Celtics must pick up intensity, effort in defending 3-point line vs. Heat
The Heat caught fire from beyond the arc to even the series at 1-1.
The Celtics had plenty of defensive breakdowns that helped the Heat hit a franchise playoff record 23 3-pointers during Game 2 Wednesday night.
About four or five of those threes came in transition, coach Joe Mazzulla estimated. The Heat ran the floor and were rewarded with open looks.
Certain things, such as opponents making tightly-contested shots, are outside of a team’s control. However, running back on defense and getting a hand in a shooter’s face is not one of them. The Celtics can control their effort in the transition game, Mazzulla said.
“After every game, you’ve always got to go back to what are the things you can control first,” Mazzulla said. “That’s the most important thing. We can control our offensive execution, we can control our transition defense, we can control a decent percentage of those threes.”
“Every game takes on a life of its own. Game 1 and Game 2 were two completely different games. You have to be ready in the middle of the game to make those quick adjustments, whether it’s individual or schematically, on both ends of the floor.”
Tyler Herro gave the Celtics fits during pick-and-roll action at the top of the key with Bam Adebayo. Herro went 6-for-11 from 3-point range, notching a team-high 24 points by unleashing various stepbacks. He also dished out 14 assists and helped to unlock Caleb Martin, who had struggled (0-4) from three in Game 1.
Martin sank five of his six shots from beyond the arc in Game 2 en route to 21 points. Four of Martin’s five threes came on open looks generated by Herro off the pick-and-roll. When the help defense stepped up on him, Herro fed Martin before the Celtics could rotate.
The Celtics lacked the awareness, at times, to defend the 3-point line properly, center Al Horford said.
“We just have to be better. We have to be better at defending the 3-point line,” Horford said. “They shot a lot of them, a lot of frequency. I know we will be better coming the next game. There will be more of an awareness to that and, for us defensively, making sure that we continue to do a good job of getting stops and holding them to one shot.”
There was a point with just under six minutes remaining in the first quarter when Herro drew not one but four Celtics with him on a drive to the basket.
Jaylen Brown chased Herro from behind. Kristaps Porzingis and Payton Pritchard slid over to help from both sides. Horford jumped to contest a shot attempt that never came. Instead of trying to finish a layup with four defenders surrounding him, Herro fired an over-the-shoulder pass to Adebayo in the middle of the paint. The fifth Celtic, Derrick White, drifted towards Adebayo who swung the ball to Nikola Jović in the corner.
Miami rookie Jaime Jacquez Jr. ran a few steps over to the top of the key and waited, ready to shoot a wide-open three. The closest Celtic to him was Porzingis, who had barely reached the free-throw line by the time the ball left Jacquez’s hand. It was about as open as a shooter could be in an NBA playoff game.
Boston finished second in the league in defensive rating (110.6) and held opponents to the fourth-lowest 3-point shooting percentage (35.2) during the regular season, which made Wednesday’s performance all the more surprising.
Miami shot 32.4 percent (12-37) from three in Game 1. The Heat only took six more attempts than that in Game 2, but were able to capitalize on open looks.
Horford said the Celtics need to pick up the defensive intensity going forward.
“We know what we have to do, especially looking at film and understanding that they had a lot of good looks,” Horford said. “We just have to make sure that they feel us a little more and we pick up our pressure.”
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