Celtics making up new lockdown defense as they go along?


The Celtics were able to pull off last night's surprising 83-81 victory at Indiana by closing the game on an 11-0 run over the last 4:35.  In a piece by ESPN Boston's Chris Forsberg, Doc Rivers gave a lot of the credit to the unusual zone defense Boston was playing.  Here's what Doc had to say:
“We were laughing because, I think someone called it a manwich, a man zone, I mean, we were half zone, half man. It was almost silly, it really was. But it was really good. We went into timeout [and said], ‘Any pick and roll, we’re man; any ball swing, we’re zone.’ [The players] figured it out. We’ve been doing that a lot lately, we have enough guys on the floor that can do it. And it’s really important with [Jason Terry] at the end of the game, because that’s the guy they are going to try to attack. And to be able to put him in the zone -- and he’s great in zone from Dallas -- it’s been good for us.”

I'm not sure if that's a compliment or a dig on Terry, but whatever they're doing it's clearly working.  During the C's four game winning streak they have gone to a zone at some point on each occasion, and the results have been spectacular.  According to Forsberg:
"In the small sample [of zone defense], Synergy data has the Celtics allowing a microscopic 0.4 points per play. To put that in perspective, Boston is allowing 0.822 points per play overall during this winning streak and 0.892 for the season (fifth best in the league)."

Who would have ever thought that on the second night of back to back road games Boston would somehow outscore the Pacers 25-13 in the 4th quarter?

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