2023-24 Playoff Series #2 | Game #2 | Cavs @ Celtics | May 9, 2024

[PIP]

 

[2 For The Brew]

All five Cavalier starters shot 50% or better.

All five Celtics starters shot under 50%.

 

[buzzdog]

He dragged his pivot about 5 inches and the whole crowd saw it and groaned. Fortunately no whistle. But when a player is aggressive they sometimes get those non calls in their favor.

 

[kidduck]

Celtics lose Game 2 as Cavs’ Donovan Mitchell cooks their ‘unacceptable’ defense​

By Jared Weiss
May 9, 2024

BOSTON — Jaylen Brown wanted to make it clear. This was unacceptable.

Another Game 2 loss on their home court, where the Boston Celtics faced an opponent that was hot from 3 and had a playmaker who got anywhere he wanted.

“It’s the playoffs, that can’t happen. I don’t care if you’re missing shots, you’ve got to guard the guy on the other end,” Brown said. “That allows you to miss more shots if you’re playing defense. But you can’t miss shots and then allow them to make shots at the other end. That was unacceptable.”

Donovan Mitchell cooked the Celtics once again. This time, they didn’t have an answer. The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Celtics 118-94 to send the series back to Cleveland tied 1-1, as Mitchell proved he could beat everything Boston threw at him.

“He made some tough shots tonight and some tough contested 3s. You got to be up, but he’s a basketball player,” Brown said. “You got to have a little bit more alertness to him, and we’re just trying to take the challenge tonight. He got the best of us, made some tough baskets that allowed him to feel free to get downhill. We just got to keep making it tough.”

This is the first star guard the Celtics have faced in the postseason who is capable of picking apart each coverage and matchup the Celtics can offer. Brown knows him well, and he still was getting left in the dust.

“They have a lot of really good defenders, so we try to attack in the gaps. Tonight, they guarded me a little differently than they did before,” Mitchell said. “Hitting the 3 ball helps, so now you have to press up, they have to respect it to be able to move.”

When Brown or Jrue Holiday would press on Mitchell, Cleveland would set the screen well above the 3-point line. He would get a clean release over the screen and then Al Horford would have to contend with an Evan Mobley roll.

If they sat back on Mitchell a bit, he would zoom into a pull-up 3 and bury it. There was no right answer.

“They tested our pick-and-roll defense. We have to get better at that,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “And like I said, I think a lot of that stuff in the paint came from transition because of our poor offensive spacing and our rim decisions at times.”

Mazzulla said the key for Mitchell was to create separation before the point of attack, much like the Miami Heat did with Tyler Herro in their Game 2 win last series.

“They are using off-ball (screens) to get him off there, so we just have to be a little more physical in our off-ball (defense),” Mazzulla said. “He got some of those by our communication. I think he hit one pick-and-roll one, and the rest of his 3s came in just our (reads), either miscommunication or body position at times, so just going to have to clean up those technical things of our individual defense.”

Boston finally tried trapping in the fourth quarter, initially pinning Mitchell against the sideline so aggressively that he had to call a timeout. But Cleveland came back out and solved that coverage immediately.

As Jayson Tatum spent much of the game failing to get clean looks over Max Strus, Mitchell’s flow of play looked effortless at times. But when asked whether watching Mitchell thrive in his comfort zone compounded Tatum’s frustration, the Celtics star didn’t want to make it about him.

“I don’t get into the one-on-one matchup, trying to outscore the other team’s best player,” Tatum said. “Just trying to focus on winning a championship. In the middle of the game, I’m not worried about individual matchups. I really just focus on the game plan that we’re trying to execute. I understand that other teams are not just gonna let me — it’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be a fight.”

Once again, the process is going to be an uphill climb. The Celtics are 14-14 at home in their last 28 playoff games.

“I’m only concerned with this year. Last year is last year,” Brown said. “In both of the games we lost here at home, we shot the ball incredibly bad, they shot the ball incredibly well, and then we didn’t play defense to our level tonight, and that’s all I can say.”

There is a bit of a shock from fans when the Celtics blow these games at home. They performed at a high level in the regular season, and any time they don’t look like it, there is cause for concern.

“I mean, that’s the narrative you might see on TV; the idea that we have a super team. It’s twofold, right?” Tatum said. “We didn’t have coach of the year, didn’t have the MVP. We only had two All-Stars, so you say we’re a super team, but we didn’t get rewarded like we are. But we know we’ve got a good team. We’re not perfect, we play the right way more often than not, and we know we’ve gotta be better.”

But the Celtics have always been a rope-a-dope team. It’s often the opponent that gets the first real knockdown of a battle with Boston. Both Miami and Cleveland stole one on the road against a team that was a lock at the Garden this year.

They’ve been able to shoot their way back into series in the past, but Cleveland isn’t likely to roll over offensively as the short-handed Heat did.

“Take it on the chin, you learn from it, and you come out and put your best foot forward for the next game,” Brown said. “Obviously, this was an unacceptable performance. We need to be ready to respond.”

Now they are in a series with a top-tier playmaker who has been here before. Mitchell knows how to pick his spots throughout the game. He knows how to read the Celtics’ game plan to know when it’s his time to attack.

Brown will have his chance to make things right as the series goes on. But Mitchell will be ready to adjust and attack.

“That’s the biggest thing on a night-to-night basis,” Mitchell said. “Did it tonight, then gotta do it again and again and again.”

 

[Melancholy Jaques]

Every article is saying this 24 point win was the biggest in the playoffs by a double-digit underdog since 1991.

I can't find any article that says which teams were in that 1991 game or what the score & spot were.

 

[T-Roy]

National media just destroying the Celtics right now. Clearly trying to provoke/instigate them to have a big response. Saturday the Cavs will have to have their best game of the year. Keep attacking inside they have absolutely no answer in defending the paint. Especially Levert, he needs to continue to attack the rim.

 

[Patdatass]

My one pet peeve with the media coverage of this game - I’ve watched commentary and read articles saying that Mitchell played bad in the first half or didn’t impact the game in the first half. It makes me wonder if these guys watched the game or paid attention to anything other than points. I thought the first half was borderline great from him. He knew his teammates had to get going and knew that Boston was going to throw out a different look. Didn’t force anything, got his teammates involved, dissected the looks Boston was giving him. I thought his first half is why we and he were so good in the second half.

 

[T-Roy]

My one pet peeve with the media coverage of this game - I’ve watched commentary and read articles saying that Mitchell played bad in the first half or didn’t impact the game in the first half. It makes me wonder if these guys watched the game or paid attention to anything other than points. I thought the first half was borderline great from him. He knew his teammates had to get going and knew that Boston was going to throw out a different look. Didn’t force anything, got his teammates involved, dissected the looks Boston was giving him. I thought his first half is why we and he were so good in the second half.

Yeah he was phenomenal last night. I believe he was guarding Derrick White as well. If you want to beat Boston you have to completely take Derrick White out of the game and do your best to contain Brown/Tatum.

 

[daddywags]

Two differences I saw were that the Cavs pushed the ball fast on offense which didn't let the Celtics set their defense. We got a lot of quick baskets. Also, we clearly made an effort to push them off the 3-point line and make them move to shoot. They are more veteran and skilled than us but they're small underneath and older. We have to take advantage of that.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

There was strict adherence to Bickerstaff’s game plan this time. The Celtics don’t have rim protectors and basically dare you to score inside of 3, and the Cavs took them up on it, especially early. Of the 60 points Cleveland scored in the paint overall, 36 came in the first half.

See, the Cavs hadn’t had a single game the entire postseason — we’re in the second round, mind you — where they’d shot it well, at all. If the deeper shots aren’t falling, at some point, the Cavs were bound to try with the closer ones first. It worked brilliantly. By the game’s end, the Cavs had not only taken advantage of what Boston was giving, but also decimated the Celtics on 3s (13 makes to Boston’s 8).

I was thinking the Cavs should attack the rim or pull-up for mid-range jumpers since they've been shooting so bad from deep. In Game 2 the Cavs shot 28 threes - down from 42 in Game 1.

Bickerstaff had also said Cleveland needed to be better at limiting the Celtics’ 3-point attempts; a considerable task given that Boston is the league’s top 3-point shooting team in terms of attempts, makes, and is second in percentage. But the Cavs succeeded there too. The Celtics were just 8-of-35 from beyond the arc.

They not only forced the Celtics to take 15 fewer 3's than their season average, they did a much better job of contesting the ones they took and forcing misses. I can't believe three of their starters (White, Brown, Holiday) combined to go 1-for-16 on 3's.

The Celtics simply looked cooked in Game 2 in every facet of the game. The Jays could not create reliable offense, nobody could cover Mitchell successfully and Cleveland shot lights out from just about every section of the floor. As they head to Cleveland tied 1-1, the Celtics need to turn this into another Game 2 wake-up call, just as they did against Miami.

Now the Celtics know the Cavs aren't going to roll over and they have a series on their hands. The Celtics are heavily dependent on three players; Tatum, Brown, and White. Those are the guys that need to step up with Porzingis out.

But Strus’ defense has been front and center this whole series. Once again, Tatum tried to score on him in the midrange and failed repeatedly. Boston will have to find a way to get Strus switched off of Tatum, because the Celtics star has no rhythm getting into his pull ups and floaters right now.

The scouting report I saw on Strus when we traded for him was his defense was shaky. Maybe not so much.

Was this just an outlier? Will the Celtics defense be able to hold down the Cavaliers moving forward? Or did the Cavaliers figure out some things and gain enough confidence to be more threatening over the rest of the series?

That's the million dollar question. In their first round series the Celtics beat the Heat by 20 points in Game 1. Jimmy Butler was out and it looked like an easy sweep for the Celtics. They came into Game 2 probably overconfident and got beat at home by 10. Realizing that Miami was not condeding anything the Celtics stormed back and won the next two in Miami by 20 and 14 points before blowing them out by 34 in Game 5.

Is this deja vu? After winning the first game by 25 and with Jarrett Allen out, the Celtics got beat at home in Game 2. So are they ready to come storming back and take control of the series like they did against Miami?

Or are the Cavs much better than Miami? Did they figure some things out and now have the confidence that they can beat Boston at home and on the road?

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Celtics poor shooting from 3 maybe more then just a bad night. Espn

Boston was just 8-for-35 from 3-point range -- though Second Spectrum tracking data showed that 77.1% of those triples were heavily contested shots, the highest percentage in any game the Celtics have played with Joe Mazzulla as coach over the past two seasons.

Can the Cavs continue to "heavily contest" those 3's? That might be the key to the series because no team in the NBA shoots a higher percentage of shots from beyond the arc.

What concerns me is that every time Tatum or Brown put their head down and bulled into the paint, using the off arm to clear space, they got the bucket and a foul. We could see more of this in Game 3.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

One of the things that make NBA rotations difficult is that the players themselves aren't consistent from game to game.

Game 5 against Orlando, Morris had 12 points, 3 rebounds, and was +8 in 26 minutes. People were begging for him to get more minutes. Last night, he had 4 points and 0 rebounds, and was -14 in 16 minutes. Which is pretty tough to do in a game we won by 24, and was by far the worst plus minus on the team.

That's just one example of the pretty wild variations in the NBA from game to game, and why making absolutist predictions is so foolish. One scrub getting inexplicably hot, or one star going inexplicably cold, can be the difference between winning and losing. And it makes a large part of in-game coaching as much an art as a science because a move that worked perfectly in one game might fail spectacularly in the next.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Celtics poor shooting from 3 maybe more then just a bad night. Espn

Boston was just 8-for-35 from 3-point range -- though Second Spectrum tracking data showed that 77.1% of those triples were heavily contested shots, the highest percentage in any game the Celtics have played with Joe Mazzulla as coach over the past two seasons.

That's the single most interesting post-game stat I've seen. Thanks for posting that.

 

[shoes22]

I didn't say this during the game last night because I didn't want to jinx it, but I have been thoroughly unimpressed with Jayson Tatum these last couple games.

He seems like a totally soft "star", who gets most of his points through illegal push-offs and at the foul line. His stats still look decent, but they seem like totally empty numbers. He's a good 3pt shooter, but we've been able to defend him well there too. He would be further screwed if refs didn't blow the whistle just for breathing on him.

An All-NBA guy like him shouldn't be able to be shut down so easily and consistently, but he is.

 

[cliffdawg]

National media just destroying the Celtics right now. Clearly trying to provoke/instigate them to have a big response. Saturday the Cavs will have to have their best game of the year. Keep attacking inside they have absolutely no answer in defending the paint. Especially Levert, he needs to continue to attack the rim.

I noticed that too, they trying there hardest to motivate Tatum for the next game, calling him all kind of weakness…..