What the Celtics are saying about the Grizzlies’ ‘bold’ Jrue Holiday strategy
Memphis's decision to leave Holiday open threw the Celtics off their game.
With this Celtics team, you have to pick your poison. All five starters have career 3-point shooting percentages of 36 percent or higher. Guarding them all effectively is a task that very few teams are equipped to handle.
The Celtics’ strength is their depth. Any one of their starters can go off on a given night.
So, on Saturday night, the Grizzlies decided to leave Jrue Holiday open. They packed the paint and took away some of Kristaps Porzingis’s post-up opportunities and helped when the Celtics’ wings decided to slash. They practically dared Holiday to shoot them out of their scheme.
It worked. Holiday missed 13 of his 17 3-point attempts and went 8-for-26 from the field. The team, collectively, had an off shooting night. The Celtics shot 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from beyond the arc.
“I didn’t feel like they were crazy physical,” Porzingis said. “I feel like other teams were maybe even a little bit better than them. I think they just had like a specific game plan, which caught us off-guard of course, but that’s how it is. Teams want to throw all kinds of crazy stuff at us tying to rob a game.”
Porzingis said the Celtics hadn’t seen a team leave Holiday open so consistently before. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla vowed to learn from the daring strategy. Holiday is a career 37-percent 3-point shooter.
His numbers are slightly down this year at 32.8 percent, but he was one of the best corner 3-point shooters in the NBA last year and has a large body of work that shows consistency over time.
“As far as the strategy on Jrue, it’s a bold strategy,” Mazzulla said. “He’s an All-Star. He shoots over 40 percent from three [last season]. It’s a risky one.
“I thought he handled it great. We empowered him. We want him to shoot any shot that he’s open, and I think that’s a huge gift because now we’re going to see it again and it’s going to be great for us. I’m really happy that they did that for us.”
Holiday said he was too wide open not to take those shots. He saw the strategy coming right away and said he liked being able to shoot more. His teammates continued to encourage him to shoot even though the shots weren’t falling.
“Everybody told me to keep shooting,” Holiday said. “I don’t have a problem doing that. Sometimes you need a little rhythm dribble or something, but I’ll keep letting it fly.”
The Warriors tried a similar strategy against Jaylen Brown last March. He scored a game-high 29 points and went 5-for-10 from 3-point range. At the time, Brown said he found the strategy to be a little disrespectful.
“It’s a test of how good we are as a team,” Brown said of the way Memphis played Holiday. “Teams try to do magic tricks, pull rabbits out of the hat to try to throw us off. We’ve just got to be mentally strong, encourage one another, and just play basketball. Take what the defense gives us and don’t overthink it.”
Payton Pritchard said he’s looking forward to learning from the way Memphis approached the game.
“It’s definitely interesting to see how different teams throw different game plans and stuff like that,” Pritchard said. “The good thing is it’s the regular season, so we learn from it so we’re experienced in that area. If they do that again, we’ll be ready to handle it.”
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