Hoops Tonight - Film Breakdown: How Jaylen Brown Lead Celtics To A Game 5 Victory

Jason breaks down the film on Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and Luke Kornet leading the Boston Celtics to a Game 5 win over Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks to extend the series. 

 

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(01:57):
All right, welcome to Hoops tonight. You're at the volume.
Happy Thursday, but I do I hope all you guys
are having a great week. We got a quick film
session this morning. I want to focus in on a
couple of things with the Boston Celtics and their win
over the Knicks last night in Game five one, just
their offensive process. I want to focus in on Jalen
Brown and just the job he did not forcing the
issue early in the game, didn't take a tough, contested

(02:19):
jump shot of any kind until about halfway through the
second quarter. Just took advantage of easy, simple reads that
were there in front of him all game long. As
a team, you guys are going to see a clear
theme in this film session, a lot of intentionality attacking
Brunson through his chest right to the front of the rim,
something that we haven't seen them successfully pull off really

(02:39):
at any point in this series for any extended stretch.
Well they did last night. And then at the tail
end of it, we're going to focus on Luke Cornette
and the defensive job that he did in the second half.
I just want to high We're just going to watch
all six of his blocks in the second half, and
I want you guys to see just the specific way
that he was able to be effective playing off of

(03:00):
ash Hard And these are going to be obviously things
that are going to have to be you know, these
are things that Boston's going to have to leverage if
they're going to win in Game six down in New York.
I just pulled the offensive rating numbers, which I thought
was fascinating. The offensive ratings for Boston and all three
losses have been very low. But in each of the
two wins, in Game three and in Game five, they

(03:21):
had a half court offensive rating over one ten. And
it's very clear that that's the driving force behind this team.
When they reach their ceiling is when the balls popping
around in the half court and they're able to reach
their ceiling on that end of the floor. And again
it's not a Tatum thing. They did it with Tatum
in Game three, they did it without Tatum in Game five.
But it's that intentionality that's going to have to be

(03:42):
there for Boston in order to have any chance to
come back and win the series. You guys know the
joke before we get started. Subscribed to Hoops and I
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(04:03):
follow us there and then keep dropping mailback questions in
the chat for our mail bags at the end of
the live shows at night after the final buzzer. We
will be live again after the final buzzer tonight of
Denver versus Oklahoma City. Also after that show later tonight,
we'll be going over to playback playback dot tv slash
shoots tonight for our after show where we take callers
and just kind of casually hang out and talk hoops

(04:26):
for an extra you know, forty five minutes or so
after each show. So that's the game plan for tonight.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So I want to
start with this first possession here and really just highlight
Jalen Brown setting the tone and the way that he
wanted to attack on this night. So in this particular case,
it actually starts against Josh Hart in a switch here

(04:48):
against the along the right wing gets Josh Hart, action
gets shut down. Now there's only nine seconds on the
shot clock. There's no choice but for him to attack Heart.
He doesn't have the opportunity to attack Brunson here, but
watch just really aggress have moved downhill towards his left hand,
brings oj Anobi both feet into the paint. Makes the
kickout pass back to Horford on time on target. Doesn't

(05:08):
ending to make but it's just a sign of the
type of night that Jalen Brown was trying to have.
He was trying to trust his teammates. He was viewing
the offense as a team goal of scoring points, not
of him putting up box score numbers. And also just
an intentionality driving towards the basket. Now, this was the

(05:32):
first time that the Nick's left Derek White open in transition,
but I want you guys to see a specific part
of it. You can see them starting to communicate and
get matched up. McHale Bridges is sitting here thinking that
Derek White is being carded. You could see him identify
Derek White as he looks back to his left. I
think he thinks that Karl Anthony Towns is going to
get him. But then we get this brush screen from

(05:53):
porzingis here against Jylen Brown, and both Kat and McHale
Bridges end up stepping up into that little app in
case Jalen Brown tries to turn the corner. There's Derek
White wide open. Jalen Brown trusts him right in the
shooting pocket, easy bucket. Drew Holliday misses this shot. But
I want you guys to see just the intentional effort

(06:14):
to try to go through Jalen Brunson's chest to the
front of the rim. Again, You're gonna just see a
ton of that in this game. Offensive rebound gets swung around.
This is literally what happens after the offensive rebound they
go around Brunson, has to close out to Jalen Brown.
Now Jalen Brown goes through Brunson right to the front
of the rim. Just a very uh, just an effort

(06:37):
specifically to attack Jalen Brunson in his lack of strength,
which I think is fascinating because for the majority of
the series they've struggled against Brunson, and they've also been
kind of more primarily focused on attacking Karl Anthony Towns.
But real advantage there to go through Brunson's chest. Porzingis
tries to attack Brunson here and it turns it over

(06:58):
by missing. Ohjan and o be on a dig down,
so they throw it into Porzingis he's dribbling down, Porzingis
ends up turning it over because he just doesn't see
Og get in there. You can kind of just see
Og dig down and get a piece of the ball
right there. One thing with Porzingis, I agree that I
would go lean heavily into Cornette in Game six, But

(07:21):
Porzingis is so talented and so capable of having a
twenty twenty five point night in that sort of game
just by getting something going with this three point shooting.
And also there is a conditioning element to what's happening
to him, which is stemming from the illness that he
dealt with, and so in theory, in each passing game,
he's gonna feel a little bit better. I would at

(07:42):
least give Porzingis off the bench. I would give Porzingis
a shift or two, maybe one at the beginning of
each half, you know, in the late first quarter, lights
third quarter, and just see what he's got. And if
he's got it, then you can ride him a little
bit longer. But then if he doesn't, you can give
him the quickly you know, the quick pull. But it's
just one of those things where you know, needing to

(08:05):
win three games in a row against a team as
good as the Knicks. He's a fire power piece, He's
a wild card that could potentially work in your favor,
and so I think it's at least worth giving him
a shift. This I thought was just another example of
Jalen Brown just kind of like having such impressive floor
game last night and just feeling the just kind of

(08:26):
feeling the flow of the game. He has no intention
of trying to score here in transition. He knows that
he doesn't have any sort of real advantage going through
og and Andobi. But what he does is he just
goes hard into a hard jump stop here around the
foul line watch and as a result, he brings four
knicks within a few feet of him and Derek White
ends up getting wide open trailing in transition. If you

(08:48):
watch his body language through this possession again, you can
literally see how he's just driving for the sole purpose
of occupying attention, but he sells it. Boom, easy kick out.
Up Here we go. Jaylen Brown attacking Jaylen Brunson again,
this time transition cross match. He gets him straight up

(09:09):
early in the possession throw down to the post. Aggressive
move occupies Karl Anthony Towns that leaves Cornette open great
interior past Cornette in the same way that in the
same way that Jaylen Brown was bringing rim pressure and
playmaking early in the game, Derek White was bringing insane

(09:31):
shot making early in the game. And just whether it
was gaps against switches, you know, in transition cross this
was his second transition crossover pull up three or this
was just a high hesitation, but he did one out
of a crossover earlier. A lot of a high level
shot making from Derek White that was providing the offensive
pop early in the game. Once again, same sort of thing.

(09:53):
Jalen Brunson or excuse me, Jaylen Brown gets Jalen Brunson
attacks through. Jalen Brunson occupies the rim protect or, leaving
the easy offensive rebound put back for Cornette. Howser misses
the shot. This is just stack pick and roll again.
So Cornette's gonna screen and Howser's gonna slip out of it.

(10:14):
This is kind of like a version of stack pick
and roll that the Warriors used to run with Klay Thompson.
Most stack usually stems out of the bottom, you know,
kind of down underneath the basket, and they relocate up here.
The Warriors used to run it with Klay Thompson coming
off of the wing and slipping out to the opposite wing,
and so this is what that looks like. And again

(10:36):
he misses that shot. But it's just an example of
Jalen Brown just trusting the easy reads throughout the game.
Two on the ball, Howser's open, Just throw the pass,
No need to force anything already. This is an offensive
rebound kickout from Jalen Brown. So he gets the ball

(10:57):
here at the top of the key against Og. He's
just standing waiting for the play to develop, and he goes, oh, look,
Howser's open, and he just throws it to him. Again,
just relentlessly trusting these easy swing passes, kick ahead passes,
transition kickouts. Like just Jalen Brown was just not forcing
the issue early and was just operating as a passing
fulcrum of his team first team, and it was just working.

(11:19):
Same sort of thing here Chris Topsporzingo Sen's of drawing
a foul slipping out of a ball screen. If you
guys watched once again, as he comes up to set it,
notice the inside position screen too. Let's take a look here.
So the inside position screen, he knows that this screen

(11:40):
doesn't serve any purpose other than to trigger a switch,
so he doesn't need to Typically, if you're trying to
set him up for a drive, his screening angle is
going to be perpendicular to where he's at right now,
on Mikal Bridges's left shoulder, so that Jalen Brown can
attack downhill over that side of the screen. Instead, he's
screening directly behind McHale Bridges for the sole purpose of

(12:02):
triggering the og An and Obi switch, but giving him
inside position. As og switches out, McHale's not in position
to be able to handle the slip and he ends
up drawing a foul. There. Nice pass from Jalen Brown.

(12:22):
I just wanted to highlight this shot because this was
the first like tough contested shot that Jalen Brown took
in the whole game, and it was in you know,
six and a half minutes left in the second quarter.
Just to show you how deliberatey he was being, he
actually hit a little jump shoot run here. He ends
up hitting four jump shots in this run. I think
we have one more that I show in this film session.
Go screen Peyton Pritchard a lot of ghost screen action.

(12:45):
You're going to see a ton of this moving forward
where it's just you know, Prichard coming up to set
a screen as notice the pre switch from the Knicks too,
So instead of sending Brunson up there, they said McBride
hedge and recover, close out Peyton, Pritchard just shows the

(13:05):
ball and ends up getting a clean look from three.
You're gonna see a ton of this sort of action.
And generally speaking, if there's a switch, if like Mitchell
Robinson decided to switch, you can see he's got his
body and focus completely on Jalen Brown and Pritchard's slipping
out of it. So this guy can sometimes get caught
off guard in the gap just because his entire focus
and attention is on a different defender. Or in a

(13:27):
hedge and recover situation with Duce McBride, he's hedging, but
look at where he is now. He's out of position.
Now he's got to close out. On those closeouts, you
have such an advantage just by like showing the ball
or throwing a jab step. It's just easy to beat
a defender in those specific types of situations. Here we

(13:49):
go again, same exact thing, Derek White screen slip and
once again now look at this time they switch. So
on this one Duce McBride just got beat on a
hedge and recover, so this time he's switching. But look,
Mitchell Robinson is slow to react. Now they have to
rotate from the weak side. He doesn't get there in time.

(14:10):
Derek White's open another jumper from Jalen Brown, this time
a drop coverage jumper. Moving to his right. Mitchell Robinson
switches the first one screen technically not a drop, but

(14:30):
it kind of functions as a drop because Michale bridges
his back in McHale's and Mitch is trying to go over,
and so there's that gap right as McHale's too far
back and Jalen just settles into it knocks it down.
So four jumpers made in that run. He hit like
a little three coming off of a wide off of
like a wide pinned down kind of action, and then

(14:51):
he hit a pull up jump shot over I think
over Jalen Brunson, if I remember correctly, But again a
little brief burst there where he's super aggressive trying to
look to score the back basketball. And again that's part
of his job too. Like when I talk about these
things with with floor game and managing the flow of
basketball games. That doesn't mean that Jalen Brown shouldn't look
to be aggressive as a scorer. It's about balance. It's
about balancing the times in the game where it makes

(15:13):
sense for you to you know, here, for the next
few minutes, I'm getting buckets. But like, you just can't
come out the gates in the first quarter and do
that and not establish any sort of flow in the game.
I've talked a lot about the ability to beat closeouts

(15:35):
with a hard jab step when someone's closing out on
a specific shoulder, so more like a side close out
versus a face up close out. Here's another ghost screen.
We've seen this a million times. Right screen, there's the
hedge from Brunson that creates a small gap. So as
you can see here, Jalen Brunson is sprinting at Drew

(15:56):
Holiday's left shoulder. So what is Drew Holiday gonna do?
A jab boom? Watch Jalen Brunson on the jab Look
at where his left foot is all the way over here.
That gives him the angle and then once again that
intentional effort to go through Jalen Brunson towards the front
of the rim Drew Holliday gets all the way there
and finishes this time Jalen Brown's turn off of an

(16:21):
offensive rebound, Horford slaps it out, goes to Brown. He's
got brunts in on him, just right through him, missus.
But Cornette wants to this is the thing you occupy
that riom protector, watch Kat, Kat leaves his feet. As
soon as Kat leaves his feet, boom, he has no
chance to get the offensive rebound. Now Cornett's in a
commanding position to get the offensive rebound. Now, three consecutive

(16:48):
possessions where the Knicks lose Derek White in transition. The
first one here, and you can kind of see as
they're running down the floor this like close up, Josh
Hart's pointing, get up, get up, get this guy, get
that we gotta They're trying to communicate, but it's just
not manifesting in execution, and they end up leaving Derek White.
How about again on the very next possession. This might

(17:10):
be a few possessions later. Let me see, Yeah, this
is a few possessions later. But it happens three times
in a relatively short span of time here in the
early third quarter. Fast forward a little bit trailing wide open.
This one is the very next possession again, so Derek

(17:33):
Whitez just hit his second transition three on literally the
very next the very previous possession, still not matched up
with him, still not matched up with him, still not
matched up with him, and then we get a panic
close out that draws a foul. The knicks transition execution
on defense was as bad as I've seen them. Another
nice driving kick from Jalen Brown gets Downhill, draws in

(17:58):
all the defense. Look at look at him, defenders he
has around him. He's got three knicks literally within three
feet of him. Kick out the Pritchard corner three bucket.
Here's a ghost screen action with Pritchard and Hawser. We've
seen a lot of ghost screens in this game. Fast
forward a little bit, so Pritchard's our handler. Same concept, right,

(18:20):
so Howser's going to screen as he screens og lingers.
They switch it right but once, just like I talked
about on that play with Mitchell Robinson, Josh Hart is
now responsible for Hawser. And look at where he's bought.
His body's positioned, his face is turned towards Prichard, his

(18:41):
hips are all screwed up. His like He's just a
little off balance, and Howser's running still once again. Now
you've got this like closeout situation and Josh Hart's just
not even close to being there in time, and Howser
just rises and fires. A lot of these kinds of actions.

(19:04):
Look at the just simple, simple dribble pitch action here
with Howser. Howser just made a three right handoff Og
wants to get up. Jalens still pursuing easy over the
top pass to Drew Holiday layup. It's effectively the same
kind of principle as a ghost screen, Drew Holidays just

(19:25):
slipping to the basket instead of to the three point line.
There once more for good measure, another Jalen Brown, Jylen
Brown attack of Jalen Brunson out of a double drag.
So on the double drag, Jalen Brunson switches the final
screen and Jalen just goes right through him, draws a

(19:47):
foul last possession that will highlight for the Celtics offense.
Before we start talking a little bit about Cornett, although
you get a little teaser there with Cornette's block, we
go down the floor. This is I just thought, like
a really quickly flowing in rhythm Celtics offense little transition
probe semi transition probe from Jalen swings out. Notice the

(20:09):
the one of the accomplishments of that semi transition probe
from Jalen Brown. Look at all the Knicks defenders. Josh
Hart's keyed in on him, ogn Andobi's kick completely keyed
in on him. Mitchell Robinson is keyed in on him,
and Cornett swing out. Now the defense is not loaded
up in any real way. There's no gapping here around
the elbow. That Jalen Brown transition pushed essentially creates an

(20:34):
already kind of like disheveled Knicks defense. Swing Cornett goes
like he's gonna set a ghost scream, but then he
realizes Derek White's driving, so he gets out drive and
drop off to Cornett. Cornett handoff to Houser coming off
that same exact action we just saw with Drew Holliday.
Look at Mitchell Robinson a little too high dunk for Cornett.

(20:58):
So if you guys watch it in full speed, watch
how this rhythm breaks down the Knicks defense. It's in
my transition push swing, swing, drive, the close out hand
off bucket all right, let's take a look at Cornett's

(21:24):
defense here down the stretch. Once again, he's guarding Josh Hart.
Little drop coverage, get screen and stack right. Josh Hart
is now wide open. His job is to contend with
Josh Hart in these situations. That's handling him, attacking closeouts,
getting good contests on three point shots, keeping him off

(21:44):
the offensive glass. In this case, he throws a nice
heard close out that baits him. He throws a nice
heart close out that bates him into driving. Then he
forces the drop off. Now he's the roamer again. He's
back to focusing as an off ball help side defender,
and he gets Carl Anton Towns same thing, starts to

(22:12):
drop kickback on the drive, and hey, there's Josh there's
Josh Hart's one offensive rebound last night. This is this
is this got logged as an offensive rebound. Boop, Yeah,
you can go ahead and have that back. And then
he just panic throws it out of bounce once again,

(22:42):
this time just kind of a chaotic offensive rebound. He's
not even on Josh Hart in this specific sequence, but
Carl Town's just not aware that Cornett was stocking him
this whole game. Here in the second half, again dealing
with Heart blocks Jalen Brunson again, sinking off of Heart

(23:17):
gets o j Ananobe this time and that leads to
that transition sequence where they end up scoring. And then
I believe this is the one where he blocks Josh
Hart in the corner. Let's see, so we get a
corner kickout and this time he closes the gap. Look

(23:37):
two feet in the paint and he gets all the
way out to block Josh Hart for three. Just really
really impressive stuff from Luke Cornett and that defense. And
again I think you guys can see from the tape
just the flow that the offense had, and it just
starts with the you know, their lead shot creator, not
forcing the issue and just trusting simple reads and creating

(24:00):
advantages while also you know, probing when he needs to
and being aggressive when he needs to. You get shot
making from Derek White. Excellent flow throughout the offense as
guys are getting in and out of screens quickly and
being aggressive and decisive in those situations. And then just
a really like just a kind of a showcase of

(24:20):
what Luke Cornett is capable of as a defensive player.
In that second half, as the Celtics end up bringing
this series back to New York, and again a lot
of those concepts will travel, and if they travel with
those concepts, they're going to give themselves a really good
chance to win. All Right, guys, That's all I have
for today is always as sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back
tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Thunder Game six

(24:43):
for our usual live show as well as our after
show on playback. I will see you guys. Then. Whats so, guys,
As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting
Oops tonight. They would actually be really helpful for us
if you guys would take a second and leave a
rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys
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