If Jaylen Brown is the leader of the Boston Celtics’ ecosystem, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard are right behind him. Brown leads the pack, but White and Pritchard, for the most part, are in charge of orchestrating the offense. So, what if you chopped off the head of the snake? What if you sent pressure to those three guys at all times?
Disaster. That’s what happens.
Teams have been putting more pressure on the ball against the Celtics. “It's a trend that's kind of around the league, just to pick up pressure,” Joe Mazzulla said post-game on Wednesday night. “Just to kind of have that. So, it tests a lot.”
Boston’s last three games, in particular, have seen a healthy dose of ball pressure at the level of screens. Onyeka Okongwu, Jalen Duren, and Jay Huff have stayed up for various amounts of time in an attempt to put pressure on the pick-and-roll. But it hasn’t worked.
Instead, it’s simply allowed Sam Hauser and Neemias Queta to control the offense—and they’ve created a beautiful symbiotic relationship in the process.
Here, Hauser sets a screen for White to run into a pick-and-roll with Queta. But instead of sticking the screen, Queta slips it and rolls hard to the basket. But since Huff is up by the three-point line, Johnny Furphy has to tag the roller.
That leaves Hauser wide open in the corner.
He and Queta have been playing off each other’s spacing perfectly, and it’s helped both of them find a rhythm lately.
“There's definitely timing to it,” Hauser said of working off Queta. “And when the timing is off, you can tell the whole play kind of blows up. But it starts with Neemi setting a great screen, and sometimes it's hard when they're pressuring like that, but we have such dynamic ball-handlers that they're able to kind of create an advantage even when a screen is not even there, which makes it easier for me on the back end of the play to get open and get to space.
“You just kind of have to adjust to it and try to take what the defense is giving you at that moment in time, if they're switching up the coverage.”
That same exact situation played out in Boston’s recent games against the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks, too. Duren comes up to the three-point line, Ausar Thompson tags the roll, and Hauser shifts up above the break for an open three.
Okongwu steps up, Vit Krejci helps into the paint, and Hauser gets an open corner triple.
That’s the baseline. That’s what teams have been giving up lately. But the symbiosis doesn’t end there. Boston has employed plenty of variations to take advantage of Hauser and Queta’s spacing.
On this play, Brown has the ball on the wing and immediately draws pressure. Huff is so focused on helping slow down Brown that Queta is able to set a flare screen for Hauser.
Pascal Siakam gets bodied, and Huff is too distracted to help over. Hauser floats over into a wide-open three.
Hugo Gonzalez gets involved in this one. Okongwu comes up to the level again, but this time, when Queta rolls, Hauser doesn’t just stand in the corner.
Jalen Johnson, Hauser’s matchup, shifts down to cover the roll, so Hauser moves up to the wing. Gonzalez screens his own man, CJ McCollum, to spring Hauser for the open shot.
So, why don’t these teams just stop helping over and let their big man recover?
Well, Queta is