BROOKLYN -- Before Friday’s 112-107 loss to the Brooklyn Nets, Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens was asked if he’s comfortable with how many 3-pointers the Celtics surrender nightly.
“Not really,” Stevens said.
The Celtics are allowing a lot of 3-pointers. According to Cleaning the Glass, Boston is giving up the fourth-most triples in the league. Opponents are shooting just 34.1 percent from behind the arc, but the Celtics are also 13th in corner 3-pointers allowed, where opponents are hitting 41 percent of their attempts.
According to Stevens, everything comes back to the defense on the perimeter, where Boston needs to be rock solid.
“If we’re not going to be a really good perimeter defensive team,” Stevens said, “we’re probably going to be in trouble, because we’re smaller.”
On Friday, the Celtics were not a really good perimeter defensive team, or even just “good”. The Nets got to the rim in the pick-and-roll seemingly at will, as Jarrett Allen racked up 14 points on 7-for-12 shooting, but maybe more notably, Brooklyn shot 17-for-41 from behind the arc -- a healthy 41.5 percent.
“We have to make them miss,” Smart said. “It starts with me. I played like s--- today, and the night before. We got lucky the night before. Today, it burned us. It starts with me. I have to do a better job of getting my team ready, and setting the tone on both ends of the court. I just have to contest more. That’s it.”
Defensively, the Celtics rely on a complicated system of switches when they are at their best. When a smaller player gets isolated in the post, the Celtics scram them out of the mismatch. When the Celtics are forced to double in the paint, the perimeter defenders are asked to rotate quickly.
That strategy is easier when Boston has another versatile big body on the floor in Gordon Hayward, but Smart’s ability to run around screens and switch his teammates out of mismatches is part of the reason he has built some Defensive Player of the Year buzz.
Smart, of course, is dealing with a litany of injuries -- a byproduct of his violent style of play.
“It’s going through the works, but that’s part of it," Smart said. "Just play through it and if it gets any worse, obviously we’ll have to re-evaluate it and see what we want to do. But right now it’s ok. Like I said, I can play through it. It’s just doing it. I can’t really worry about it too much. I can’t let it stop how I play on both ends. If I’m out there I have to be able to produce and play. Otherwise I have to sit my ass down.”
Stevens was asked if giving up twos is a viable strategy against a team like the Nets that relies so heavily on 3-pointers.
“Well, you don’t want to accept dunks,” Stevens said. “Dunks and layups are the killers, and they do a good job of not shooting too many bad ones. Harris made that incredible kind of floating 16 footer, but I don’t remember us forcing them into too many bad ones. When we overreacted on close-outs, they got to the rim or Allen dunked it on us, Jordan too. And I think Jordan made a big difference too, I think having those guys for 48 minutes matters.”
One common theme did emerge: The Celtics know they need to be better on the defensive end, and they know they got lucky against the Nets on Wednesday.
“These kind of games are all about the teams who want it the most," Walker said. "That’s what it was. They wanted it more than us, especially after us getting them at home, where they played well -- we just got over the hump and won that one. But tonight you could tell they wanted it, and they came out and got that win.”