This Celtics preseason can be distilled down to one word.
Pace.
Obviously, everyone is very interested in how the Celtics' offense will look and the pace at which they will play. A faster team will be a little more aesthetically pleasing for a lot of fans, and it will give them their best chance to put up a lot of points.
But that's not the only way pace will factor into Celtics games this season.
“It's not just an offensive term, it's a defensive term,” Joe Mazzulla said after day two of training camp on Wednesday. “How can you create pace defensively? How can you make guys uncomfortable? How can you make them play faster? How can you make them make more decisions over the course of a possession and over the course of a game? And then using your physicality and your activity, which I think the guys have done a good job of the first couple of days of practice.”
Boston’s defense took an obvious hit this season. Jrue Holiday is still one of the best individual defenders in the league, and not many people can match him when it comes to navigating screens. Kristaps Porziņģis is an elite rim protector whose presence has kept guards away from the paint. And Jayson Tatum is the team’s best defensive rebounder and a plus defender with enough length to block shots.
But just because the Celtics took a defensive hit, it doesn’t mean they can’t be a competent defensive team. How they defend will just be a bit different. The Celtics of the past two seasons didn’t need to gamble and get out of position. Their strength was in their discipline and ability to challenge shots. This year’s team won’t be quite as good as that, so they’ll have to take a few more risks in hopes of forcing some turnovers.
“I think over the course of a game of a season, you want to be able to do that, but you have to have situational awareness,” Mazzulla said. “Know time and score, know when you should do those things and when you shouldn't. So it's definitely a balance, but you want to lean more on taking some of those chances throughout, especially throughout an entire game.”
Those concepts might be easy for established elite defenders like Derrick White or Jaylen Brown. But for someone like Anfernee Simons, who has acknowledged his reputation as a bad defender and that it is a matter of his own effort, it will take a lot of dedication to something he hasn’t focused on much.
“That's the first things we worked on, is just being a playmaker in that way,” Simons said. “Whether it's stabbing at the ball, trying to steal the ball, look at passing lanes, being in the right spot each and every time. And so that's one of the things we drilled for the first four weeks I was here before training camp.
“Those things are something I never really worked on or been taught. And so I was happy that was the focus. And we could see the impact on those four weeks of just working on that stuff.”
Simons is guaranteed a spot in Mazzulla’s rotation, but guys like Baylor Scheierman are not. And as much as he’s shown promise on the offensive end, he knows that he has to be part of the defensive pace. Mazzulla notices.
“(He has) a better understanding of angles, a better understanding of tendencies,” Mazzulla said. “I think having a better understanding of NBA actions, knowing where to be on the floor, how to do your work early. A lot of defense is really more about being in the right position before the play starts and not waiting for the play to start, and that just kind of covers time. So he's done a great job in the film room. The staff has done a great job with him.”
Boston has a lot of very good offensive players, and they will more often than not have to rely on their offense to win them games this season. But part of that offense will flow off of their defense and its ability to force turnovers.
We’ll see guards taking chances on steals, which will invariably lead to whiffs and advantages for the other team. That will put pressure on the back line defenders, none of whom would be considered “elite” rim protectors. That's why those chances have to be taken in moderation.
“It depends on what the lineups are, it depends on time of the game, time and score, where the ball is, is it a five-on-five?” Mazzulla said. “There's just so many things that go into that. I think at the end of the day, having an understanding of what you're trying to accomplish from your scheme defensively, and also having an understanding of who's defending and who's on the floor, where their help is, and is there advantage or a disadvantage. Just trying to take all those things in on each possession.”
It will be a higher-risk, higher-reward style of defending with the goal of getting out and running. It’ll be different than we’re used to because it has to be. If some of the guys with lesser defensive reputations can figure out what the team is trying to accomplish, this team can be better than expected.
