Boston's Doc Rivers was able to feed off of the work done in October to score a coaching victory over one of the game's sideline superstars. And while it's true that the Los Angeles Lakers' eventual collapse was a team effort of player malfunction, the Celtics also enjoyed an advantage in tactics and adjustments.
Admittedly, many strategic devices that were attempted by Phil Jackson may have died from implementation failure, player stubbornness or player misunderstanding. But it's also a coach's responsibility to make sure the message is expertly imparted.
That charge typically plays to the strength of Jackson, who checks in as one of the leading psychologists in NBA coaching history. However, based on witnessing Paul Pierce outplaying Kobe Bryant, it also seems ridiculous to refuse acknowledgement that Jackson was out-schemed by Rivers.
Let's return to the training camp reference by noting the Celtics arrived for duty armed with incoming All-Stars named Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. Teamed with Pierce, the recently dreadful C's automatically received expectations of Eastern Conference supremacy, if not total league domination.
Rivers also came to the party with Tom Thibodeau, a new associate head coach who earned considerable defensive chops as an apprentice to Jeff Van Gundy. While Thibodeau deserves the hosanna chorus bestowed upon him, and KG was the spiritual marshal for Boston's defensive commitment, Rivers is the guy signing off on game plans and adjustments.
While the Celtics were refining their ability to crowd the strong side, attack ball screens, deny dribble penetration, rotate, recover and take charges, the Lakers — based on the evidence — must have made only a brief investment in team defense during camp.
The only sign of a defensive system from Jackson is his traditional refusal to attack ball screens. Based on a reported disinterest in surrendering defensive rebounding position, his post players are instructed to back away from the screener, forcing the on-ball defender to deal with the screener and ballhandler on his own. This strategy often results in open jumpers for the ballhandler or easy pick-and-pop opportunities for the screener.
In the past, Jackson would make slight adjustments when needed, but his current roster does not include committed perimeter defenders like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen or Ron Harper.
In the Finals series, his Lakers also were annihilated by the straight-line dribble penetration of Pierce, who often was matched against Vladimir Radmanovic or Luke Walton — two players who couldn't guard a bear in a phone booth.
Phil seemed content to keep the C's within arm's length and save Bryant for checking Pierce in the fourth quarter. Rivers' adjustment to this potential loss of dribble penetration was to use Garnett as a screener, a maneuver that involved Pau Gasol as an impediment to his own team's defense. Gasol, you may have noticed, is another softy who doesn't bend his knees or slide his feet and had no idea what angle was needed to "flatten out" Pierce's attempts to turn the corner off of the screen.
While Gasol wasn't a Laker back in October, it seems impossible to imagine that someone who once played under Hubie Brown has no clue in defending screen-roll. It was hideous to watch.
When not dealing with screen-roll, Jackson's Lakers attempted to mitigate their one-on-one mismatches with Pierce and Garnett by forcing those players into help. Unfortunately, the on-ball defenders either forgot which direction the help was supposed to come from or their teammates were tardy in arriving. For the most part, the Lakers were forcing baseline — a tactic that's been in vogue for about 20 years — but the rotations were brutally late or nonexistent.
Forcing stars into help was a fine Jackson adjustment that may have worked if the appropriate rotations were instilled during training camp. It also should be noted that help-side defense requires rotation and closing out of open shooters.
The Celtics were far superior to the Lakers in closing out, which seems to be another manifestation of training-camp preparation.
One seemingly astute Jackson adjustment was to assign Bryant to guard Rajon Rondo, a young Celtic capable of chipping most of the paint from the rim. This tactic would enable Kobe to leave Rondo and use his quickness and strength to double on Garnett and Pierce or dive into passing lanes.
It also allowed Bryant to completely ignore Rondo, a decision that invited the Boston point guard to push the ball in transition and get into the lane before being accosted by any Laker defender. Instead of having a defender stop the ball and flatten out Rondo's dribble far above the three-point line, Rondo darted into the lane, waited for half-hearted defensive help to arrive and then pitched out to spot-up shooters named Ray Allen, Pierce, Eddie House or James Posey.
It should be noted that when confronted by double-team tactics, Rivers used the veteran House to make the Lakers pay from the perimeter, while P.J. Brown received considerable burn as a big man who knows just when to dive to the rim if left unguarded or where to make the extra pass.
For the record, keeping Gasol on Garnett wasn't a completely rotten idea; it provoked KG into perimeter shots (he missed a bunch during middle stretches of the series) and kept him from camping in the low post.
The Lakers weren't much better on offense.
The obvious key for Boston was making Kobe's points or facilitation opportunities difficult to come by. With KG and Kendrick Perkins lurking near the rim, the C's used the same ball-side-crowding scheme that helped them control LeBron James.
Bryant was limited to 40-percent shooting in the series and — with the exception of his marvelous Game 3 — didn't make frequent trips to the free-throw line. Kobe certainly helped the Celtics' cause with impatient fade-away jumpers or contested 3s when one hard dribble followed by a ball reversal would make the defense more vulnerable. We also can be fairly certain that Phil never encouraged Kobe to jump into the air to find a passing angle against a superior defensive team.
Boston's ability to crowd the lane was enhanced by Jackson's celebrated triangle offense, a system that requires tweaks when team defense crowds the strong side and switches the off-ball back screens on the weak side.
While the triangle offers corner-fill deployment on the ball side, the two Lakers on the weak side aren't spaced far enough away to open Bryant's driving lanes against a great help-defending team.
One formation that would take away much of the help Boston brings is the dribble-drive motion offense used by John Calipari's Memphis Tigers. It's a four-out, one-in alignment that — in theory — would put shooters such as Radmanovic (or Sasha Vujacic) in one corner and Derek Fisher in the other.
Gasol would start on the weakside block (keeping Bryant's driving lane open), with Lamar Odom at the guard spot above the three-point line opposite Kobe. Even though dribble-drive tactics may be anathema against great help defense, the help defenders would have more territory to cover. This would lead to longer close-outs if Celtic defenders were required to assist on Bryant's attempts to attack the basket.
OK, so it seems silly to suggest a new offensive system in the middle of a series, but one realistic alteration was almost totally ignored. That, of course, is the screen-roll scheme using Bryant against the hard show or all-out trapping of Boston.
High screen-roll created gaps in the defense that the Lakers exploited — via the slip screen from Gasol — until Boston rotated early to Gasol. The Lakers countered by flashing Odom to the opposite mid-post for a catch and lob to Gasol ... and it worked. But when the C's dropped another defender to take Odom's flash away, the Lakers didn't adjust. Instead of putting a shooter in either corner to space out the help, Jackson left Fisher and Radmanovic, for example, lurking on the nearby wings, where their defenders could crowd Kobe and still have space to close out any shot opportunities.
Instead of sending Fish and Vlad to the corners, the Lakers just quit running screen-roll.
It's a simple adjustment.
At least the Lakers now have more than three months to think about it.
