This is a coaching mismatch, the Celtics undoubtedly have more depth of talent but the Heat have Spoelstra and Jimmy Butler leading the way. Nothing against Mazzulla, but Erik Spoelstra against virtually anyone outside of Pop or Kerr is going to be an advantage to Spoelstra. He is unafraid of the moment and pulling on strings to see what works and then when they find something that works they continue to tweak and focus on improving ways to continue that success. But the key difference between Erik Spoelstra and other coaches is he has a great sense of when something is going to stop working and going to something else before the other team can take advantage.
All stats from Cleaning The Glass unless otherwise noted.
Boston Celtics Defense
Taking away these actions and movements will be important for the Celtics defense which has the ability to switch everything off the ball and try to chase shooters off the hand offs and into the paint.
I personally believe that the Celtics could take a page out of the Lakers and top lock/deny all off ball stuff and have the bigs for the Celtics sag in the lane to take those away but the Celtics have seemed hesitant to change up any gameplans so far in the playoffs.
When they played ballscreen coverage so far they have been pretty conventional with Horford or Rob in drop coverage and trying to keep the other teams taking mid-range pullups and protecting the paint. The problem that I have with this is it is a conventional, normal defense that does not do anything specific for each individual on the other team and their ability to beat you. Letting Embiid walk into pullups and roll without any issues is a recipe for disaster the further along you get in the playoffs and if they let the Heat stay comfortable then you can bet their shooters and Butler are going to find it easy to score.
Switching Defense
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