OKC expected 3-pointers but couldn’t stop them
Thunder coach Billy Donovan warned his players at halftime that the Celtics’ inability to sink 3-point shots wouldn’t last. Sure enough, Boston’s perimeter shooting in the third quarter launched the team back into a game the Celtics would eventually win 10195 at Chesapeake Energy Arena on Thursday night.
There were two main offenders: Al Horford and
Marcus Morris. In the third quarter alone, the Celtics scored nine 3-pointers, shooting 64.3 percent from beyond the arc. That was after missing all 11 attempts in the first half. Horford was a perfect 3-of-3 from downtown in the third quarter, and Morris just barely trailed him with two 3-pointers in as many attempts.
Much of Horford’s production came out of Steven
Adams over-helping.
“Al really hadn’t gotten going,” Donovan said Friday, “so he wasn’t really taking those shots during the course of the game.”
It was true. Horford missed his first 3-point attempt, an open shot from the corner in the second quarter. That was the only shot he took from beyond the arc in the first half. The next two times Adams was late to contest a perimeter shot from Horford, after being pulled too far helpside, Horford sunk his shot.
“But the third one didn’t need to happen just because he wasn’t helping,” Donovan said. “He was just kind of at the free throw line.”
As for Morris, he entered the second half having missed all four of his shots from the floor, none of which were from the 3-point line.
Then with his first catchand-shoot 3-pointer in the third quarter, Morris made Nerlens Noel pay for giving him too much space at the top of the key. On the second, he was wide open.
Jayson Tatum (2), Gordon Hayward (1) and Kyrie Irving (2) also contributed 3-pointers in a 40-point third quarter. By the end of the period, the Thunder’s 16-point halftime lead had disintegrated, and the Celtics led by one point.
Defense improves quickly
For Donovan, it boiled down to two good practices.
“We really cleaned up some stuff defensively,” Donovan said Friday, “and the things we struggled in with Sacramento I thought we did a much better job in the game.”
It was just five days removed from a cringe-worthy defensive performance by the Thunder in a 131-120 loss to Sacramento and less than 24 hours from a nail-biter of a 101-95 loss to Boston. The contrast had been stark.
As Donovan went back through the film from Sunday’s game, the list of things to work on kept growing.
“I thought our pick-androll coverage was really too loose,” Donovan said. “I can’t hear them on every single play, especially when they’re on the other end of the floor, but it appeared our communication wasn’t great. We had some guys jumping coverages, some guys in a different coverage.”
On Thursday against Boston, the Thunder defense was suddenly moving as a unit. OKC held the Celtics to 34 points in the first half. Boston helped them out some by shooting 31.8 percent from the floor and 54.5 percent from the line in those first two periods, but the improvements Donovan had wanted to see were evident.
Giving up 40 points in the third quarter was a low point for the Thunder, but they bounced back to allow just five field goals in the final period.