BOSTON -- For years, the Boston Celtics were all about defense. Throughout the Doc Rivers and Brad Stevens years, Boston was always one of the best defensive teams in the league. Ime Udoka's single season produced a Marcus Smart Defensive Player of the Year.
Since Joe Mazzulla took over, the public perception has shifted. It's all about the threes. And in a way, that's fair. Mazzulla Ball has been widely associated with 3-pointers (and a lot of them).
The Mazzulla-led Celtics have still been elite on defense. Al Horford. Jrue Holiday. Great infrastructure, largely built on guarding your yard and playing smart, straight-up defense. With that, the 'all-offense, Mazzulla Ball' Celtics have landed in the top five on defense every season since Mazzulla took over.
They were fourth last season, fourth the season before that, and second in defensive rating in each of Mazzulla's first two campaigns. But maybe it didn't feel like it because of how standard the game plan was.
Accept one-on-one matchups and live with it. Help when needed, but for the most part, just handle your own business. Horford didn't need help. Neither did Holiday. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown could take care of themselves. Why overhelp?
That style of defense was wildly effective, and Mazzulla's math game certainly helped in that regard, too. But perhaps the defense never felt quite as suffocating because it wasn't the sexy, high-octane defense that can easily live up to an eye test.
Well, on Saturday, Boston provided a first look at the new-look Celtics. Tatum. Paul George. Mitchell Robinson. A new era of Boston basketball. And it only took 48 minutes to light the torch of a new era of Celtics defense.
Heading into last season, the Celtics decided to put an extra emphasis on defensive playmaking. Creating more chaos on that end of the court. But they slowly faded back into the one-on-one, straight-up defensive style.
Part of it was personnel. Brown is a point-of-attack guy. Not really a defensive playmaker. Luka Garza and Nikola Vucevic were the backups behind Neemias Queta. Not really built for back line help. And even Boston's most annoying defenders -- Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, and Hugo Gonzalez -- were all young and inexperienced.
This year, the landscape has changed. George is one of the best defensive playmakers in the NBA. Robinson and Queta combine to form a much more formidable back line duo. All those young wings have another year of growth under their belts. Oh yeah, and Tatum is fully healthy.
LeBron James didn't play in Boston on Saturday. Neither did Brown, or Joel Embiid, or even Anfernee Simons. The Sixers were truly a shell of the Super Team they formed this summer. But that shouldn't take away from the Celtics' defensive performance.
They nabbed 16 steals. For context, the most Boston had in a game all of last season was 14. And in their second preseason game, they outpaced that. George had five. Scheierman did, too.
"I think it's just the activity," Mazzulla said of the defensive system. "I think Paul helps that. That's one of the best things that he does, and we kind of saw that in a couple possessions, and I think that just becomes contagious. And guys are able to do that. But just creating a system where you have to be active. You have to be able to cover for each other. You have to have a level of instincts and communication, and we have a bunch of guys that are able to do that. So, we make this a habit to where we get those deflections and have those active hands and make those plays for each other."
The number '16' isn't necessarily the impressive part here. It's what led to the 16 steals. Obviously, had James, Brown, Embiid, and others been healthy, this would have been a completely different basketball game.
Again, it's not the result that stands out here. It's the process. Its how the Celtics played together on the defensive end that led to them snagging 16 steals. Philadelphia's personnel is irrelveant to that connectivity. That connectivity just one game into the season (for the starters, who didn't play against the Cleveland Cavaliers).
Take a look at this play. Justin Edwards catches the ball on the wing with Sam Hauser guarding him. Look at where Queta and Payton Pritchard are already standing.
Queta is up by the 3-point line because his man is setting the screen. Pritchard is shifted over to take away Edwards' driving lane around the screen, but he's also sitting in the lane where Edwards' pass to Labaron Philon Jr. would be. So, Edwards can't make the pass over to the wing.
Now, shift your eyes to the paint. Look at George. He's already planted himself in the paint. Nobody can cut off the ball because there's a guy at the rim. And if Edwards tries to pass the ball across the court to VJ Edgecombe, George has plenty of time to get back and contest.
As soon as Edwards comes out of the screen, Pritchard is there to meet him. He has to make a decision. But since Pritchard has already cut off the passing lane to the wing, Edwards tries to make something happen.
He throws a lead pass for Philon to cut in toward the paint. But oh yeah, remember the positioning from before? George is already in the paint. All he has to do is read the pass, step up, and boom, easy steal.
"He's got great instincts," Mazzulla said of George. "Great technique, great positioning. It's something he takes pride in, but I do think it's very contagious."
On-ball pressure and precise off-ball positioning allowed George to get the takeaway. "Just being in the right spot," George said of his defense. "Obviously, be there to help my teammates. [Mazzulla's] just allowed me to be me. Be a playmaker out there defensively, being, like I said, in the right spots, and just having my guys' backs."
Boston has cultivated a defensive infrastructure that allows George to do what he does best: Hunt steals. He gets to use his instincts to help the Celtics generate turnovers. And he's got a perfect group around him to help him do so.
One of the unsung heroes of Boston's defensive performance on Saturday was Hauser. He did a phenomenal job of being in the right spots to either let someone else get a steal or to grab one himself.
Here's another play. George is already helping over on Maxey. The Celtics wanted to throw a bunch of bodies at Maxey on Saturday (and it worked out for the best, as he shot just 2-of-10 from the field for eight points).
So, as soon as Maxey sees two, he swings the ball to Edwards. But watch the Celtics' defense react to that decision.
George flies back to Edwards. By the time he gets there, Derrick White has already stunted over -- the pass to the corner is gone. Queta is guarding the corner and the drive, with one foot in the paint and the other inching out toward Edgecombe.
Edwards decides to drive at George. Smart move. Attack the guy still recovering. But by the time he gets downhill, Hauser is already back in the play. His help defense forces Edwards to pick up the ball.
So, Edwards is left with two choices. One, go up with a shot. Unfortunately for him, Queta still had a foot in the paint. Not only is George staying with him stride-for-stride, but when he makes it to the rim, Queta is there to greet him.
Two, pass out. But he already picked up his dribble. So, Edwards' pass-out (his choice of the two options) is a weak one. And Hauser knew he only had a couple of places to go, so he got back out to Philon, corralling a steal in the process.
Hauser's court awareness won this possession. George did a lot of heavy-lifting. White and Queta stayed active. But Hauser's ability to stay in the play and be in the right spots eventually earned Boston the steal.
But none of it works without Queta. And, in turn, without Robinson. Having a back line of defense makes all of these plays possible. These "risks" that the Celtics don't actually view as such.
"It helps having Mitch and Neemi out there. Guys who are proven rim protectors. And just understanding that we want guys to be playmakers on the defensive end," Tatum said. "I mean, I guess you could call it risk, but we just call it making plays. Kind of like educated risks, per se. But you only can do that if you know the four guys behind you have your back, or we're all on the same accord. And Baylor and PG are two of our best defensive playmakers with their instincts and things like that. So it just makes us pretty dynamic."
The Celtics are okay with these educated risks because they trust their personnel. They trust guys to make the right decisions off the ball. Decisions that don't always seem important until they are.
Here's one final play for your consideration. Right away, the Celtics have loaded up one side of the floor. Edwards drives, and there are four Celtics bodies around him.
Queta is under the rim, Gonzalez is picking up the drive, and Pritchard and Hauser are ready to deny any corner passes. But that leaves Scheierman on an island. A two-on-one island.
You can see these types of situations present throughout all the previous clips. Boston overloading one area, leaving a guy to guard multiple players on another side of the floor.
Usually, they make it very hard for the on-ball player to find the pass to that underloaded side. Here, Edwards makes it happen. He finds Saint Thomas on the wing.
Now, Scheierman could have closed out to Thomas. That would have denied the shot. But he didn't. Instead, he closed out to the gap between Thomas and Dillon Jones in the corner.
In Thomas' head, he's thinking Scheierman is going to run right at him. So, all he has to do is get the ball to a wide-open Jones in the corner. But Scheierman uses an angled closeout. Because of that, he's able to jump in the air and get the ball.
What ensues is a great display of hustle and an impressive transition finish by Gonzalez. But that was all a byproduct of Boston's educated-risk defensive system.
There will be times when the old style of Mazzulla Ball defense will be necessary. Traditional guard-your-yard defense. Living with one-on-one matchups in space and not sending help. End-of-game scenarios usually feature thist style heavily because there's less risk involved (even if the risk is educated).
But with the new personnel Boston now has on hand, expect more dynamic defense. More steals. More energy. More defense that passes the eye-test, not just the numbers test.
The Celtics have been an elite defense for years. But this season, it's going to be impossible to ignore their presence on that side of the ball.