Some notes on the Celtics Game 1 defense from the email NBA.com sent this morning...
Boston played Luka one-on-one for much of the night, but mixed up its coverages just enough to not let Luka get comfortable.
Double Teams: As the Celtics built their 29-point lead in the 1st half (and rebuilt it back to 20 at the end of the 3rd quarter), they only double-teamed Luka five times. Then, they doubled him four times in his seven 4th-quarter minutes to prevent one final run
The Mavs scored just 0.78 points per possession when Luka was doubled, compared to 0.98 on all other possessions
Switching: Luka drew a game-high 31 on-ball switches in Game 1, in which Dallas scored 1.12 points per possession compared to 0.88 points per possession without a Luka switch
Boston’s switching led to Luka being defended by Boston’s bigs, which Luka tried to exploit – 15 of his 26 shot attempts came in the 2:12 of matchup time he had against Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis.
Horford held Luka to two points on 1-of-8 shooting (0-of-4 from 3) with one block, while Porzingis allowed 13 pts on 5-of-7 shooting (3-of-4 from 3) to his former teammate
Luka’s two primary defenders – Jaylen Brown (7 minutes) and Jrue Holiday (2:15) – combined to allow 10 points on 5-of-9 shooting with two turnovers
By playing Luka one-on-one and staying home on Dallas’ shooters, the Celtics forced the Mavs into historically-low playmaking.
As John Schuhmann noted in his Game 1 film study, Dallas’ 25.7% assist rate was the lowest for any team in any game in the last seven seasons.
