The Celtics, and Jayson Tatum, had a good idea of what to expect in the postseason following Wednesday’s loss to Miami.
It hasn’t happened often since the start of the year, but the Heat blitzed and tripled effectively enough to disrupt Tatum. His 20-point performance included an 0-for-5 night from 3-point range and a two-point, 1-for-3 fourth quarter.
Dallas had similar success during another Celtics Garden loss on March 13, when Tatum needed 23 shots to score 21 points. Better off-ball action is needed at those times, says Ime Udoka.
“Teams are gonna come after him and make other guys prove it,” the Celtics coach said after Thursday’s practice. “I keep mentioning the Chicago game early in the season as our first time really seeing it, and we’ve had a lot of practice since then, so having our guys prepared behind it to make plays, to be confident, be aggressive, and kind of be in attack mode when they get those numbers. So it’s an area that we know is going to come up in the playoffs. We’ve seen it quite a bit this year and got to have our guys in the right spots to make plays behind it.
“He’s been great. He’s made the right plays. He gets off the ball, trusts his teammates and like I said, he’s enjoying the success that they have because of the attention that he commands,” said Udoka. “The passing has been noticeable, that some of the passes he’s making, he has the size to do that. And in general, he can use them as a bait to have the numbers behind or we can put them in certain positions where it’s harder to double team and we move him around quite a bit. And so Miami was coming after him pretty strong. Dallas did it as well, and those are a few games that do stand out, where we didn’t attack it as well in the fourth quarter specifically, but overall, we’ve been really good at it. And if you make a team pay once or twice, they’ll back off and you miss a shot, they’ll stay in it, so it’s kind of up to the other guys to make the right play behind there, make the shots, same thing like a zone or whatever. And so Jayson understands it, sign of respect that he’s scoring this well and playing this well. And just trust his teammates and make the right play as he has all year.”
The role of teammates in this situation is fairly simple, according to Derrick White.
“Just try to be available. We know teams will try to blitz him, trap him, get the ball out of his hands,” said White. “Just try to be available and make plays after that. I don’t think we did a great job doing that last night, but the opportunities we had we just missed some good shots. Just being available and making the right play after that.”
Vaccine issues?
The Celtics don’t reveal the vaccine status of their players, and how they would be impacted by Toronto’s ban on unvaccinated visitors is unknown. But the Raptors are looming as one of two likely first round playoff opponents (Chicago is the other). Any playoff opponent with an unvaccinated player would be forced to play shorthanded.
“You don’t have those discussions. Honestly, it’s a personal choice. And everybody, it’s up to them, that’s their decision,” said Udoka. “But it’s been two years now that that’s all been on the table and everybody knows the restrictions or whatever. And so we leave that up to the guys. It’s their personal choice. And there’s not much discussion that we have with them.”
Al Horford, who was asked about his view of Canada’s vaccine mandate Wednesday night, said, “we’re clear on it and I’ll be ready to play wherever.”
Rob Williams comeback trail
Rob Williams rejoined his teammates on Thursday, and began his early recovery program after having surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee a day earlier.
“Well it’s initially just the movement, the movement part — he’s in the meetings, in the gym, in good spirits,” said Udoka. “And so getting him around and just getting that flexibility back in, off top. And then we can kind of build up pretty quickly from there.”
Williams is expected to miss four to six weeks, and would most likely rejoin the team on time for the second round of the playoffs.
