ourselves, so that’s like the most important thing.”
It’s especially important for people like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, both of whom are capable of answering Durant and Irving, but are also tasked with making their teammates better. The best way to answer a couple of Nets buckets in a row is by running good offense and getting good looks for whoever is open. If Brown or Tatum get lured into an iso-fest, that swings the odds in Brooklyn’s favor.
“It's not a one-on-one duel, it’s not a 2-on-2 duel, it’s 5-on-5 at the end of the day,” Brown said. “It's gonna be other players on the court, so everybody else outside, of course, it's exciting and they get caught up in the matchups and this star power, but in reality, basketball is played 5-on-5. It’s gonna take everybody on our side to be able to win and be able to push forward.”
This might ultimately be the key to this series. For all the planning and talk about matchups, the key to Boston’s success might simply be to treat Brooklyn buckets as things that just happen from time to time, and that have no bearing on what the Celtics are trying to accomplish.
Boston has to dictate the terms of this fight.
“Our mentality is, I guess, punch first and we want to affect them and not make it easy on them,” Udoka said. “That's how we're rolling into it and what we've done well this year and continuing that."