Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Will Jayson Tatum & Jaylen Brown take Celtics back to Finals?

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hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. Yeah, all right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fandel here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. We have almost made it to the end of the week, and I hope it's been a great one for you guys. We are down to the final two in our power rankings, and today we'll be doing number two, the Boston Celtics. Before we get started, you guys know the drill. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels.

You don't miss any more videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason Lts you guys don't miss show announcements. That's also where I clip NBA footage since we're not allowed to use it on YouTube. A lot of the plays that I referenced on the show, you can find them there. I also give a little descriptions and stuff. I do my rewatches and film sessions and stuff primarily

through Twitter, so you're gonna wanna follow me there. Last, but not least, if you miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight. So in the top tier of teams, we had the Clippers, the Bucks, the Celtics, and the Warriors in that order, and I saw a tiny bit of a gap between three and four between the Bucks and

the Clippers, mainly just because of health. I think of all of the teams in that top four, in that top tier, they have the most health concerns but it's strictly health with them. I'm not concerned about drama with them at all. They very well could have the most talented roster in the league. I think them and the Celtics have the two most talented rosters in the league. So it's not like a Net situation where there's weird ego stuff going on, or a Lakers situation where there's

a mal content that they might have to deal with. No, the Clippers just might get hurt, and they've shown a propensity to do so. That's why I kind of have them at the bottom of that pack. The top three, the Bucks, Celtics, and Warriors, I view extremely close to each other. Don't view much of a gap between any of them. The primary reason why I put Boston over

Milwaukee was this summer. Those three teams all had opportunities to get better, and the Bucks basically stood pat and the Celtics went out and addressed their biggest weakness, which was ball handling with a very good player in Malcolm Brogden, a twenty point per game guy, a six assists per game guy who's extremely efficient, especially as a pull up jump shooter and as a catch and shoot jump shooter.

So they addressed a need. They got significantly better. When you were looking at Boston's closing lineups, there were concerns about that fifth man. Right, You're like, okay, I like Marcus Smart, Tatum, Brown, Horford, that's great, But are gonna play Rob Williams, We're gonna play Grant Williams, We're gonna play Derek White, Like, what are we gonna do there?

All three of those guys came with Big Pro, was in Big cons and now they have a sure fire five man lineup that they're gonna be finishing games with. It's Malcolm Brogden in that fifth spot, a a significantly better player than the other three players that we mentioned, and something that active actually makes the Celtics considerably better

basketball team in my opinion. Now, the Warriors did not get better this offseason on paper in theory right, And in fact, they got a little bit worse with the loss of Gary Payton the second and with the loss of Otta Porter Jr. We're gonna address that a little bit more tomorrow when we're covering them. But the primary reason why I didn't drop them, um uh. In addition to the obvious basketball reasons, I think they're smarter basketball

team there. I want to talk a lot about the Warriors tomorrow and what they do well, but the primary reason why I didn't punish them for the inability or unwillingness to go out and be more aggressive in this offseason was the simple fact that they've got three rookies on the roster and James Wiseman, John and the coming gun Moses Moody that to improve rapidly over the course of this year. Wiseman didn't even play last year, will give them another option in the front court, and they

have incredible player development over there. So I feel like they're going to make improvements simply through their player development and their young prospects that they have coming up. There's nobody in Milwaukee or in Boston that kind of fits that mold of of young player that could see sizeable improvements this year. So I went with the Warriors at number one because I think that they are the best combination of talent, coaching, you know, personnel that fits modern

basketball there. I think they're the smartest team. I think they're the most disciplined team. I think they're the most experienced team, and they have the most continuity that's why their number one. We're gonna elaborate on that a lot tomorrow. I had Boston over Milwaukee, even though they barely beat the Bucks without Chris Middleton, because first of all, I think Tatum is gonna take a lot from last year

and improve as a player. We're gonna talk a lot about that today, and that now them brogged in signing or trade excuse me, significantly improved them in terms of their talent and their most important lineups that they'll go down with in playoffs series. So that just just to give you a little bit of background to where I kind of landed with that ranking. Um. But again, as you guys know, I care less about that and more about the basketball and getting into the analysis, and that's

what we're gonna do today. Also just in general, and we're doing these rankings, so many different things can go one way or another. Injuries obviously, can swing things a million different ways. Matchups can swing things a million different ways. Like that, just just in terms of like maybe one team's weakness lines up with another team strength and you get beat even though you might be the better team. That kind of thing happens a lot around the league.

I don't think that the Dallas Mavericks were better than the Phoenix Suns. I just thought it was kind of a bad matchup for them, for instance. So that kind of thing always plays a role. What we're really doing with these rankings is kind of just putting them in order of most likely. Know, just because I see the Celtics as the second most likely team to win the title, or the Warriors at first, or the Bucks at third, or the Clippers at fourth, doesn't mean that's what's going

to happen. And anything could happen. And obviously, like they're like, if things break right for the Brooklyn Nets, they could beat everybody. Even the Lakers have a very slim but puncher's chance to win the title this year. Anything can happen. Or just ordering them based on likelihood. So as you guys know, we're gonna go over last year, We're gonna go I'm gonna talk a little bit about the email

Udoka situation. We're gonna talk about what they did this offseason, what their depth chart looks like, talk about what they do on the offensive end of the floor, what they do on the defensive end of the floor. Best case scenario, worst case scenario and X factor, lots of different angles to go at with the Celtics team. I took my sweet time with this one, and I'm gonna do it again with the Warriors tomorrow. I watched the first three

games of the NBA Finals this morning. I wanted to get or this morning and yesterday I wanted to get a good feel for how Boston got in the lead of that series. And then tomorrow I'm gonna dive into the footage. This will be my like third or fourth time watching the Finals, but digging into how Golden State came back in one. I have a in I already have a good feel for it from when we were covering the Finals, but I'm excited to dive into it again.

Um So, last year, the Celtics finished fifty one and thirty one. They lost the NBA Finals in six games. Um Like I said, We're gonna spend a lot of time today and tomorrow rehashing the NBA Finals. Just a super interesting series on so many levels, very high level basketball, two very different teams. I was watching Game one yesterday. Game one of the NBA Finals was just an incredible

basketball game. I've really enjoyed rewatching it um. They finished the regular season ninth in offense, first in defense, and second in net rating. From January eight to the end of the season, they were second in offense. They were four point one points per one hundred possessions better than everybody in defense, and there were six point three points per one hun possessions ahead of everybody in net rating. And then they went up two games to one in

the finals. So from January eight to Game three of the Finals, they were far and away the most dominant team in all of basketball. That's why I was so high on them. That's why I picked them in a lot of cases. But I learned a lot about them through the first three rounds of that playoffs. I learned about their weaknesses and that was a big part of why I picked Golden State to win the finals. I think I picked them in seven and they ended up

winning in six. But the reason why I picked them to win the finals was because I had a feeling of all of the teams, you know, like Miami exploited their weaknesses to damn near steal that series. They came one shot away from stealing that series, and the Golden State Warriors were just a more talented version of the Miami Heat. So I had a feeling that they'd be able to get the job done. That's why I picked

against them. But I was a big believer in them up to that point because of how dominant they were. So looking at the email Udoka situation, you can like when you see a coach like email Udoka come in and fundamentally change a team in Boston that had been pretty disappointing over the previous year and a half, Like, I get why you would think, Okay, if he made jokes out, this could be catastrophic. I get why you would see that. But what he did is super valuable.

But what he's doing less. So what he did was he changed the psychology of the team. He made them tougher, he made them more willing to fight. They became a very resilient team, which was what If you talk to Celtics fans, and again I always encourage you talk to the fans because like I do my best to cover all thirty teams, I do my very best, but there's no way in hell I can ever cover any of

the thirty teams. As well as one dedicated fan can or one dedicated media member that covers one specific team. It's just the nature of the job. I only have twenty four hours in each day, and I have to sleep for a lot of them. Right. But when you're when you're looking at Celtics fans and what they thought about what they did over the previous few years, Talent

was never the issue. Scheme was never the issue. Yeah, they little nitpicky things like, oh, we want Jason Tatum to handle the basketball better, Oh, we feel like we might need a point guard, that kind of stuff. But the large the biggest thing that most Celtics fans pointed to was a lack of mental toughness. When things got hard,

they shrink away. They didn't have any fight. They didn't compete well enough to beat the tougher teams around the league, especially when they get into tough spots, especially when their back was against the wall. Email Udoka helped a lot with that. But the truth of the matter is is I believe that stuff will stay if they're Those are emotional changes. Those aren't basketball changes. Those are emotional changes.

Everyone in that locker room grew up a lot during that year, But when we look at the basketball, they were actually a very sloppy basketball team in the conference finals and finals. A thought email Judoka went with defensive strategies that actively played into the strength of their opponents.

That was a Miami Heat team that that literally had one guy who could create his own shot consistently, and instead of switching everything trying to bait them into ISOs, they ran their drop coverages and allowed shooters that liked to shoot off the off of screens, guys like Tyler Harrow, guys like Kyle Lowry, guys like Gabe Vince, and guys like Maxter's. He gave them good shooting opportunities that allowed them to linger around in that series because of a

defensive scheme that played directly away from their weakness. And then with the Golden State Warriors, they played directly into their strength. Steph Curry is the best off the dribble shooter ever, and they ran a drop coverage that baited Steph into taking off the dribble jump shots, and he shot I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was in the mid forties. He torched them, and they lost

the series. So that was schematically something that I've and we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into that conversation here in a couple of minutes. But those those, uh, those defensive strategies I thought were indicative of Email Judoka not being up to the chess match of the NBA. Of the NBA Playoffs, they were really sloppy and execute and this is stuff that that points me directly towards coaching.

In the first few minutes of Game one of the finals, they failed to match up with Steph in a walk up possession. He literally dribbled the ball off the floor, stopped at no one was guarding him, walked into wide open three. That's in the first handful of possessions of an NBA Finals game. That's not having your team ready to go. That's not them not understanding matchups, so they're not communicating well enough. That's on coaching in the in

the level of discipline that they have. They botched a baseline out of bounce play where Robert Williams was hugged up on Kevan Luney and uhum, I believe it was Jalen Brown was guarding Clay Thompson or something and literally, uh, Kevan Luney just set a backscreen on Klay Thompson. Robert Williams just wasn't even paying attention. He just went right

under the basket and laid it in. I'm literally watching this game and I'm like, they're the one team looks prepared and ready to go, and one team looks like they're trying to ride the strength of their talent to winning a playoff series against a team that that that's just not gonna work against Robert Williams, and their scheme

does a lot of roaming. It's kind of the way they use him, and on tape it looks really bad the the way that Robert Williams is just randomly doubling people without any purpose or or leaving his man to over help when he doesn't need to. And they got absolutely torched on the back side of that by com On Looney again. We're gonna get into that a little

bit more later. The team frequently oscillated between playing good a good brand of basketball, and a bad brand of basketball, particularly in their driving kick game, initiating offense with the intention of drawing to help defenders and kicking rather than over penetrating and trying to score every time, and then turning over the basketball. They just simply did not play well often enough, and they were inconsistent enough that it would lead you to believe that their coach didn't have

them disciplined. Their defensive metrics, they gave up one point three four points per possession and transition in the playoffs, which is absolutely atrocious. That's on coaching. If you're what have I been saying this entire our ranking series transition defense, that's on coaching. Defensive rebounding, that's on coaching. They only rebounded of their opponent's misses in the playoffs. That's really bad. That would have ranked in the bottom five or six

in the league during the regular season by percentage. So they're super talented team. Email Judoka made them a mentally tough team, but they're not an especially smart team, and they weren't a very discipline team, and they weren't a

very detailed team. And so as I don't think Email Yudoka leaving for this season and potentially permanently is going to hurt them that much on the basketball court, especially if Missoula comes in and does a better job of holding them to a higher standard of level, a higher level of detail, attention to detail, or if Brad Stevens gets more involved in the day to day coaching, or if they bring in an assistant, someone like a Quinn Snyder or a Frank Vogel to help in that department.

I believe they could actually be a little bit better this year in that regard. I didn't factor that in when I was considering them, UH, when I was considering them in this power rankings list. I considered a lot of different things, but email Judoka leaving the team was not something I worked about. Is The only concern would be is if somehow they descend back into a lack of mental toughness and things like that. But I just don't think that's gonna be a case. I also don't

think it was just email. I think it was a lot of Al Horford too, And I think it was a lot of Marcus Smart, And I think it was a lot of Jayson Tatum and Jalleen Brown just growing up and turning into solid veteran basketball players. So this offseason, they UH traded for Malcolm Brogden, the only rotation player they gave up in that deal. With this Daniel tys he this this was a really smart, ceiling raising trade.

It addressed a specific weakness, which was their ball handling, which we're gonna talk a lot about here in a minute. It's a very natural fit with the Stars with their kind of like driving kick system that they like to run. He feels that fifth starter slash fifth closer spot that I was talking about earlier that was too inconsistent. They were really inconsistent with guys like you know, Derek White, and with guys like Robert Williams and guys like Grant

will Ums. You plug Malcolm Brogden in there, that's five really really good basketball players, five like not quite all star but fringe all star level talents across the floor. There um outstanding shooter looking at it. He only played like thirty five games or something last year, so I looked at the previous season. He shot on catch and shoot threes, which is a sixty seven percent effective fieldgal percentage. That's amazing. He shot on seven pull up jumpers per game.

As I've said, pull up jumpers are the pull up jump shooting is becoming one of the most important offensive skills in the league because it's the primary way you beat any coverage. The best way to beat you know, pick and roll coverages is pull up jump shooting. The best way to beat help defense that meets you at the rim is pull up jump shooting. It's just a very, very important skill and he's great at it. He averaged

six assists to just two turnovers. He was one of only twelve players in the league last year excuse me, to average at least five and a half assists with less than two and a half turnovers. Marcus Smart was on that list as well. By the way, but this gets the ball out of Tatum and Brown's hands more to start possessions, which is good. Let them catch and work with an advantage or work out of triple threat so that their ball handling weaknesses don't get exposed as much.

It's just an increase in aggregate ball handling on the floor at any given moment in the Celtics driving kick system, which is gonna be one of the big themes of this show today. Their offense is predicated on generating high quality spot up possessions. They lead the league in spot up possessions generated per game. That's possessions where a guy caught the ball with a defender closing out at him and he was able to score um out of that

play or take a shot out of that play. He's the reason why I have the Celtics at number two. I think he dramatically improves their ball handling. I think he fits great into their system. It raises the level of talent on the roster. The buck State put the Celtics got better. That's why I put them in at number two. They also signed down DANIELO Gallinari, but he

towards a c L likely won't play this year. So um looking at their depth chart, it's it gets a little finicky because there's not a whole lot of depth here at the guard position. It's a lot of really good players, but not a lot of depth at the guard position. Malcolm Brogden, Marcus Smart, Derek White, and Peyton Pritchard. On the wings, Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brown, Grant Williams, and then a huge drop off to the likes of Sam Houser and Justin Jackson, Bigs, Al Horford and Robert Williams.

So if you look at like their top eight guys, which is Robert Williams, you know Grant Williams, Al Horford, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, uh Derek White, Marcus Smart, Malcolm Brogden, those eight guys are probably the most talented top eight in the entire league in my opinion. But after eight, it's a pretty significant drop off to Peyton Pritchard, and then it's an even bigger drop off to everybody else. They do not have depth, and eight guys is more than enough to win you a bunch of playoff series

if you stay healthy. But during the regular season with guys in and out of the lineup, like Robert Williams is expected to miss some time to start the season. In that case, being down to seven usable players and having to play lesser NBA players after that point, that could hurt them a little bit in the standings early

in the season. I would not be surprised if they attempted to trade Danilo Gallinari around the deadline in conjunction with one or two more minimum contracts to try to bring back a usable rotation player to kind of bolster them, particularly on the wing. I mean a guy that I'd look out for. There is if for some reason, Jay Crowder doesn't get traded before Danilo's no trade timeline lapses.

Once Danilo becomes available available for trade off, jay Crowder is still available, he'd be the kind of guy that I'd be looking at there, so looking at the offensive end of the four um the The most of their sets came out of three looks that I saw. They ran a lot of five outsets. They ran four low sets where you have one guy at the top of the key, four players along the baseline, and then they ran some horns sets. So out of horns, they run

a lot of double pick and roll. They'll do it both ways, like they'll either have both bigs come up and set ball screens on both sides, and then Marcus Smarter Tatum a Brown will like pick a side to go off of, and then one guy will roll to the basket and the other will pop. Sometimes they both go on the same side and do the same concept. We talked about this a little bit um yesterday with Milwaukee.

The concept behind double pick and roll is you want your shooting big to pop to the three point line, and you're rolling big to roll to the basket. Generally speaking, both screen defenders will drop and usually get great stuff at the top of the key at the very least, if not a jump shot. You can quickly flow a new dribble handoff from there and get some good stuff also out of horns. I saw them run a lot of uh like little interchanges before they'd run double pick

and roll. So they'd have like Horford down screening for Marcus Smart, and Marcus Smart would come up and then Smart and Williams would set the ball screen. And the big thing there is guards just don't know how to defend ball screen actions as the screener we see. I talked about this a lot when we talked about inverted pick and roll with the Denver Nuggets. But essentially, when you turn a guard into a screen defender, they just

don't have a lot of experience with that. More often than not, they just hug up to their man, and your ball handler can get good advantages going off that. And there are four low sets. The most frequent thing they would do is have Tatum start on the block and have one of the bigs, even either Williams or Horford coming pinned down for Tatum, and then have Tatum sprint up to the top of the key. Now Marcus Smart is up there with the basketball, and from there

they'll do a couple of different things. They'll either have Smart use Tatum as a ball screen, or they'll have Tatum come off of a drible handoff. But almost every time they did that, it would result in a guard getting switched onto Tatum and almost immediately if Tatum had the basketball, he'd give it back up to Marcus Smart and then go post to the elbow. Or if he set the ball screen and Marcus Smart came off to

get the switch, he would just run to the elbow. Now, the idea there is if Tatum comes off of a pin down at the block, his defender is now trailing the play. When his defender is trailing the play, and he sets a ball screen, that forces the switch because now at that point Tatum's man is trailing the play, He's not in position shin to do anything else at

that point. Same thing with the dribble handoff. It just basically forces the switch on the screening action in that case, but all of its designed to get Tatum at the elbow with a triple threat attacking a guard. He's That's one of the spots on the floor where he's pretty successful. Um, they also run a bunch of stuff out of five out. The main thing that I saw there was uh like actions that set up dribble handoff. So they'd have like Tatum and Brown on the wings, smart uptop and then

Williams and Horford in the corners. They'd have them both come up and set flare screens, and then Tatum and Brown will come off, but then they'd immediately turn around and set another pin down, or they'd make a post entry to Horford on the wing and then he'd go do a dribble handoff with Tatum again. All all little like interchanges that are designed to get that first drive.

Because this is a driving kick offense. It is predicated on everyone's ability to extend the advantage and everyone's ability to shoot at the end of the play or to finish at the rim, whether that says a cutter um or driving all the way to the basket. But everything is designed to get that initial advantage so they can do their driving kick. As you can imagine, a pretty common theme around the league, but this is one of

the better driving kick teams in the league. This team and the Clippers um are the two best that I've seen at it. A couple other offensive looks that I wanted to go over transition ball screens. They'll do a lot like pointless ball screens just to get switches. The Clippers did a ton of this too on tape. But like you know, Marcus Smart comes up the floor and they're not really running everything the defenses and seat the offensive players aren't even in their spacing yet. But tatums

down the floor. He'll just come and set a quick ball screen for Marcus Smart get the switch and then run down to the elbow or if it's a if it's a big man like al Horford, then they'll quickly run out and drag the big man out and try

to drive past him to the basket. Um. The other thing that I've seen them do a lot is transition drivel handoffs, uh with two with the double screen, So like Tatum and Brown will sprint the wings and they'll get to the deep corner and then Al horfor like Marcus smartle bring the ball up the floor, and what he'll do is he'll just pitch it to al Reford at the top of the key and then he'll run down and set a pin down for Tatum, and Horford will dribble into it like a dribble handoff, so it

acts as like a double screen, but the last guy dribble hand hands the ball off off the dribble to Tatum, then he curls around that and he has an opportunity to get downhill again. Everything is designed to start the driving kick. That's the fundamental um foundation of their offense. So in isolation, they were the fifth most frequent isolation team, a twelfth most efficient. A consistent theme here, um Uh. Tatum's numbers and isolation and post up are actually not

that great. He's he's more of a point forward than he is a scoring forward. He just doesn't know it yet. But we'll get into that here in a minute. So Tatum only average zero point nine one points per possession and isolation. Jalen Brown was awesome one point zero four points per possession. They were middle of the pack pick and roll frequency and efficiency team. They were fourth in post up efficiency, which is really good. Jalen Brown and

Al Horford are pulling the weight there once again. Jalen Brown excellent post player in terms of scoring efficiency. Jason Tae him not so much. Um off screen actions. Uh, this kind of stuff reminds me of of what the Chicago Bulls did. Again, when you're talking about having Tatum and Brown coming off of curling off of screens, or dribble handoffs rather than just attacking with a live dribble.

It just gives them more advantages. We talked about this a lot with the Chicago Bulls with Zach Lavine and Demarta Rosen, Like, it's just easier to play basketball when you're defender isn't set in up in your airspace to start the possession, but rather he's trailing the play or he's closing out at you. The more advantaged situations that you create, the better. Jalen Brown once again amazing off of screens. Jalen Brown one point one one points per possession,

which is in the seventy seven percentile. Marcus Martin Derrek White both did really well in those situations this year. But spot up is where this where this team is most successful, and that is the result of driving and kicking. They had the most spot up possessions in the league.

Um uh, it's funny too, like when you when I watch tape and I like because obviously you guys know, I use a big combination of metrics and film right now, the metrics that I focus on our possession by possession, like I don't ever look I hate catchalls, like I don't want you to tell me what you know, Uh what Jayson Tatum's offensive real plus minuses like that? Just to me, that's insignificant stat that accomplishes absolutely nothing. That's

just my opinion. I think the game of basketball is way too complicated to simplify every single type of possession into one single number. But I love looking at points per possession on specific play types because that's just the scoreboard. Like if you run a hundred post ups and you score a hundred and eleven points out of it, then

you averaged one point one one points per possession. That's just the scoreboard, and I'm I'm simplifying it down to that, like, Okay, spot up possessions, this is how many points you scored out of them. That's how good you were attacking closeouts. That's just that. That's just the scoreboard. There's some context on tape, right, Like maybe you're, uh, you're playing with better creators so you get better spot up reps. Yeah,

that absolutely is a factor. Maybe you're a post player but you don't have great shooting around you, so you're running all your post ups and wor spacing. Yeah, there's there is some context there. But I at least can take scoreboard information from those numbers that I'm grabbing, whereas with the catchalls, I don't get anything from it. But at the end of the day, like I I always think it's interesting when I see connections between what I'm seeing on tape and what I'm seeing in the numbers.

When I watched the Boston Celtics, I think they're a great driving kick team. When I watched the l A Clippers, I think they're a great driving kick team that stands out on tape. So when I go to the numbers and I see that the Clippers and Celtics are two of the very best spot up teams in the league, that tells me that my eye test is correct, which

is good. And sometimes you need to go both ways there, Like if I'm watching, you know, Kendrick Nunn this year for the Lakers, and I'm thinking, man, it seems like he's struggling and pick and roll, But then I look at his pick and roll ball handler possessions and he's torching everybody like he's averaging one point one four points per possession. Then that means I'm I mean, they're not watching the film correctly enough, or I need to go back and look at it again and see if there's

something that I'm missing there. You kind of use the two to help each other, if that makes sense. But their spot of possessions are the result of driving kick basketball. They were eight in spot of efficiency. This is where Jayson Tatum was the most effective, finishing driving kick possessions. He had one point one two points per spot up possession,

which was seventy nine percentile in the league. Uh Jalen Brown, Marcus Smart, Grant Grant Williams, al Horford, and Peyton Pritchard were all over one point one point per possession in closeout situations. So essentially, they're really good at driving and kicking the basketball, and they're really good at finishing when they get those opportunities. That's why they were the second

best offense in the league after January eight. UM. So looking at the offensive end of the floor in the playoffs, because this is where this is where Boston had the most struggle UM in this playoff run. There were two specific areas that I wanted to look at, turnovers taking care of the basketball, and then their general offensive process,

which we'll talk about in a second. Their inability to take care of the basketball and consistently make good decisions, consistently undercut themselves in the playoffs, in every single one of the series. They were talented enough to beat that Milwaukee team in five games without Chris Middleton. They were talented enough to beat that Miami team in four games. They were talented enough to beat that Warrior's team and maybe six games, right, but they were. But in all

cases it extended much further than sure should. Seven games against the Bucks, seven games against the Heat, three consecutive losses against the Warriors to actually blow that series. That that's that's where that offensive process stuff ended up biting them. Turnovers, ignite the fast break, which they were such a terrible transition defense team. Like I said, and I shared those numbers earlier, like when teams faced Boston set defense in

the half court, they really struggled to score. They did. But when teams are able to avoid that situation entirely because you keep turning the damn basketball over and now they're attacking your helter skelter bad transition defense, they don't have to score against your half court defense, and they're gonna kill you there. Also, when you turn the basketball over, it prevents you getting a shot on the rim. It's like worse than a miss. It's like a worst version

of a miss. They were fourteen and three when they held their turnovers to fifteen or fewer. They were owing seven when they went over fifteen turnovers. That's how much of an indicator it was for them and their success last year. And then simply when I when I'm saying offensive process, I'm referring basically to the approach of their ball handlers. Like I said earlier, Jayson Tatum is a

point forward. He just doesn't know it yet. He's got a little bit too much of that Kobe Bryant mentality, Like I'm this three level score, And the truth of the matter is is he's not that great creating his own shot in isolation. He's not that great pull up jump shooting. He's not that great finishing at the rim. His one real rank offensively where he actually excels compared to the rest of the league is three point shooting, pull up three point shooting, catching shoot three point shooting.

Everything else he does offensively, Jalen Brown is better than him, But Jayson Tatum is actually a very good passer when he actually plays to that archetype. He is a point forward. He is a big forward that can score the basketball, but his main gift is the ability to create advantages and get his offense moving with the past. That's his best skill. They were seven and oh when Jayson Tatum had at least eight assists in this playoff run. They were seven and ten when Tatum had seven or fewer.

He too frequently lost sight of his best identity and played a bad brand of basketball for his skill set and hurt the team a lot. Check this out. In wins, the Boston Celtics had an assistant turnover ratio of two point zero three. In losses, they had an assistant turnover race. You have one point to nine. That's a thirty seven percent drop and assist the turnover efficiency from wins the losses.

So to put it simply, when they drove the basketball to kick it two teammates to start the driving kick, they kicked everyone's ass when they drove the basketball and over penetrated and tried to force the action for themselves. They turned the basketball over, they didn't get their driving kick going, and they hurt their defense and they lost basketball games. And that's why you had like these really ugly stretches of basketball, but then these like incredibly dominant

stretches of basketball, huge runs in games. They blew out a ton of teams from January eight to the end of the season. That game one of the NBA Finals, in the fourth quarter, when they got going on both ends of the floor, when they were really driving and kicking the basketball, when like getting wide open catch and shoot threes for Peyton Pritchard and Marcus Smart and now Horford and you know, Jalen Brown made a couple of tough ones. But it's a lot of driving kick in there.

When they play that style and they're locked in defensively, they're just in their damn near impossible to beat in those situations moving to the defensive end of the floor. So their scheme, they switch one through three when Horford and Williams are on the floor, and they switch one through four when they have one center on the floor, and then they run a drop without Horford and Robert Williams. Now in their drop, they're supposed to be at the

level of the screen. That's the way that drop coverages account for pull up jump shooting in theory. But it's so much harder to do in theory than it is in practice. Fatigue inevitably caused their coverages to fail against the teams like Miami and and UH and Golden State. So for instance, UH, if you run a drop coverage right and the guard chases over the top of the screen and you have a big at the level of

the screen, then there is no pull up three. And the more that the guard is attached to the backside, the more Horford or Williams can drop back and take away the role. When it's run properly, it works great. The problem is is when you get tired, it's very easy to get caught on a ball screen as the guard. When you get tired and you're the big, it's very easy to run up maybe to the top of the

key instead of to the NBA line. Maybe you run up, you know, between the free throw line and the top of the key, like you just don't quite get high enough because you're tired. That's what happens. Whereas when it was switching, you offset all of that physical wear and tear onto mental focus and energy and and so that's the thing. Like in theory, I get you Dooka's game plan. Hey, We're gonna be super physical on the ball. We're gonna chase him over the top. You know, here's our big

man waiting at the level of the screen. In theory, it makes sense, but in practice it's just really, really difficult to execute. But yeah, so again I'm talking a lot about bad Boston as it pertains to UM, as it pertains to this Warrior series, because that's why I have them at number two and the Warriors at number one. But making no mistake, this is a very good basketball team, and we're gonna talk about why here in just a second.

So looking at their metrics, they were first in defensive rating. As I said, they were second in defending the paint, second in blocks per one hundred possessions. Robert Williams and Al hor for just menaces around the rim at all times. They were eleventh in defending the three, which is really solid when you consider how good they are defending the paint.

Um Usually for teams that sell out to defend the paint, they're gonna give up a lot of three point shots, but they run around like crazy and rotation and they take that stuff away. This is a damn good defensive team, especially in the half court. Their half court defense held three of the four teams they played in this playoff run under um Um. I think they held excuse me, they held. Their overall defense held three of their four opponents to ten offensive rating or less, and then only

the nets scored more than that. And then in the half court they stifled everybody. If you look up scoring against Boston and the half court on cleaning the glass, it's kind of frightening how good they were. Um their areas for improvement. They need to be better as a defensive rebounding team and better as a transition defense team. That's on coaching. I don't know if Missoula is going to fix that. I don't know if they'll bring in another assistant. I don't know if it was just a

bad season for them. They're gonna have to figure out those particular things. The other thing, too, is their offensive process is directly related to their transition defense. When they take care of the basketball, when they play driving, kicked basketball and generate good shots, they have an opportunity to get their defense set while the ball is being taken out of the basket. The two are very intricately related. But that's what's so cool about the game of basketball. Um.

Tatum's rim finishing in particular really hurt them. In transition defense, he missed of his layups against Golden State. That's just really, really really bad. The other thing to the other last area improvement for Boston potentially defensively is forcing more turnovers. They were the middle of the pack turnover team. With how athletic they are, they should be able to force more turnovers turnovers playing the passing lanes and being more

aggressive on the ball. UM looking in defense on the UH on the in the Warriors series, Steve Kerr's plan look like, what I'm gonna do here too, is I'm gonna talk a little bit about the game plan that Steve Kerr used against Boston in UH in this particular segment tomorrow, I want to focus on some of the personnel things and the actual, like just basketball technique things that Golden State did to swing that series. UM. Steve Kurr's plan was to attack Boston's desire to not switch

screens with their bigs. They showed up in the numbers pretty crazy. So the Warriors attempted twenty one point seven pull up jumpers per game in the regular season one point seven that went up. That went up to twenty eight point two against Boston, So they had a significant

increase in pull up jump shooting against Boston. They were spamming high pick and roll even though they don't like to to get Steph Curry pull up jump shop opportunity to pull up jump shot opportunities, because they knew that was the weakness in Boston's defense. Their incessant for a lot a desire to run drop coverage even though it doesn't work against teams like Golden State. Golden State's a

smart team, They're gonna find ways to attack it. They massively increase their pull up jump shooting volume and then in percentage. The Celtics shot on pull up jumpers in that series, which is not a strength of Theirs. The Warriors shot pull up jumpers, it's their strength. So that's it's easy to see how that ended up backfiring on them the way that it did. They also were dropping on off ball screens, which I thought was really weird.

Sometimes Rob would just like hug up onto Looney while he was setting off ball screens, and so there was just no help in Clay Thompson and Steph Curry would just come flying off and get wide open threes. Other times he just dropped a way back into the paint. Al Horford just ran like kind of like a modified drop coverage on off ball pin downs and stuff. And too often he was just way too low as Clay

Thompson and staff would come running off for shots. Just just a really poor, poor XS and nose game planning from Boston in that series. UM. The other thing too, and this, this is this is something that I'd like to see the Boston addressed this year. And I talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the show. One of the fundamental concepts of Boston's defense is using

Rob Williams as a roamer. So they attached him to somebody that can't shoot right, so Kevin Looney for instance, in the UM in the Warrior series, or put him on bam at a bio in in the Miami Heat series. But what will end up doing is he just kind of runs around it, does whatever the hell he wants.

Like you know, Draymond Green will catch the ball on the block and he'll just randomly run over and double even though Draymond Green is not gonna hurt you out of the post right, or he'll randomly over help on a guy who doesn't need help on a drive because he's got it contained. And what it ended up happening as a result is his man is free to do

whatever the hell he wants around the rim. Kevon Looney had twenty one offensive rebounds in the NBA Finals, and then just in general, his random double teams opened up those Golden State blender possessions where it's past past past, closeout attack, close out attack, lay up, wide open three, you know what I mean. It got it got it got them into that Golden State chaos that is so bad, that's so difficult to handle. It did not look good

on tape. So I'd really like to see Boston kind of rain in UM Rob Williams this year and give him a little bit more of a structured role defensively, because I think even though you'll lose some of his highlight blocks and some of the crazy plays you can create, I think he actually does more damage than good when

he's recklessly roaming around like that. UM, looking back at their coaching staff for a second, this is an incredibly talented team that was unbeatable when they played well, but they frequently lost sight of their offensive identity and they

were sloppy in the details of defense. So if they get somebody in there, whether that's Missoula or it's a Frank Volgo or Quinn Snyder that they add to the staff, or it's Brad Stevens coming down in the end of the season, if they get someone in there that runs a little bit of a tighter ship on the details, they could become a very very dangerous basketball team. I think coaching is actually a weakness on this particular roster.

So the best case scenario, know is that toughness lingers with Udoka gone, that they still have that same mentality that they had from him, that Joe Missoula just does a better job of coaching the details and the xs and ohs. Maybe Brad Stevens gets involved, like I said, maybe they signed somebody the bench. Uh, Malcolm Brogden significantly improves their ball handling and decision making, you know. Again, and with with this Malcolm Brogden piece, it's the aggregate

ball handling that helps with avoiding turnovers. The other thing, too, is just it's just giving you another matchup opportunity. So if Marcus Smart Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brown, and Malcolm Brogden are all on the floor, and they've got You're playing a team like the Warriors last year, for instance, and they got Gary Payton the second just like up in Jayson Tatum, just like disrupting his handle, doing all this

crazy stuff. And they got Andrew Wiggins on Jalen Brown, and you know they've got you know, Draymond Green, you know, guarding Marcus Smart. I'm just throwing out random matchups. Maybe Malcolm Brogden that fourth one, he has a better matchup. Maybe he's getting guarded by a guy who struggles a little bit more in full court defense, like an Auto Porter junior or Moses Moody or something like that. Right,

that's kind of where your advantage is. Particularly, Miami did a lot of a lot of damage um to Boston by full court pressure or attacking them right when they cross half court. Just increasing your aggregate ball handling helps in those situations and most importantly helping it so that Jayson Tatum and Jylen Brown can attack with an advantage and with a triple threat, rather than having to bring the ball off the floor and get to their spots.

I think that the Malcolm Brogden addition is really really going to help them. Um, they need Rob Williams to be fully healthy for this playoff run instead of playing on a balky knee, and he needs to find a more structured defensive role. Like I said, if all of those things go right, that edges them past Milwaukee to me, and actually it gives them a really good chance to

win the title this year. The worst case scenario is that the loss of you Man Udoka's emotional leadership hurts the team in their toughness health issues, particularly really with Rob Williams and Malcolm Brogden. Malcolm Brogden, I don't think has played over sixty games in the last three years, so that's something he's got to figure out. Rob Williams, obviously with a knee, had to get another surgery. They're not very deep. Like I said, They've got a really

talented top eight, but there's not a whole lot after that. Um, and then maybe Brogden ends up not solving their ball handling issues. I believe he will to a certain extent, but that would be the worst case scenario is that their ball handling issues linger, and then what will end up happening is that if all those things happen, they'll just get beat by a smarter basketball team. They'll get beat by a team that's sharper in those details, that's

more disciplined, and they'll end up going home unhappy. Biggest X factor for this team is Jayson Tatum. I had him six in my player rankings because I think that

he's potentially the best wing defender in basketball. I have never seen a basketball player do a better job guarding Kevin Durant then Jayson Tatum did in the first round of this playoffs of this year's playoff run, and then when he plays to his strengths offensively, when he is point forward, he looks like a bona fide superstar in wins in this playoff run, he averaged seven and seven on six true shooting. That's Lebron James type of numbers.

That's superstar stuff. That's how good Jayson Tatum is when he has his head on straight. That's why I had him at number six. The problem is is he has these nights where he just loses sight of that and he hunts his own shot, takes bad pull up threes, doesn't look to be the facilitator and rather looks to

be the score in losses. In this playoff run, he average twenty three, seven and five on true shooting, and like I said, seven and oh when he had at least eight assists, seven and ten when he did it. So it's it's a legitimate thing with Tatum is inconsistency. I would argue that the reason why the Celtics lost in this playoff run was in large part due to the Tatum's inconsistency. I think him getting out played so badly by Steph Curry was a huge part of why

they lost in the NBA Finals. So a couple of specific flaws that he needs to address to be more consistent his rim finishing. Like I said in the restricted area against Golden State, the reason here is he hunts for fouls instead of going out strong. He sticks his arms out as far as he can and tries to like scoop up to the rim, trying to draw that hack foul. But they just let too much of that stuff go during the playoffs, and so what ends up

happening is he just misses all of his layups. Not only does that hurt him in his in his efficiency, it hurts the team in transition defense when he smokes a layup, falls down into camera, Row, turns and complains to the refs while the team is running the other way. If he takes on the role of point forward rather than scoring wing and takes care of the basketball focuses on creating the initial advantage, then he's a superstar. Jalen

Brown is the better pure score anyway. Jalen Brown is better in isolation by a lot, and Jalen Brown is better in post ups by a lot. It's a more organic fit between the two of them. If Tatum takes on more of that point forward role and Jalen Brown takes on more of that scoring role. Either way, the ball ends up working its way back to Tatum anyway. And he's an excellent play finisher like we talked about earlier.

So that's what makes him the biggest X factor for the Celtics team in my opinion, Like he could be the sixth best player in the world, or he could be the sixteenth best player in the world. That's the gap between his good and his bat And he was the sixth best player in the world for a good two thirds of this playoff run. But it wasn't every night, and he played poorly in the finals and it costs his team. So I don't see any scenario where he's

not the X factor. The way he plays will be the largest determining factor and how in in the in the fortunes of the Boston Celtics this year. Al Right, guys, that is all I have for today. Tomorrow we're covering the Golden State Warriors. I want to dive a lot further into some of the things that they did really well against Boston from a personnel standpoint, basketball technique, stuff that I find to be very interesting, a very deserving number one for me, and I'm excited to talk about them.

I will see you guys tomorrow. The volume