Ime Udoka, the head coach in his first year, looked excellent on Saturday against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Boston Celtics led the Cavaliers by as many as 19 points in the second half, but they let the lead slip away. With 9.3 seconds left in the fourth quarter and trailing 91-89, the Celtics trusted guard Dennis Schroder to make the game-winning jumper. It took Schroder several seconds to get a switch on Cavs player Cedi Osman, and with time running down, he missed a disputed fadeaway two-pointer. The team’s top scorer, Jayson Tatum, participated in the game but spent the whole last possession merely standing on the sidelines due to a hamstring injury.
After the game, the Celtics coach Udoka offered a strange explanation for the final play. He said that the Celtics wanted to get Schroder downhill against “a guy we wanted to pick on a little bit,” per Jay King of The Athletic.
That explanation doesn’t make a sense for a few reasons. For one, Udoka is essentially admitting that the Celtics were trying to get Schroder to the rim for a two-pointer to force overtime. But Boston was playing on the road in the second half of a back-to-back when it had already played overtime in its first leg against the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday. Virtually any coach would call for a three for the win in that scenario.
For another, Udoka clearly thought that putting the ball in Schroder’s hands to get to the basket was Boston’s best option considering the situation. It is true that Schroder was the Celtics’ leading scorer on the evening and that Tatum has been in somewhat of a shooting slump to start this season. Also, Osman is a generally poor defender who lacks foot speed. But he is still 6-foot-7 and could more easily defend a jump shot from the 6-foot-3 Schroder if Schroder could not get by him, which is exactly what happened. Putting the ball in the hands of the 6-foot-8 Tatum would have offered more leeway for a bailout jumper if the Cavs snuffed out Boston’s Plan A in that situation.
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