Eastern Conference questions

Boston's bricks, Indiana's unsung hero, Cleveland's Alfred problem, and more

Through 1.5ish rounds, these have been the best NBA playoffs ever.

Almost every night delivers at worst a very good game and at best an instant classic, and recently, it’s been heavy on the latter.

The Eastern Conference is particularly fascinating. How often can you say two 2-0 series are more interesting than two 1-1 battles?

All season, most people (guilty!) have assumed the East was a two-horse race. But right now, those stallions haven’t left the starting gate while their competition sprints ahead. I’ve got questions.

Will Boston ever make a shot again?

Of course they will. I’m pretty sure. Like, they have to, right?

The Celtics are missing shots left, right, and center. It’s not one or two players, it’s everyone:

That’s one player shooting over 30% from deep. Yikes!

You may have heard that the Celtics are bricking a bunch of great looks (25% on shots the NBA classifies as wide-open). While true, that stat is both overblown (wide-open on paper rarely means wide-open in reality; you try shooting with OG Anunoby sprinting at you like a demon on wheels) and misleading, as these aren’t Boston’s usual threes.

In the regular season, Boston averaged 16.8 pull-up threes per game and knocked in 33.0% of them. In two games against the Knicks, they’ve averaged a whopping 22.0 and hit just 20.5%. Conversely, the Celtics tried 30.7 catch-and-shoot triples during the season and laced 39.1%, but they’ve only attempted 27.5 in this series and hit just 29.1%.

In summary, Boston is taking more of the hard shots (pull-ups) and fewer of the easy shots (catch-and-shoots), and they’re missing both kinds. This was especially pronounced in Game 1, when the C’s actually shot more pull-ups than catch-and-shoots. That’s one way to set the record for most missed threes in a playoff game!

It’s easy to hand-wave these losses away as pure shooting variance problems that will fix themselves, but Boston is a 2-0 hole with three games left in New York (although that might be a blessing in disguise, as the Celtics seem to play better on the road). The margin for error is almost zero, and there’s no guarantee that regression to the mean will happen immediately — Boston fans remember all too well when the Miami Heat made 47% of their threes or better in four games while upsetting the Celtics back in 2023.

The weird thing is that we’ve seen Boston have a more dynamic offense plenty of times in the past. Coach Joe Mazzulla knows how to fix this, and they just spent an entire playoff series battling a somewhat similar style defense in Orlando. More off-ball stuff, more speed within a possession to get the offense going before the shot clock starts ticking down, a better game plan to attack Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson (hit them with some off-ball screens before involving them in the main action, for example), and more secondary actions if the primary one fails.

That’s all easier said than done, of course, and it’s not just the threes. Boston can’t buy a two-point basket, shooting far below their average on jumpers inside the arc, too. Kristaps Porzingis, who has been their antidote to cold outside shooting nights and could help mitigate New York big man Mitchell Robinson’s rim protection by stretching him to the perimeter, has been unwell with a weird, lingering sickness. His availability can’t be counted on.

Without him, Boston is still the better team! They’ve shown that through three quarters in both contests. However, “better” and “worse” are ultimately decided by Ws and Ls, and New York keeps taking their lunch money right before meal time.

Did Tom Thibodeau level up?

I have criticized Thibodeau in this space for many things, including an unwillingness to tweak his basic defensive principles and an inability to cobble together a backup plan on offense for when the “Jalen Brunson, do something” button doesn’t work.

The latter is still an issue, but Thibodeau has thrown some curveballs in this series and deserves his flowers.

In Game 1, he introduced some switching on defense (which, praise be, kept Towns out of automatic drop coverage) to help stymie the Celtics’ drive-and-kick game. That might seem minor, but the Knicks almost never switch! In Game 2, he had OG Anunoby going under picks on Tatum much like he did against Cade Cunningham in Detroit, daring the shaky-shooting Tatum to launch without hesitation (he didn’t, attempting only five triples in the entire game after launching 15 in Game 1).

Knowing Jalen Brunson will be attacked, Thibodeau has also tailored his defense for his star. Brunson will switch onto Jaylen Brown or smaller players, where he can at least put up a fight thanks to the Knicks’ strong help principles. Against Tatum, he’ll hedge and recover. Shockingly, the Celtics have been unable to take advantage of Brunson’s defensive deficiencies.

Thibodeau has also looked better thanks to an overall lack of glaring mistakes (something that can’t be said for his counterpart, Joe Mazzulla, who looks like he’s a first-year coach again). How much credit does Thibs get for the Celtics inexplicably putting themselves in the bonus with repeated Hack-a-Robinson fouls with just three minutes left in Game 2 (the hacking strategy is no longer legal at the 2:00 mark)? While the Knicks’ defense has been excellent, why can’t the Celtics run some plays for some more off-ball movement, or at least try to put Jrue Holiday in the post against Brunson, like they did to start Game 2?

The New York offense is still horrendous in its own right. Towns was inexplicably uninvolved at all in Game 1 again, and the Knicks scored just 91 points as a team in Game 2. The Knicks have also been down 20+ points in both games; while Thibodeau deserves some credit for the comeback, he also deserves some blame for the fact that the Knicks have looked demonstrably worse than Boston for most of both games.

Thibodeau hasn’t solved all his problems overnight. But he’s trying, he’s been better, and most importantly, he’s gotten results.

Are the Cavs dead in the water?

I’ve tried warning people that the Pacers are really good, but such proclamations were mostly met with indifference — and I certainly didn’t see this coming. Now, they’ve authored two of the greatest comebacks in NBA history nearly back-to-back. The second put the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were missing three of their five best players in Game 2, in a 0-2 hole without a ladder.

For all the talk about Boston’s disgusting shooting, Cleveland has been just as terrible. They’ve shot 26% from beyond the arc for the series, while Indiana has hit 47%. That is, by far, the most significant difference between the squads.

The crazy thing is that even with the injuries, even with the horrible shooting, the Cavaliers haven’t looked like a worse team than Indiana! The Pacers play to the level of their competition; they stepped up in Game 1 and were rewarded by the Cavs missing every long-distance shot they took, but they then took the foot off the gas in Game 2 against the fightin’ Donovan Mitchells. A miraculous Haliburton buzzer-beater and an epic collapse from Cleveland (aided by a couple of tough refereeing decisions) are all that kept Indy from what would have been a disappointing defeat.

Mitchell has proven unstoppable in this series when he gets into the paint; if he’s merely 5-for-18 from deep instead of 2-for-18, the Cavs might be up 2-0. But I can’t blame the guy who’s carrying the offensive load of two players (and holding up quite well inside the arc!). He’s had virtually no help.

Cleveland can still win this. But they’ll need Evan Mobley and Darius Garland to return sooner rather than later, and they really, really need something from Ty Jerome, who tore up the efficiency charts this regular season playing mostly against backups but has looked like a fish in the sky in this series.

In Game 1, Jerome went 8-for-20 with eight assists off the bench. While he didn’t play nearly as well as that line indicates, particularly on defense, at least he did something. In nearly the same amount of playing time as a Game 2 starter, Jerome went an astonishing 1-for-14 and was repeatedly put on a spit and roasted defensively.

Dean Wade, an analytics darling, has been invisible, putting up just six shot attempts (making one) in 46 minutes across the two games and not doing much else. Isaac Okoro has encountered the same problems he always has in the playoffs: a justifiable lack of confidence in his shot creates hesitation and uncertainty with the ball. Things were so desperate that coach Kenny Atkinson gave short burn to Craig Porter Jr. in the second game — and he did more positive things in his four minutes than Jerome did in his 29.

I am sympathetic. Without Garland, Mobley, and De’Andre Hunter, everyone mentioned is taking on bigger roles than they should. However, Atkinson doesn’t really have other buttons to push. Someone (and preferably someones) must step up and, if Robin is too far-fetched, at least play Alfred to Mitchell’s Batman.

Can Aaron Nesmith keep this up?

As a fellow Commodore, I’ve always had a soft spot for Aaron Nesmith. He’s had an unusual career arc. The Boston Celtics drafted him for his shooting, but he never found his stroke or role in Beantown. He eventually made his way to the Pacers, where he’s reinvented himself as a 3-and-D-and-D (threes, defense, and dunks) guy thriving next to Tyrese Haliburton.

Nesmith has shot over 40% from deep in his last two seasons while carrying a heavy defensive load. At 6’5”, 215 pounds, and with rocket boosters strapped to his boots, Nesmith has the size and athleticism to guard most wings.

Donovan Mitchell isn’t most wings, of course. Nesmith is trying his best, however, taking advantage of the playoffs’ increased physicality to make Mitchell’s life as taxing and exhausting as possible. Although Mitchell has generally done what he wants, it’s not for a lack of effort on Nesmith’s part: how many other guys have tried to Saquon Barkley their mark?

Unusually, Nesmith’s bigger contributions have come on the other end. Nesmith has dropped 17 and 23 points in Games 1 and 2 after averaging just 12 in the regular season (23 points is his fourth-highest scoring game of the year). He’s done most of his damage from outside. He’s 9-for-14 from deep and is the leading shooter in the series.

But his most memorable play came on an outrageous late-game tip dunk in which he both committed a clear lane violation and created an awesome highlight:

Nesmith’s primary defender has been Mitchell. Nobody on Indiana provides a safe place to hide and catch your breath; the team plays too fast and has too much off-ball movement for that. But if Nesmith continues to play this well offensively, it’ll be an even heavier brick placed on Mitchell’s Atlasian shoulders.

Nesmith might not shoot this well the rest of the series, but he doesn’t need to. Sprinting in transition, defending with physicality, and pressuring full-court are all effort-based things that are independent of personal box-score stats but remain critical to team success. For as long as Mitchell remains a one-man band, the goal is to tire him out; that’s something Nesmith can be counted upon to do no matter what.

And, hey, if he’s going to score 20 points per game, Indiana faithful surely won’t complain. There’s a strong argument that Nesmith has been the third-best player in this series. If that remains true, Indiana will return to the Eastern Conference Finals.