Celtics are struggling on defense, but is it mostly effort?

Five games into the season, the Boston Celtics defense has been underwhelming. It’s not something to be concerned about long term, but it has been jarring to watch the same team that made life hell for Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving in the NBA Finals, cruise their way through the first five games of the season.

It hasn’t been a total disaster. The Celtics are 12th in defense this season, compared to 3rd last season (per Cleaning the Glass). Coming into the season, I was interested in seeing how the Celtics would look from an emotional investment, energy, and effort perspective. You can say and think all the right things throughout training, but coming off the emotional high of winning a title and bludgeoning the Knicks on Opening Night, I thought it was likely the team would struggle to find the competitive juice, at least to start the season. Hopefully, it will only take one loss against the Pacers to regain some focus and intensity on the defensive end, not a few more frustrating losses.

It feels reductive, but most of the issues on the defensive end can be attributed to a lack of focus and effort. Jaylen Brown agrees with me, saying, “our energy was lackluster. A lot of that was on me. I gotta be better for my guys.”

We’ll start with transition defense. Last year, the Celtics allowed the fewest points per transition play and the second-fewest transition plays per game. In the 2022-2023 season, the Celtics allowed the second-fewest points per transition play and the fifth-fewest transition plays per game. The Celtics have been an elite transition defense team over the past two seasons.

This season, the Celtics are 14th in allowing points per transition play and 12th in transition opportunities. The main problem is that while the Celtics are not turning the ball over much, they are averaging the second-fewest turnovers per game. When they do turn it over, almost all of their turnovers are live ball turnovers and lead to points. Overall, the transition defense is not awful relative to the rest of the league, but it’s a significant dip from last season. Probably a good time to remind everyone (and myself) that we are five games into the season, and a lot of weird stuff happens in the first 10-15 games of an 82-game schedule.

I’m spinning the transition defense being bad as a good thing. Transition defense is easy to clean up. There isn’t some glaring structural issue causing the defensive struggles. Unless the Monstars specifically stole the Celtics’ ability to run back on defense, we might be in trouble. The more likely explanation is that the Celtics, coming off a championship, are taking things easy and are relying on their three-point shooting and overall talent to carry them to victories. That makes a smidge more sense.

Now, it wouldn’t surprise me that when we finish the regular season, the Celtics defense is ranked closer to 10th than 1st, and that’s ok. I predict they finish the season 7th in defensive rating (down from 2nd last year). Last season, we wanted to see the team build championship habits every step of the way which they did, and they brought home Banner 18. Al Horford is 38. Jrue Holiday is 34. Kristaps Porzingis is injury-prone. If the goal is to win back-to-back titles, the Celtics should be coasting to some extent. They need to find the balance between what they did last year and being a slightly above-average transition defense team this year.

Another piece of the slow start on defense is that the Celtics are committing way more fouls. Last season, the Celtics committed the fewest fouls in the league. They are 15th in foul rate this season, committing seven more fouls per game. This is somewhat skewed by the Bucks game, where Damian Lillard foul-baited his way to 18 free throw attempts, but the Cs have been less disciplined regarding fouling. I expect this to stabilize.

The last piece of this is the Celtics are having issues protecting the rim. Teams are shooting 71.8% in the restricted area against the Celtics. For context, last year, teams shot 64% in the restricted area against the Celtics. It’s important to remember that the Celtics’ defensive metrics from last year include 57 games with Kristaps Porzingis, one of the best rim protectors in the NBA. The Celtics don’t have that beautiful Latvian man right now.

However, last season, the Celtics had a better defensive rating with Al Horford than with Kristaps Porzingis on the court. It was very close – 112.95 with Al on vs 113.01 with KP on. So, we can’t blame everything on Kristaps being out. There’s no question Kristaps Porzingis not being available is detrimental to the Celtics’ rim protection, but the Celtics’ perimeter players getting blown by in ways they weren’t last year is not helping. Even our sweet prince Derrick White had his problems staying in front of people, staying with cutters and navigating screens against the Pacers.

I’d like the record to show that it pained me deeply to post a video of Derrick White struggling on defense. Again, I don’t think Derrick White, one of the league’s best defenders of the last five-plus years, suddenly can’t guard his yard. I think it’s another sign of a championship team easing their way back into the season. This Celtics team knows what it takes to win a title. They know what it takes to win multiple rounds in the playoffs. While it may be frustrating at times in the regular season when their defensive intensity wanes, I’m confident that when the chips are down, they will be a nightmare to score on when they tighten the screws.