Celtics to get some needed home cookin’
Less travel in second-half schedule
Brad Stevens was tired of a few things by the time Wednesday night’s game in Atlanta came around, but mostly, the repeated problems that led to a sub-.500 (15-16) record.
So when the NBA announced the second-half schedule on Wednesday, and despite having seen the Celtics’ portion three days ago, the Celtics coach had no time for looking ahead.
“The schedule I got three days ago and I’ve looked at it once. I’m getting peppered with questions about travel and game time, all kinds of stuff,” Stevens said, showing a touch of exasperation.
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“Like, I’m just trying to figure out how to guard Luka Doncic and Trae Young. Somebody else can figure all that crap out,” he said with a slight smile.
“We have a lot of work to do, and I assume we’re playing great players and I assume we’re playing every night. So I don’t really even care.”
That said, the NBA has planned something special for the Celtics. They’ll open the second half on March 11 in Brooklyn, and play three of their next four games on the road.
But the Celtics, one of the most traveled teams in the first half, will ultimately find the second half more agreeable.
From March 29 through April 9 they will play a seven-game homestand, including Gordon Hayward’s return to the Garden with
Charlotte on April 4.
Overall 16 of the last 28 are home games.
Mixing it up
Stevens did some experimenting with his rotation in Dallas, using Kemba Walker in the role Jayson Tatum usually plays with the second unit.
Though part of the strategy was tailored to always have either Jaylen Brown or Tatum on Doncic, it was also designed to free up his two young stars.
“That gives you a little more flexibility for bringing in Jaylen and Jayson, in and out, so they’re not as rigid necessarily in their rotations,” said Stevens. “It also enabled us to keep size on Luka when they kept him in longer, especially in the first half, but then when Luka played the whole first quarter we got a good idea that we’d have to be more flexible with rotations because of the size factor.
“It was also good to get another creator in with that second group. It’s a place where we’ve struggled at times to score. Our fourth quarters have been well-documented. Two areas we’ve struggled that have been documented are the start of the fourth and the idea that we foul at the beginning of the fourth. Those are two things we’ve spent a lot of time on, thinking about in the last couple of days. Obviously we came up short on the foul part (Tuesday) in the fourth. But it gave us more flexibility with Jaylen and Jayson is the quick and easy answer.”
Avoiding the penalty
The Celtics faced Young for the third time in a week Wednesday. Toss in Doncic, and the Celtics have had only limited success guarding two of the best young scorers in the game.
They’ve made the mistake of focusing too much on those two, and losing track of others.
“I mean, first of all, one of the reasons why those other guys are able to score with their strengths the way they are is because of all attention Young and Doncic get, so you have to be very alert to what they do well,” said Stevens.” We did OK on some of Dallas’ other guys. We didn’t do well on a couple. Same thing in the first two Atlanta games. I think Trae and Luka both have the advantage of — it’s a lot harder to plan for, or to take the ball out of their hands, because they start with the ball at 50 or 60 feet away from the basket.
“You’re not running actions for them to catch and shoot and all that stuff. They can, they certainly do some of that, but they have the ball. But the whole name of the game, and we’ve talked about this some with our guys, is once you draw two, you’ve done all the hard work. Well, they draw two almost immediately. And they are both very crafty and quick to get rid of it and I think people are at the very least overly alert or sensitive to the fact they draw fouls, so there is this desire to be aggressive and into them, but at the same time this inhibition because you get whistled, so you have to balance that appropriately.”