https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2024/04/joe-mazzulla-gives-bizarre-assessment-of-celtics-game-2-defense-vs-heat.html

The Heat made history in Game 2 on Wednesday night, erupting for a postseason franchise record 23 3-point makes in a 111-101 upset win over the Celtics to even the series at 1-1. The bombardment came from a diverse cast for the undermanned Heat with six different players knocking down multiple 3s as the team shot a scorching-hot 53.5 percent from 3-point range.

The move to fire away from deep should not come as a surprising choice. Without Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier, Miami lacks reliable creators and attackers at the rim outside of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. The team was going to need to roll the dice from beyond the arc to give themselves a chance. Their hot start put added pressure on a Celtics offense that struggled to keep pace and got little help all night beyond their two All-Stars.

Yet the assessment of Miami’s steellar shooting after the game led to a bizarre evaluation by Mazzulla of his team’s role defensively in the outburst.

“Defensively, obviously they made a conscious effort with free reign to shoot more,” Mazzulla said. “I thought most of those were moderately to heavily contested, so we’re going to have to make the adjustment on some of those.”

That assessment stood in contrast to a couple of Celtics players after the defeat as Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday acknowledged the Celtics were willing to let most Heat shooters fire away.

“They were making shots, guys that we want shooting the ball were hitting them,” Brown said. “Seemingly couldn’t get them to miss. Credit to those guys.”

Holiday was more candid about Boston’s tactics right out of the gate.

“I think just starting off, the guys that we wanted to shoot, not that we let them, but it wasn’t like a get out to them and put it on the ground,” Holiday said. It was kind of like protect the basket but still get a close-out, but they started knocking them in. We know Martin can shoot, but they had guys out there that were knocking in everything, even Jaime Jaquez just knocking it in.”

Miami’s hot shooting night should have had a familiar feel for the Celtics as Game 2 proved to be the fourth time in the last two postseasons that the Heat shot 50 percent or better from 3-point range.

A video review of Miami’s made 3s indicates that Mazzulla’s assertions are dubious. There were maybe 10 total contests of those 23 3-point field goals by the Heat and that’s having a generous threshold for what this author considers to be a contested shot. Boston moderately or heavily contested perhaps a handful of those makes. The rest? The Celtics were inviting wide-open looks. A few came on defensive breakdowns via rotations (another area Boston had to clean up) but the Celtics gameplan here was clear and failed.

Mazzulla’s late-game tactics were also questionable. The team threw an extra body at the Herro/Adebayo pick-and-roll and left wide-open hot shooters (Haywood Highsmith, Caleb Martin) with the game on the line with ugly results. Closing the game out with Kristaps Porzingis (-32) over Al Horford (+8) invites debate as well since Horford was the superior defender on this night.

Ultimately, there is nothing here that the Celtics can’t clean up going into Game 3. Yet, Mazzulla’s gameplan opened the door for the Heat to fully lean into their high 3-point shooting volume. Miami’s drivers shouldn’t share the Celtics more than their ability to hit the 3-ball in this series. While Jaquez and Martin shot over their heads in Game 2, they did so on wide-open looks. Meanwhile, Boston did a horrific job respecting a host of 40 percent 3-point shooters (Herro, Highsmith, Jovic) and was punished accordingly.

The pressure is on Mazzulla and the Celtics to respond on this front in Game 3 to retake command.

“I think we’ve gotta be more creative,” Tatum said. “The playoffs are about making adjustments game to game, and they did that...They’re supposed to try to mess things a little up, and make it a little bit tougher. So it’s our job to react in real time, as well as make our adjustments going from game to game.”

I love BRobb. He's always willing to call out Joe's questionable decisions.

This is just so bad. Not only were all of our memories right that the majority of the shots were anything but "moderately to heavily contested", but this kind of gameplan just makes no sense to me whatsoever. Sure, in the NBA you at times definitely have to give up something to stop something that is more impactful, but that's generally the case for high-powered offenses like Denver, where you might sag off of Gordon to double Jokic or stay tighter to everyone else.

But against a mediocre Heat offense that has no Butler or Rozier, why in the world are we giving up open looks to their shooters, particularly some of their better shooters? In fact, this just played right into their hands. Their only chance was to try and shoot and hit a lot of threes, and at their core that's what they are - a three point shooting team. So what sense does it make to really pack the paint in this scenario? And it's not like we laid off some of their shooters to stay tighter on their better shooters like Herro or Robinson, as we were essentially giving them wide open looks off of every PnR by dropping so low with our big. And then Robb picks up on the late-game adjustment to bring the extra help out on the high PnR instead of just going small, which again just left wide open hot shooters to hit more threes.

Just make it make sense.

Quote from: Phantom255x on Yesterday at 09:23:22 PM

I'm asking a Yes/No question to this entire forum: Are these issues the same as the last 8 years?

Because honestly, I feel they are. And that was even with Ime/Stevens. Also, the team has guys like JVG, Cassell, etc. as assistant coaches and advisors. At some point I start to look at the players more. A ton of reliance on the 3. Players becoming soft and mentally weak. Some terrible lapses in-game.

Mazzulla deserves some blame but I think blaming primarily him is just missing the point frankly.

The issue is that we don't have transcendent talent, and our best player hasn't shown that he consistently perform when it counts most.

Add that to a constant uphill battle that is Joe's terrible coaching, and it's no wonder why we underperform in the playoffs despite our stacked rosters.

Joe.

Our best player was iced by coach...

Quote from: Larry for 3 on Yesterday at 10:59:31 PM

The Celtics can’t win a championship with this coach. It’s not going to happen. He doesn’t have a clue how to adjust or change the rotation on the fly ect ect ect. Or anything else. You can’t fire the players although Brad has tried. And this isn’t an over action. I’ve been saying this for ever. He’s over his head and unless Tatum goes Lebron / Jokic on teams we won’t win it. The evidence is right infront of us.

It’s unfortunately much deeper than Mazzulla being out of his depth. The truth is that this is not a team, it’s just a collection of talented players. If you want to see what an actual team looks like, watch Denver.

I think it is D White and Jrue who make us a team. Who bring other players together and make them collective. And when they don't play well, the team doesn't look good.

Not gonna lose many games when you shoot 23-43 from 3PT land for 53.5% shooting.

C Martin = 5-6 3PTA
Jovic = 3-4 3PTA
Herro = 6-11 3PTA
Jaquez = 3-6 3PTA
Highsmith = 3-5 3PTA

D Robinson = 2-7 3PTA
D Wright = 1-3 3PTA
Bam = 0-1 3PTA

Mo has a nice and thorough analysis regarding Tatum benching while Brown was on the floor. People have asked me about my signature and asked "do u still wanna trade Joe and Brown?"...games (and postseason games) like this is the reason why I want them both gone. These are repeated issues that we've seen before. And those JB handles, turnovers, missed FTs... nothing's changed. Never get it in their thick skull.