Defense?

[celtics2030]

its not after preseason, its more of just watching throughout the years, not just bradley but in general

learning more about how the nba game works and is as i get older.

Defense is very difficult to play, especially when you have to become an offensive threat.

Bradley is already at a disadvantage because of his size.

[Celtics18]

I agree with what Max was saying during the telecast.  I would have liked to see Avery up on Williams off the inbound, and not give him thirty feet of space to get a running start.

That could have been a decision by Stevens or it could have been Avery's own decision.  Either way, it was a tough shot, and Williams made a great play. 

Overall, I liked our defensive effort (and results) in that Toronto game.  It gave me some hope for that end of the floor for the upcoming season.

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.   

[BudweiserCeltic]

I agree with what Max was saying during the telecast.  I would have liked to see Avery up on Williams off the inbound, and not give him thirty feet of space to get a running start.

That could have been a decision by Stevens or it could have been Avery's own decision.  Either way, it was a tough shot, and Williams made a great play. 

Overall, I liked our defensive effort (and results) in that Toronto game.  It gave me some hope for that end of the floor for the upcoming season.

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.   

I don't know why people think it would've been such a great idea to pressure Williams. Williams is a very speedy guy with the ball in his hands, he had been burning our defenders all night long doing just that, getting penetration for easy layups.

So we have a tied game, you pressure Williams and chances are he'll get by Bradley, then get into the paint which is a much worse position to be in than Williams taking a 3-pointer which was really a tough shot to make, but he did it. Good for him. Now if we were up 2 or 3, then sure have Bradley pressure him to avoid a 3-pointer, but I don't think it's a good idea to pressure Williams with his skill level to get buy defenders with his speed on a tied-game situation.

[D.o.s.]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

[Celtics18]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

My impressions were based on the visual evidence of watching the game.  But, go ahead and check the boxscore for confirmation. 

[Celtics18]

I agree with what Max was saying during the telecast.  I would have liked to see Avery up on Williams off the inbound, and not give him thirty feet of space to get a running start.

That could have been a decision by Stevens or it could have been Avery's own decision.  Either way, it was a tough shot, and Williams made a great play. 

Overall, I liked our defensive effort (and results) in that Toronto game.  It gave me some hope for that end of the floor for the upcoming season.

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.   

I don't know why people think it would've been such a great idea to pressure Williams. Williams is a very speedy guy with the ball in his hands, he had been burning our defenders all night long doing just that, getting penetration for easy layups.

So we have a tied game, you pressure Williams and chances are he'll get by Bradley, then get into the paint which is a much worse position to be in than Williams taking a 3-pointer which was really a tough shot to make, but he did it. Good for him. Now if we were up 2 or 3, then sure have Bradley pressure him to avoid a 3-pointer, but I don't think it's a good idea to pressure Williams with his skill level to get buy defenders with his speed on a tied-game situation.

I might be Monday morning (or Friday afternoon) quarterbacking on this one.  But, Lou Williams "burning our defenders all night long . . . getting penetration for easy layups"?

That seems like some fairly serious hyperbole. 

[mgent]

We don't have the best roster, but I like the way our guys are working together.  I think we have the potential for a top 10 defense and a top 20 offense, which would be good for an 8 seed.  You don't need a big name rim protector if you have really good paint denial.

[D.o.s.]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

My impressions were based on the visual evidence of watching the game.  But, go ahead and check the boxscore for confirmation.

My impressions were based on being roughly 15 feet from the basket during that game. 
If that's your bar for 'holding their own', then that's a low bar.

[BudweiserCeltic]

I agree with what Max was saying during the telecast.  I would have liked to see Avery up on Williams off the inbound, and not give him thirty feet of space to get a running start.

That could have been a decision by Stevens or it could have been Avery's own decision.  Either way, it was a tough shot, and Williams made a great play. 

Overall, I liked our defensive effort (and results) in that Toronto game.  It gave me some hope for that end of the floor for the upcoming season.

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.   

I don't know why people think it would've been such a great idea to pressure Williams. Williams is a very speedy guy with the ball in his hands, he had been burning our defenders all night long doing just that, getting penetration for easy layups.

So we have a tied game, you pressure Williams and chances are he'll get by Bradley, then get into the paint which is a much worse position to be in than Williams taking a 3-pointer which was really a tough shot to make, but he did it. Good for him. Now if we were up 2 or 3, then sure have Bradley pressure him to avoid a 3-pointer, but I don't think it's a good idea to pressure Williams with his skill level to get buy defenders with his speed on a tied-game situation.

I might be Monday morning (or Friday afternoon) quarterbacking on this one.  But, Lou Williams "burning our defenders all night long . . . getting penetration for easy layups"?

That seems like some fairly serious hyperbole. 

Probably a hyperbole, but saw him get to the paint few too many times for my comfort level including some uncontested layups.

But his speed with the ball is legit, and the point stands that the least I want to do with a ball handler like that is give him the lane on a tied game to get into the paint.

Bradley played it quite well in my opinion. Gave enough cushion to stop penetration but not far enough that he wouldn't be able to contest a shot, and I thought he did his job so that the shot wasn't an easy one... but Williams is a very capable shot maker who can hit tough shots (while making them look easy for him).

Whatever, the main point is that the strategy to pressure Williams isn't the obvious route to take as it's being made to be or in my opinion the right strategy for a tied game and Williams with the ball. But Williams made the shot, which makes us question the initial strategy as it is. Not going to lose sleep over it.

[Celtics18]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

My impressions were based on the visual evidence of watching the game.  But, go ahead and check the boxscore for confirmation.

My impressions were based on being roughly 15 feet from the basket during that game. 
If that's your bar for 'holding their own', then that's a low bar.

You are going to have to do a better job explaining how Brother Jonas and Amir owned Kelly and Sully in Wednesday night's game.  I only got to watch the game from my TV screen, and it's possible that CSNNE edited the game to make it not look as bad for our bigs, but from what I saw each of Toronto's starting big men only had a small handful of buckets each, and were not able to control the offensive glass.

As I remember (I think it was early in the second half), the Raptors had a stretch where they made a concerted effort to feed Prince Val down low to exploit the "mismatch" with Sully.  However, that strategy only resulted in one made basket followed by two or three empty trips for Toronto.  Then, they tried it with Amir against Kelly, and he came up with a goose egg as well. 

So, yeah, when the opposing front line has (without checking the box score) roughly five to seven points each and less than three offensive rebounds between them, I call that "holding your own."

What's your bar? Is anything less than scoreless unacceptable?

[Beat LA]

I think the theme of this year, and this thread, will be, "Defense?  What defense?"   At least on the interior.  Don't look now, but KJ McDaniels, playing just 22.8 mpg off of Philadelphia's BENCH, is averaging 1.6 bpg .  Yeah.  I'm not saying that he would have been our savior or anything, but at least he would have given us someone, anyone, who can actually block a shot.  Man, I really wish that we could have gotten him somehow.  What a unique player.  He's had at least 1 block in 4 of the 5 preseason games, at least 2 twice, and 4 once.  Wow.  Very cool.  Interestingly, he seems to like playing against us, because he's blocked 6 of our shots in 2 games lol.

[ImShakHeIsShaq]

I think we had the 10th best (around it) with CRAWFORD, a rookie Kelly, coming of back surgery Sully, RR was out, AB, Green, Bass, and a bunch of other guys not known as defenders.  Then our defense quickly fell off when we made changes (heck, losing a lot can cause people to not defend as hard). I'm not saying we can sustain a top 10 defense for sure but I think we should have a better shot if everyone is healthy and we have better defenders by default of growth, health, and better defenders.

We will see. I can't wait... I just want to see some real action. I'm already tired of preseason half effort games (better than nothing but come on season).

[Surferdad]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

My impressions were based on the visual evidence of watching the game.  But, go ahead and check the boxscore for confirmation.

My impressions were based on being roughly 15 feet from the basket during that game. 
If that's your bar for 'holding their own', then that's a low bar.

You are going to have to do a better job explaining how Brother Jonas and Amir owned Kelly and Sully in Wednesday night's game.  I only got to watch the game from my TV screen, and it's possible that CSNNE edited the game to make it not look as bad for our bigs, but from what I saw each of Toronto's starting big men only had a small handful of buckets each, and were not able to control the offensive glass.

As I remember (I think it was early in the second half), the Raptors had a stretch where they made a concerted effort to feed Prince Val down low to exploit the "mismatch" with Sully.  However, that strategy only resulted in one made basket followed by two or three empty trips for Toronto.  Then, they tried it with Amir against Kelly, and he came up with a goose egg as well. 

So, yeah, when the opposing front line has (without checking the box score) roughly five to seven points each and less than three offensive rebounds between them, I call that "holding your own."

What's your bar? Is anything less than scoreless unacceptable?

That was an interesting sequence with the force feeding of Valencunis. I felt so good when Sully consistently stopped him almost every time. Seems like Raptors coach was trying a specific pre-season experiment, and clearly it failed, at lest against Sully.

Overall this should be a better defensive team than last year. They will be much better at stopping the point of attack with Bradley, Smart, even Rondo and that will take huge pressure off the bigs Olynyk, Zeller, Sully and Bass all of whom are decent defensive big men.

To point to this extremely difficult 3-pointer by Williams as an example of the Celtics bad defense is just silly.

[bleedGREENdon]

Celtics are a defensive big away from a contending team.

[D.o.s.]

I was particularly impressed with how Sully and Kelly held their own down low and on the glass against the fairly formidable front line of Valanciunas and Johnson.

This doesn't jive with what I saw at all.

My impressions were based on the visual evidence of watching the game.  But, go ahead and check the boxscore for confirmation.

My impressions were based on being roughly 15 feet from the basket during that game. 
If that's your bar for 'holding their own', then that's a low bar.

You are going to have to do a better job explaining how Brother Jonas and Amir owned Kelly and Sully in Wednesday night's game.  I only got to watch the game from my TV screen, and it's possible that CSNNE edited the game to make it not look as bad for our bigs, but from what I saw each of Toronto's starting big men only had a small handful of buckets each, and were not able to control the offensive glass.

As I remember (I think it was early in the second half), the Raptors had a stretch where they made a concerted effort to feed Prince Val down low to exploit the "mismatch" with Sully.  However, that strategy only resulted in one made basket followed by two or three empty trips for Toronto.  Then, they tried it with Amir against Kelly, and he came up with a goose egg as well. 

So, yeah, when the opposing front line has (without checking the box score) roughly five to seven points each and less than three offensive rebounds between them, I call that "holding your own."

What's your bar? Is anything less than scoreless unacceptable?

That was an interesting sequence with the force feeding of Valencunis. I felt so good when Sully consistently stopped him almost every time. Seems like Raptors coach was trying a specific pre-season experiment, and clearly it failed, at lest against Sully.

Overall this should be a better defensive team than last year. They will be much better at stopping the point of attack with Bradley, Smart, even Rondo and that will take huge pressure off the bigs Olynyk, Zeller, Sully and Bass all of whom are decent defensive big men.

To point to this extremely difficult 3-pointer by Williams as an example of the Celtics bad defense is just silly.

I don't know that Sully stopped him as much as Valenciunas missed his shots. Those are two different things.

And when the opposing front line you're comparing them to plays roughly half the minutes of the other one, I'm not sure that the box score is the best reference point.

Based on what I saw, the C's are going to get roasted by actual centers when the games start to matter. I don't think Sullinger played badly, I just don't think there was very much he could do.