quickly came to the end of the 2018-19 season. This season started when LeBron James moved to the West last summer, and many teams in the East have undergone major lineup changes. For example, Raptors not only replaced DeMar DeRozan with Kawhi Leonard also came to Marc Gasol and other famous players in the mid-season; Bucks also transformed into a leader in the East through a change of coaching staff and multiple signing transactions; not to mention the 76ers who formed the strongest starting lineup in the East.
said that the sharp-eyed readers here should also find that two Eastern Division powerhouses, the Celtics and the Pacers , are the only two teams in the Eastern Division's top five this season that have not kept up with the "big reinforcement" "A trendy team, the Pacers have at best brought in Tyreke Evans in the summer and signed Wesley Matthews after a midseason injury to Victor Oladipo, just as they will meet in the upcoming first round of the playoffs.
The Celtics have "no room to lose" in this playoff. How far they can go this year will also affect Kyrie Irving's willingness to renew this summer, and whether Al Horford will choose to jump out of the contract and take a pay cut to stay with the team , even Danny Ainge will have to look at the playoffs first if he dares to recklessly fight for the coveted Anthony Davis.
Why is the Celtics the fourth in the Eastern Division?
Last year's success led to a disaster
The Celtics were undoubtedly the most talked-about NBA team in the summer of 2017, when they welcomed Gordon Hayward, the second free agent in team history to join with a "max salary", and later arrived At the end of August, Isaiah Thomas was sent away in cold blood in exchange for his current brother, Kyrie Irving. However, these topics were the calm before the storm. Plans and layouts, but under the coaching of Brad Stevens, young players such as Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Terry Rozier emerged from their cocoons, and they fought hard until the division finals G7 before losing to LBJ, who dominated the East for eight years.
maintains the original team and two stars Irving and Hayward are back from injury. Even if other teams in the Eastern Division want to strengthen, they cannot shake the Celtics' status in the hearts of all walks of life. ESPN predicted before the game that they will be 58 wins and 24 losses. It became the leader of the Eastern District, but in the end, the Celtics only finished with 49 wins and 33 losses and the fourth seed in the Eastern District. Obviously, the high expectations of the summer vacation turned into high disappointments. A complete
does not mean that it can have a better record and performance. The success of
in the playoffs last season has increased the attention and worth of Tatum, Brown and Rozier. Rozier is preparing for the contract year, but what they have in common - "needing a stage" is exactly the attitude that the Celtics don't need the most. After all, the team's goal is for players to sacrifice each other to get the "championship". ”, and the return of Irving and Hayward also needs to take back their rightful place.
In this way, a contradiction arises. After the young players have last year's experience, there is a subconscious idea of "we would be fine without you"; Irving, who should have been and should have been the team leader, lacked to deal with this kind of problem. The experience began to feel uneasy; not to mention Hayward, who was leading the team's highest salary but needed a lot of time to slowly get back to his state. In this way, each player had his own thoughts, and the instructions and tactics issued by the coaching team could not be implemented smoothly. Stevens Excessive trust in the players under his command to solve problems on their own has only aggravated the situation of the team getting out of control. What he finally got was that his record was not as good as the previous season for the first time since he coached for 5 seasons.
This season is the first time since Stevens took over the regular season record.
From the management level to the players, they all have a very "Buddhist" attitude in life. In order to save chips, Danny AingeWaiting for the summer vacation to try to change the nature of the Pelicans stud Anthony Davis and dare not act rashly; Stevens insists on egalitarianism and hopes that all players in the team can play their due value; The players have not woken up from the dream of last season as mentioned in the previous paragraph , so they will always get carried away after a wave of winning streak, and fall into the low tide of losing streak or even coax; but they will also find a way to unite from the low tide and rebound again in time, like a roller coaster. 's performance revealed the instability of the season. The unsatisfactory performance of
attracted a lot of discussion from the outside world. Several players and coaches associated with the Celtics also offered advice from the air, but they also mentioned that "everything will get better until the playoffs". prophecy. In addition to the conservative scheduling of coaches and the concentration of the ball on the stars, the depth of the lineup of the Celtics still makes them not to be underestimated!
said that this rumour did not affect the layout and performance of the Celtics and the Pacers are definitely deceiving
How should the Celtics deal with the Pacers? , the city fans to which they belong are also very enthusiastic, but the two teams rarely face each other less than in the playoffs. So far, there have been only 5 series and a total of 25 games, of which the green shirts have won 3 series and 13 games. Victory; the Pacers won 2 series and 12 in 2004 and 2005.
For the Celtics, the Pacers are relatively good opponents in the first round of this year, but this Pacers will remind the Celtics of the "old self". The rise of Oldaipo last year was like Isaiah Thomas in 2016; the whole team relied on the unyielding efforts to fight the game, and it is also like the "weed soul" that changed the fate of the Celtics in recent years; this season, the injured team of Oladipo can maintain A certain level of record in preparation for the playoffs has made Tom Heinsohn, the current ball critic of the Hall of Famer in the history of the Celtics, describe them as "they are like us last year."
The Green Shirts have a lot of experience playing the Pacers in the regular season this year. On January 20, they won 27 points at TD Garden at home. The last time the two teams played against the Green Shirts, they also won the Pacers by 20 points in the away game. The only defeat was on November 4 when Oladipo scored a quasi-lore three-pointer with 3.4 seconds left, and this was the only game Oladipo played.
The two teams have played against each other in three games this year, and the player with the higher penalty area has won in three games. The only exception is in 4/6, but both teams scored exactly 54 points in the penalty area in this game. The other focus is on rebounds. Whoever has the highest total rebounds in each game will win in the end. These two phenomena, combined with the characteristics of "starting defense", reveal that the two time-honored teams in the Eastern District are expected to play very "traditional" hand-to-hand combat.
Fans who like traditional defensive hand-to-hand combat in the Eastern District must not miss this series
The pick-and-roll switch will be the key to victory Team coordination can make changes through other players' movements or the way they respond to opponents. The Pacers used "P&R Roll Man" on offense in as much as 10.1% this season, ranking first in the league; The proportion of "P&R Ball Handler" is only 15.8% in the bottom 10. The reason for this has a lot to do with Oladipo's injury. Otherwise, according to the last season, the proportion of the latter is 18.3%, which is the 10th highest in the league. The former also remains the league's top 11.5 percent.
The current green shirts have very different defensive habits from the "undersized" players in the short soup era. They are not like Smart, Avery Bradley, and Jae Crowder. The screeners slammed into the middle. After all, this kind of defense has a higher risk of injury and it is more difficult to drill directly after the body is upgraded. Therefore, they will choose to get rid of the human wall in a large circle or follow the current mainstream "infinite defense".
However, Stevens is a coach who really likes small-ball lineups, especially his dream lineup of "1 defender + 3 strikers + 1 long man", although this formation is a current one.The mainstream culture of basketball, but if you are too obsessed with it, it will have the opposite effect. There are as many as 7 players in the Celtics this season who are 6'7" to 6'9" in Qiguang, which also makes Stevens the first scheduling to be "handed over to the small forward" when he encounters a problem. , it was not until the end of March that the "Twin A Towers" of Al Horford and Aron Baynes were reopened. The biggest benefit of the
twin towers is that Horford can concentrate more on the offensive end to play the supporting value, the defensive end can also avoid the influence of time, and at the same time, it can also prevent the first line of defense constructed by the center guards from defending the "pick-and-roll". fault. By sitting in the two towers, the team can ensure that there is an adult in the penalty area at every point in time, so as to avoid other teammates who must tighten to the penalty area and miss the outer space when switching defenses. The basket problem occurs.
As long as the twin towers can maintain their health, the defensive intensity of the green shirts can be maintained at a high level. On the eve of the playoffs, the green shirts have sent out a defensive leader, Smart, who may miss the first two rounds of the series due to a torn left oblique muscle. , As a result, at the beginning of this season, Smart will share defense and organize and liberate Irving's schedule will face changes again. It is expected that Stevens will re-place Brown to reproduce the starting five "Irving+" of the Celtics after Hayward was injured last year. Brown+Tatum+Horford+Baynes", but from last year's playoffs and this year's games, Smart's offense is brilliant, but his defensive appeal is enough to change the look of the entire Celtics team. The
Pacers' flanks are slightly inferior in stature and athleticism to the Green Shirts, but they have better experience and game reading ability than the Green Shirts, which is easy for Brown to be distracted on the defensive end by talent alone. It will undoubtedly be a big challenge. In addition, although Irving has made some slight progress in defense this year to avoid becoming a defensive black hole, the bad habit of "marking the ball instead of the man" may still become the weakness of the Pacers' strong attack, which also tests whether Brown can make up for Smart's lack of becoming The "vocal guy" of the team's perimeter defense.
For two consecutive years, the playoffs have not been able to see this hot-blooded defensive leader
The value of the star at the critical moment
Whether it is the Celtics or the Pacers, both teams have often pulled the game into Clutch Time this season (the remainder of the game). In the next 5 minutes and the difference between the two sides is within 5 points), the green shirts averaged 9.5 points per game, ranking seventh in the league, and ORtg was the league leader; on the contrary, the Pacers averaged only 7.1 points per game. 2, but their DRtg is the 5th in the league. In other words, the Celtics rely on "offense" to break through the deadlock while the Pacers use "defense" to finish.
However, Oladipo has a total of 15 Clutch Time games before he is reimbursed this season. If 15 games are used as the screening criteria, he can lead the league in 5.1 points per game, and the Pacers have won 11 wins and 4 in these 15 games. A negative record, meaning the Pacers went 12-14 in 26 Clutch Time games without him. As for Oladipo's confirmation of reimbursement, the Pacers' record in Clutch Time was only 8 wins and 12 losses, and they averaged only 4.8 points per game (the lowest in the league). The team's highest scorer was Darren Collison's 1.5 points.
However, the playoffs are often the stage to witness the "birth of a star". Although the Pacers lack a star who can replicate Oladipo's critical moment to get the ball and make opponents fear, no one can say whether they will be. There will be players who will come forward like last year's Celtics, such as the aforementioned Collison, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Evans have the opportunity to become their new "that person".
Who can step up and become a key hero in the absence of Oladipo is the biggest problem in front of the Pacers
Part of the Celtics Clutch Time's scoring leader is of course Irving's 4.3 points, and he has played many times since he was still in the Cavaliers. Key killers deal critical blows to opponents, but don't assert themCan easily beat the Pacers from the stalemate. The Celtics are a bit overly reliant on Irving's performance this year, and even Stevens' proudest ATO often suffers from Irving losing his flexibility after being defended, so the Celtics still need a second or even a third attacking point to stand up. out.
Judging from this season's data alone, Horford's 1.7 points and Morris's 1.2 points will be the first choices, but as the season progresses, Hayward's steady progress month by month puts him in the best shape physically and mentally. Morris is a mid-to-long-range shooter. In addition, Hayward has stronger independent attack ability and sharper passing awareness than Morris. Although I don't expect him to play the inexorable containment force of Irving's former best partner LBJ, he will undoubtedly be the Celtics. The X-factor of this year's playoffs.
The Gemini will be the biggest advantage in the first round of the series
Series prediction
Overall, the Green Shirts have an advantage in both the depth of the lineup and the coaching staff. In addition, both teams have played "one-stop home game" in the regular season this season. , A bug in the away game, the Celtics, who have home advantage, once again got extra points. Although Smart is injured, the impact on the team is not greater than the damage caused by Oladipo's absence to the Pacers. The Celtics' smooth promotion should not be a problem.
But looking back, the biggest problem for the Celtics this season is "instability", so even if they have advantages in all aspects, they may not be able to pass the level easily. The first two home games will determine the trend of this round of the series, as long as If the Celtics successfully won two consecutive victories, they will have the opportunity to build up the "mutual trust" that the team lacks this year, and it is expected to defeat the Pacers 4:1 in G5 to prepare for the second round; If the Pacers stole a victory, then the Green Shirts would probably have to fight to the death in G7 before they can advance or even be eliminated by the following offenses in G6.
Whoever can break through the opponent's home court first is expected to win the series and advance to
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