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WALTHAM, Mass. – Brad Stevens was asked about what he saw Monday morning while reviewing film of Boston's frustrating, 123-107 loss to Denver the previous night.
“I didn’t wait 'til today,” the Celtics coach quipped Monday afternoon.
An antsy Stevens cued up the tape right after Sunday’s game and immediately dug into Boston’s defensive troubles. He then took his findings to practice the next day and displayed them for all of his players to see.
“It was horrible,” Marcus Smart later reflected of the team's film session. “Everybody was disgusted with it. Everybody was disgusted with themselves and the way the team played.”
Fortunately, disgust often brews motivation among athletes, and that was the case for Boston’s players Monday afternoon when they hit the practice court.
“We were out there today and everybody was competing,” said Smart. “Everybody was trying to make sure they aren’t that guy on film again.”
Sunday’s film exposed Boston’s defensive miscues. Stevens says the main issues were that they weren’t physical enough, they weren’t in the right spots, and they simply weren’t providing enough help on the defensive end of the floor.
That style of defense, he explained, just won’t cut it for an NBA team.
“Defense is a five-man proposition,” said Stevens. “If one is not in the right spot or the right place, you’re always going to be exposed, and certainly if you’re small you’re going to be exposed.”
Smart says each player felt exposed during Monday’s film session, and owning up to those individual mistakes allowed them to grow as a team.
“We watched all the negative clips, all the things we didn’t do, and we just kept it honest with each other,” said Smart. “And with a team that’s what you need. You need everybody to be honest. You can’t have anybody worrying about themselves, because everybody did something wrong; it wasn’t just one person out there.
“So it was a good thing to do that today – to watch film, watch what we did wrong and try to fix those mistakes.”
Boston isn’t used to making such mistakes on the defensive end. Its defense thrived last season, as it posted the fourth-best defensive rating in the NBA. So far this season, however, the C’s are second-to-last in that category.
Smart has noticed a different mindset from both the Celtics and their opposition during the early stages of this season.
“We’re coming out too cool and (other) teams are coming out ready,” he stated. “We’re not sneaking up on anybody this year. We’re the hunted. Everybody’s coming after us.”
Such was the case Sunday night when the Nuggets, fresh off an embarrassing loss of their own Saturday night, came out with much greater desire than Boston.
“We played a team that was hungry and was playing with a chip on their shoulder,” said Smart. “Their coach ridiculed them, they felt that, and they came out ready and they punched us in the mouth. We just stood there and took it.”
The embarrassing result set the tone for Monday's practice.
“Today’s (tone) was, ‘We get punched, we gotta be ready to punch back. We gotta be ready to get in a boxing match,’” described Smart.
Boston has yet to truly step in the ring and duke it out on the defensive end this season, which prompted Stevens to call it “a finesse team’ after Sunday’s result.
Smart doesn’t want the Celtics to have that reputation. He hopes to return to the physical style of play that they displayed night-in and night-out last season, and he hopes that begins Wednesday night when they take on the Wizards in Washington, D.C.
“We’re not a finesse team, but we did play finesse the other night so [Stevens] was right to call us that,” said the third-year guard. “We just gotta look ourselves in the mirror, own up to it, and take responsibility for it.
“And the good thing about sports, especially basketball, is you have to go play another game. So we have to throw [Sunday’s] game out the window and be ready for Wednesday.”
It appears Monday’s critical film review lit a fire in Boston’s belly. Now that flame just needs to remain ablaze for Wednesday’s matchup and beyond.