Few things have been consistently reliable for the Boston Celtics over the past two months amid some uneven midseason malaise. Yet, with the Celtics facing a crucial showdown with the New York Knicks on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, urgency was apparent. The Celtics were down two starters in Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis while coming off a dismal performance at home by the starting five against the Mavericks.
With Boston holding a 1.5 game lead in the standings over the Knicks for the No. 2 seed and tiebreaker implications potentially in play for down the line, this one meant a little more than most regular season games.
Joe Mazzulla sensed this out of the gate and elected to lean into a grouping that had given him success all year long: double bigs. The coach decided to play the entire game (before garbage time) with two true bigs on the floor against the Knicks, even leaning into unorthodox pairings like Neemias Queta and Luke Kornet together for minutes at multiple points.
The logic made sense coming off a dismal defensive performance Thursday. Increasing the team’s size and rim protection would prove valuable while enhancing the team’s presence on the glass.
The groupings have been rock solid for the C’s all year with Horford/Queta, Horford/Kornet and Kornet/Queta all having net ratings above 10. Still it was a rarity to remain committed to those for a full game, yet that’s what the Celtics did in a 131-104 rout with Kornet getting the nod over Sam Hauser to replace Porzingis in the starting five.
“To me, it’s more about just having different ways that you could play and so the season presents opportunity for that and we need to be able to be flexible to win the matchup at that particular time,” Mazzulla said postgame. “And I thought tonight that just won the matchup for us. New York’s one of the most physical teams in the league and they do a great job on both ends of the class and so we were able to counteract that a little bit with our physicality.
“So credit to the guys though for playing as hard as they did, especially defensively, they were really well connected. All of our bigs, I thought Al, I don’t know if he took two, three shots, but his defensive positioning and physicality was tremendous.”
While Horford was quiet offensively, Kornet and Queta both scored in double digits with big nights on the offensive glass. The trio each had their moments defensively as well against an undersized Knicks squad outside of Karl-Anthony Towns.
“It’s a lot of fun defensively just having that size and presence,” Kornet said. “I think Al’s great, obviously KP’s a lot of the time, and then being able to spend some time with Neemie on the floor, it’s a lot of fun. Honestly, we look forward to it and I definitely enjoy it. I think just defensively and trying to crash the boards and be aggressive on that side of things. Fortunately we have a lot of bigs that have good feel for the game and know how to anticipate and work off each other. So it worked pretty well.”
The strategy may not work against every opponent but it’s more evident than ever this year than Boston’s defense is at its best with two bigs on the floor. Mazzulla picked a great night to lean into that reality, paving the way for a key Celtics win.
