Difficulty in the defending army: the last dance of the double-Tanhua?

After the Celtics won the championship trophy that was 16 years away in 2024, they are about to face the first team to challenge two consecutive championships after the Warriors in 2017 and 2018.

Although they stumbled in the regular season for a while, they finally scored a regular season record of 61 wins and 21 losses, and achieved at least 60 wins for two consecutive years. Looking at the past ten years, only the Warriors in 2014-16 have completed it.

For the Celtics, although the winning of the championship last season washed away the label of a pseudo-strong team, with the NBA salary regulations becoming increasingly strict and the team salary continues to rise, it has become an impossible task to establish a dynasty. As for William Zizzem, the new boss who just obtained the team's management rights, on the surface, he will not trade the team's core, but from common sense, most people believe that this summer, the Celtics will inevitably experience a trading storm.

As the defending champion, the Celtics started the new season without the Popes, but when they finished playing in October and November, they still chased the Cavaliers with 16 wins and 3 losses. However, after 18 wins and 12 losses in December and January, although he was not caught up by his opponents from behind, he missed the first place in the Eastern Conference early.

If you look at the performance after the All-Stars alone, the Celtics ranked second in the league with a record of 21 wins and 5 losses, second only to the Thunder's 23 wins and 4 losses, it can be seen that the defending army is getting better in the second half of the season. With the 60 wins in the regular season, this year's Celtics have also achieved 60 wins in two consecutive seasons for the fourth time after 1980-1982, 1984-1986, and 2008-2009.

If you use this law to observe, the Celtics have not been able to complete the championship in the past three times, and they only reached the finals for three consecutive years in the 1984-86 season.

Since Stevens coached the team, the characteristics of the Celtics have been quite obvious. They have always regarded three-pointers as the main line of offense. After Mazula integrated football philosophy, the Celtics gradually became a top offensive team that can continue to run for 48 minutes while maintaining three-point efficiency.

According to statistics, the five teams with the highest offensive efficiency in NBA history have all been among the Celtics in the past two years. The Celtics last season ranked first in history with 123.2, while the Celtics this season ranked fourth in history with 120.6. In addition, the Knights and the Thunder in the East and West this season ranked second and fifth in history with 121.7 and 120.3 respectively.

Before this, most people believed that the Warriors led by the Splash Brothers were the strongest three-point team in NBA history, but this season's Celtics unexpectedly rewritten multiple three-point records based on the Warriors. Such as the highest number of goals and shots in history, and it is also the first team in history to have a three-squad player to score at least 250 three-pointers in the three-squad season, namely White with 265 three-pointers, Prichard with 255 three-pointers, and Tatum with 250 three-pointers.

Compared with the Warriors in the past, although they have strong outside firepower, they are mainly concentrated on Curry and Clay. Most of the time, there will be 1-2 blue-collar workers in the penalty area who are not good at shooting, such as Rooney, McKee, West and others. Compared with the Celtics this season, in the main nine-player rotation, only Connett did not shoot three-pointers, and the other eight averaged more than 4 three-point shots per game.

But what is more worrying is that the Celtics' three-point shooting percentage this season is only 36.8%, ranking tenth in the league, while last year it ranked second in the league with 38.8%, second only to the Thunder with 38.9%. This season, the three-point shooting percentage of many Celtic players has declined, such as Holiday's decline of 7.6%, while Horford's declined by 5.6%.

As for the double-Tanhua core, although they are the top two scoring points of the Celtics, they have been the top three in the last three-point shooting percentage of the eight major players in the past two years. Therefore, when the opponent puts the center of defense on the double-Tanhua, as long as the two can keep calm in execution of breakthrough passes, they will naturally bring direct threats on the offensive end. However, as other players' three-point shooting percentages declined, the negative impact on the double-Tanhua seems to be gradually increasing.

The above is the Celtics' offensive side, and in addition to the obvious offense, the defensive performance this season seems to be declining.

Perhaps because of the slackness after winning the championship, compared with the invincible Celtics' defense line last year, it has been a bit unstable this year. Last season, the Celtics scored an astonishing 37 wins and 4 losses at home, while 27 wins and 14 losses away. However, this season, this aspect showed a completely different performance. The Celtics' home record regressed to 28 wins and 13 losses, and the away record reached 33 wins and 8 losses, ranking second in history in away records, second only to 73 wins and 34 wins and 7 losses created by the Warriors in the 2015-16 season. Such a strange situation is actually a microcosm of the Celtics this season. In the first half of this season, the Celtics clearly showed some characteristics of "strong when they meet strongly, weak when they meet weakly". When facing top teams, they can still show the offensive and defensive strength of the champion's army, but when they encounter opponents in the middle and lower reaches of the league, the offense is a lot of single-handed fighting, resulting in excellent team defense becoming full of loopholes. Although the record is still excellent, the offense and defense intensity of this fluctuation is something that cannot be ignored. Especially before their defending goals, such situations are absolutely not allowed.

Referring to the 21 defeats lost by the Celtics this season, 7 games were lost to teams with a winning rate of less than 50%. What is more interesting is that only one of these 7 losses occurred after the All-Star game. From another way, the Celtics had encountered teams with a winning rate of less than 50% before the game, with a record of 22 wins and 6 losses and a winning rate of 78.5%; while the All-Stars had 15 wins and 1 loss after the game, with a winning rate of 93.7%.

Although we can regard this situation as a change in the direction of the team after the All-Star game, we can still see that their rollover rate in the second half of the season has been significantly reduced.

As for the opponent with an average winning rate of more than 60% this season, the Celtics won 13 wins and 7 losses, with the current second round opponent Knicks completing a 4 win or 0 sweep, and the Eastern Conference leader Cavaliers had a 2 win or 2 draw, and the Thunder was the only team that the Celtics had not been able to defeat this season.

Judging from the team data alone, the Celtics' offensive efficiency of 110.1 this season is still better than the 110.6 last season. The league's ranking dropped slightly from the second in the last season to fourth, and is still the top defensive team in the league. However, in the environment where defense is increasingly important in recent years, the Celtics' starting five players should be able to play three big locks in the backcourt, Holiday + White + Brown, but Holiday is a little tired this season and cannot maintain efficient attacks when facing the ball-holder in the whole game. Brown, who defended Doncic many times in the finals last year, also liked to participate in assisting defense this season, which led to the continuous missing of his main defender, and his personal defensive efficiency hit a new low in the past four years.

So, for the key players of the Celtics this season, naturally came to Jaylen Brown.

As the MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals and Finals last season, and the offseason waived the US men's basketball team, how Brown will respond this season has been highly concerned. Mazula has also let go this season and let the double-Tanhua play as usual, giving Brown more opportunities to attack by himself.

However, in the regular season, although he averaged 22.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, his shooting percentage of 46.3% reached a new low outside of his rookie season, and his three-point shooting percentage of 32.4% was a career low.

If we look at the second half of the season and the playoffs in the previous season, the Celtics chose Tatum, who had successfully transformed, to organize the chain attack, while Brown served as the main attacker in the half-court offense, calling out the opponent's weak defensive ring; this season's strategy will continue to be used this year, but based on the regular season data, Brown's mid-range jump shot has significantly declined this season.

combined with his right knee injury, this will undoubtedly become a major hidden danger for the Celtics to defend their title. For the Celtics, the Pole has a high risk of injury. If Brown cannot remain efficient and healthy, the team will face great challenges on both offense and defense.

As for the playoffs, after falling behind 0-2 in the semi-finals, we still can't completely underestimate the Celtics. The Celtics already have enough lineup depth, and in addition to Prichard's outbreak in the regular season this season, Cornet's offensive and defensive influence has also increased greatly. Even if he completely gave up his outside skills, his excellent ball quotient allowed him to start implementing some targeted and highly targeted high-level response tactics, becoming an important offensive role for the team. In addition, after showing his top franchise protection ability, he can even roam between the penalty area and the perimeter this season, allowing the team to play a double tower lineup of 3-2 with Pope God + Horford + Cornett for a long time, increasing the team's fault tolerance rate on the defensive end.

As the defending team, the Celtics' goal for this year's playoffs is still the championship. Even though they are currently in a backward situation, their goal will not be shaken. In addition to the team's performance, starting from next season, the new contracts of three players in the Celtics will officially start, namely Tatum's five-year 314 million, White's four-year 125 million, and Hauser's four-year 45 million. Without considering whether Horford, Connet and others renew the contract, the Celtics already need to bear more than 225 million team salary, far exceeding the estimated second-level tyrant line.

In other words, under the strict restrictions of the new version of labor and capital, the Celtics have a very high chance of adjusting and changing the championship lineup with Double Tanhua as the core this summer, but how big the final change will be depends on the consideration of Stevens and the team's senior management. With uncertainty in the future, the only comfort is to hope that these players can complete their "last dance" of the season with the best posture.