BOSTON — It must have been frustrating for the Celtics, watching Evan Mobley cook all night. There were many times he would roll to the basket, drive through space and get off a clean finish.
This was the performance Cleveland had been waiting for — with 33 points on 15-for-24 shooting, Mobley scored at will most of the night.
Joe Mazzulla loved it. This was all by design.
This post was from Game 3, when Donovan Mitchell’s 7-for-12 shooting from deep was just about the only thing keeping Cleveland’s offense in the game.
Well, it turns out this was very possible. By Game 5, the strategy was clear: aggressively switch on Darius Garland and dare the Cavs to beat them in the paint.
Every game has several layers to shape the outcome. The Celtics won because Al Horford brought fervor and grit. The Celtics won because Jayson Tatum did it all. But the Celtics also won because of the math.
Mazzulla is one of the league’s strongest proponents of 3-point volume. Shot margin is just about his favorite keyword, the difference in attempts from deep against the opponent.
Looking at the boxscore from their 113-98 Game 5 win to eliminate the Cavs, there are few areas in efficiency or total output that are drastically different, except for 3-point volume. Boston took 12 more of them and made six more.
Mazzulla’s theory is that teams like Cleveland and Miami can shoot their way back into a series if 3-point variance falls their way. That was the primary factor for Miami’s 3-0 lead to start the Eastern Conference finals last year. And it was starting to take shape in Game 5 when Marcus Morris came back with a vengeance for a career shooting night.
So Mazzulla’s key was to make sure Cleveland couldn’t keep feeding the likes of Morris, Max Strus, and Sam Merrill throughout the night.
How did he do it? He invited the Cavs’ best players to try to take over, and it all traces back to Horford.
Garland shot 3-for-12 against Horford, per NBA Stats. He went 1-for-5 against everyone else. He simply never got it going.
Boston shifted its coverage to have Horford aggressively switch up on the Garland-Mobley pick-and-roll. Then, if Garland managed to slip the pocket pass to Mobley, Mazzulla had the Celtics defenders stay home on shooters as late as they could and take away Mobley’s viability as a passer.
“They made a conscious effort to get more 3s,” Mazzulla said after Game 5. “So once we went to switching and they were going to isolate, I thought that was the best thing for our defense because it took away the Struses, the Merrills, the Morrises, and it just made us play one-on-one.”
They let Mobley score as he wished, pushed in transition off of makes, and Horford kept firing away from deep on the other end. Tatum, Horford and Derrick White took 29 shots from 3, only two fewer than the entire Cavs team.
The key was how Boston switched on the screen. They would imitate a high drop coverage, where Garland’s man would go over the screen and Horford would be up at the screen level. This coverage usually requires a third defender to leave a shooter and “tag” Mobley on the roll to stop him from getting to the rim.
Watch Boston’s reluctance to tag Mobley on these plays where he got a clean roll.
This works not just because of the coverage on the ball, but how the help defenders are set up on the shooters. Boston’s help defenders have their backs to the baseline with a line of sight on their man and the ball.
As Sam Merrill cuts over to Strus’ man Jrue Holiday for a back screen, Holiday boxes him out, holding Merrill in place so he can’t cut to the paint or curl up for a handoff 3. Payton Pritchard sits under Merrill to help pin Merrill and Strus into that corner. When Garland drives, Holiday doesn’t dig in for a steal and lets Horford do all the work, making sure Garland has nowhere to pass the ball.
To help counter this, Cleveland tried setting high screens in transition with Dean Wade, a viable pick-and-pop shooter. But Horford was able to step up to the right level to take away Garland’s pull-up, then still steer the Cavs guard where he wanted to block the shot.
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