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WALTHAM, Mass. – Kevin Durant won’t be getting into “the zone” Wednesday night at TD Garden, but his teammates will be getting into a zone without him.
Oklahoma City, without the services of Durant and Russell Westbrook, is using its big men to its advantage this season by playing much more zone defense than it has in the past. In previous seasons, the Thunder played man-to-man defense almost exclusively. This season, according to the Celtics’ basketball operations group, they have played about 30 percent of their defensive possessions with a zone concept.
They’re zoning a lot more,” Brad Stevens said on Monday, “because they’ve got Lance Thomas playing the 3, and then they’ll even play (Serge) Ibaka, (Nick) Collison and (Steven) Adams or Perk (Kendrick Perkins) together.”
Each of those guys possesses a wingspan that nears or surpasses seven feet, and their imposing characteristics don’t end there.
“When you say bigs – real, real bigs,” Stevens commented following Tuesday’s practice. “They’re big and they’re long and athletic.”
Any combination of three of Oklahoma City’s big men can combine to be a dominant force at the bottom of a zone.
“That baseline zone is – if you’re stagnant, they’ll eat you up because of their length,” Boston’s coach added.
Such a description is most commonly reserved for the vaunted 2-3 zone of the Syracuse Orange. Stevens, a former collegiate coach, actually compared the two teams on Tuesday.
“It’s like whenever you play Syracuse when you were coaching in college,” he said, “the 2-3 zone is a great scheme for them. It also works really well, because they’re a lot longer than everybody else. That’s a big part of it.”
This Thunder team is much longer and more athletic along the frontline than most NBA teams. That’s why it has been able to play successful zone defense at the highest level of basketball. In fact, as Boston’s front office relayed to Celtics.com, Oklahoma City has been a better defensive team from a statistical standpoint when it has played zone as opposed to man defense.
Boston recognizes the challenges Oklahoma City’s zone will present, and that’s why the C’s have been working on their zone offense this week. They understand that they’ll need to concentrate on a few particulars in order to be successful Wednesday night.
“You have to move bodies and you have to get guys cutting and passing, and you have to read and react against the zone,” Stevens told the media. “So hopefully the offensive work that we’ve put in lends right to that.”
Rajon Rondo, who will return from a one-game absence to lead Boston’s offensive attack against the Thunder, added a couple additional details to his coach’s list.
“I probably use more ball fakes,” he said of facing a zone. “I try to drive and kick regardless of man or zone, so you definitely want to get into the teeth of the defense and collapse the defense and kick it out to the open shooters.”
Succeeding on those drive-and-kick plays is easier said than done against the Thunder. Their length results in tighter passing lanes, and their close-outs are that much faster.
That being said, Rondo has the ability to thread the needle with his passes, and his teammates have the ability to drill shots from the perimeter. A successful combination of those two skills will, as they say, bust the Thunder’s zone.
Until that happens, expect to see Oklahoma City’s players eating up portions of the parquet with their incredible length and athleticism. That’s what they’ve been doing at a very high rate this season, and that’s unlikely to change Wednesday night.