Celtics searching for answers on offense heading into Game 2 against the Knicks

Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett have cast a misleading image over the Celtics offense the last few seasons, as far too many assume that the renown of a teams headliners dictate its capacity to score effectively. But Boston hasnt scrapped together even a league-average offense since 2010,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. and over the past two seasons in particular it has plummeted toward the bottom of the NBA rankings in offensive efficiency. That limitation has come to define these most recent Celtics teams as much as their world-beating defense.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. With such a thorough and consistent offensive weakness, Boston leaves its defense precious little margin for error on a night-to-night basis.

But the Celtics D was good enough on Saturday to steal Game 1 from New York at Madison Square Garden, and for a half its offense followed suit. Jeff Green erupted for 20 first-half points on a series of strong drives and tough jumpers, and the Celtics put up 53 points on just 38 shots (good for 52.6 percent shooting). Thats a strong playoff output in the general sense, but a miraculous achievement for a team so limited offensively that it ranked 20th in points scored per possession during the season. The Celtics managed to slip through the grips of the Knicks defensive coverage for 24 solid minutes, eluding traps with smart passes and conjuring mismatches to exploit through New Yorks propensity to switch pick-and-rolls.

But a sobering second half swung the Celtics offense back to its inefficient norm, in no small part because Mike Woodsons Knicks made a series of very necessary adjustments. Woodson, frankly, has come up short in this regard in recent years, but he quickly directed his team to play to Bostons limitations after an uncomfortable first-half showing.

The easiest change to make was a mere scouting-report refresher. New Yorks various perimeter defenders had allowed Green to drive to his right with perplexing frequency in the first half.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. When given that avenue, Green can be an effective off-the-dribble scorer big enough to create problems for the undersized wings often tasked with guarding him, and quick enough to push past tweener forwards like Carmelo Anthony and Chris Copeland. All of this would be understandable if Green were even the slightest bit ambidextrous, but his left hand seems to be present solely for symmetry a garnish with little practical value. Once the Knicks began to play him as such, Green turned back into a pumpkin, contributing just six points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field in the second half. Their adjusted coverage looked largely like this.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case.

Like so many in the Celtics rotation, Green is an imperfect player. He requires the slightest deliberate attention to nip his offensive strengths, leaving both him and Boston to subsist on his wild-card jumper and complementary skills.

With Bostons first-half leading scorer under wraps, New York turned its focus toward defending the post an area that had proved to be a consistent problem in the first 24 minutes. Boston wasnt manufacturing points explicitly out of post-up shot attempts, but rather using the low block as the focal point of its offensive action. It was an area of the floor from which Pierce, Garnett and Green could gain an advantage with relative certainty, helping Boston create without a reliable point guard.

The action on all of those plays is fairly consistent, as a low-block touch for any of Bostons post options would result in a double team to force the ball out of their hands. Thats a reliable strategy against dangerous post threats, but only if the defense on the whole is prepared to adjust to the imbalance.An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. On several occasions multiple defenders edged over to help against Pierce on the right block without any plan in place on how to recover once Pierce passed the ball back out, resulting in wide-open cuts for Avery Bradley and some good looks for the Celtics perimeter shooters.

New York was able to get stops on some of Pierces switching sequences, but overall the Knicks coverage was painfully predictable. Because of that, Bostons ball handlers knew exactly what actions would cue which responses a knowledge that put the Celtics in control of the board, free to manipulate matchups as they wished. Pierce exploited those conjured advantages repeatedly, as Boston was allowed to get the ball to its primary scorer against a smaller opponent without even the slightest defensive deterrence. It was an exercise in repetition, and on first-half possession after first-half possession the Knicks were bludgeoned with their own reluctance to change things up.

When faced with such a sequence, many coaches would change up their gameplan completely, forcing their players to adapt to a challenge by altering direction. Yet Woodson stuck to more or less the same plan doubling the post and switching difficult screens by tightening the screws on his teams execution. Those efforts largely started by preempting the Celtics now-predictable play preferences before they happened. In familiar sequences that are designed to set up a Boston player on the block, the Knicks now aggressively played for post position while denying entry passes. That adjustment forced Doc Rivers to move Bradley who was just horrible with his entry feeds on Saturday off the ball more often, offering an offensive player whom the Knicks could cheat off of without much penalty. Watch here how re-routing post feeds through other players mucks up the Celtics spacing, if only because theres no optimal place for Bradley an inconsistent shooter to be.