After crushing the Wizards with 48 points at 17/25 shooting, Joel Embiid challenged the Celtics of Kristaps Porzingis. However, the duel of the giants never really took place, Boston having taken care to limit as much as possible the possessions where the Latvian had to manage the Cameroonian one-on-one.
In fact, Joe Mazzulla mainly used Kristaps Porzingis to help Joel Embiid. When he was on the field, it was Al Horford who was the first defender on the reigning MVP. And when the Dominican was on the bench, it was mainly… Jrue Holiday who was the first defensive curtain against the Sixers pivot!
A sizeable deficit, but solid support
Even if the former Bucks gives 20 centimeters to his opponent (1m93 against 2m13), he is strong enough to resist the first low post shock, while waiting for help from Kristaps Porzingis to arrive.
In the first sequence, the Latvian leaves the racket to avoid being whistled for the 3 defensive seconds at the wrong time, which allows Joel Embiid to slam a dunk on his “spin move”. But down the stretch, the strategy works pretty well, with the Philadelphia superstar not exactly getting any easy shots.
With Jrue Holiday as the primary defender, the Celtics were also able to put higher pressure on Joel Embiid. To force him to create on his dribble, where he is still least comfortable, while he has made big progress on low post readings for example. Enough to push him to commit a lot of ball losses (6).
” I expected that “ nevertheless ensured the pivot on this defensive strategy. “And I think we haven’t really done a good job of adapting to it. What they did, overall, was try to stay in front of me. I think that too many times we could have put something in place between the high post and the low post, but we didn’t react quickly enough to do it. This is an adjustment to make for the next matches. I’m sure they’ll use that again, because sometimes we didn’t move the ball fast enough. »
Strategies to test for future battles…
With a smile on his lips, despite the defeat, Joe Mazzulla was satisfied with what he had seen, while Joel Embiid attacked Kristaps Porzingis, imposing his power on him, as soon as he could. Making him make mistakes.
Using Jrue Holiday as the first defender on the Philadelphia pivot, in order to keep Kristaps Porzingis on help, and thus protect him from fouls, seems to be an interesting option. While the two teams will have to meet again three times this season. Before a new battle in the playoffs?
“He did well” noted the coach on Jrue Holiday. “He moved him away (from the circle) on his ball catches. We know we can’t stop it just one way. We’re going to play this team four times (in the regular season) and we have the ability to play in different ways so we need to test those things to see what we can use later in the season. I thought it was good. We moved him away from the circle, we were physical with him. He scored [il regarde la feuille de stats] 27 points but he’s going to score 27 points, no matter the defense. »
