Al on an island: A look at why the Celtics were fine with how Donovan Mitchell attacked Horford

Aside from the 3, I wouldn’t call those one-on-one situations. But Horford was there and he was definitely slow on the last drive. 

According to NBA matchup data, Horford had at least one turn on 10 Cavs. Mitchell was 6-11. Even with LeVert’s 3-5, the rest of the Cavs were 6-18. Garland was 1-3, Dean Wade was 1-4, Evan Mobley was 1-4, and Isaac Okoro was 0-2.

Horford’s defense in Game 3 was not bad. He was okay in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I’ll take it one step further. He wasn’t bad against Mitchell, either. 

“I think he did as good job as everybody else on the team,” Derrick White said at the team’s morning shoot-around ahead of Game 4. “(Mitchell) is a great player. He makes tough shots and so we just got to be consistently making him work and try to take away the stuff that he likes to do and force him to make tough shots, which he will, but we just gotta live with something.”

Look at it more closely, the shots Mitchell got against Horford weren’t bad at all, he just made some tough ones. Here’s how it looked, shot-for-shot.

1. Mitchel hits a tough step-back 3-pointer. Who is stopping that shot?

2. Horford is retreating a bit because he’s anticipating the drive, so Mitchell steps into a clean look and misses. That's a tradeoff to me. He made the tough one and missed the easier one. 

3. A drive right and wild miss. Maybe he was looking for a foul, but Horford was there and he made it tough. 

4. A true one-on-one and another step-back 3. That's another shrug shot. He’s a career 36.6% 3-point shooter who was almost dead on his career average this season. He’s shooting 35.4% in the playoffs and that's AFTER going 7-12 from 3 against Boston. If switching onto Horford results in step-back 3-pointers, I’ll take that every day. He’s not going 7-12 every night. 

5. Another pull-up, another clean look he stepped into, another miss, and another tradeoff. I’m still fine with all of these looks. 

6. Mitchell tosses a few fakes and, as they said on the broadcast, tosses up an olé shot that goes in. We’re firmly into “oh he’s hitting this crap” territory. 

7. Another step-back. 

8. This is the first real “oh Al can’t guard this guy” moment for me and it came more than three minutes into the third quarter. This was an aggressive drive. 

I didn’t include three plays that the NBA included: One was a missed 3 where Horford was scrambling for a late contest. One was a made step-back where Horford started on him and Holiday ended up switching late and the basket got credited to Horford as the defender, and then there was the shot Derrick White blocked, which goes down as a miss because the drive was on Horford. 

The best stat in all of that Mitchell versus Horford matchup was that Mitchell only had one assist. And this is why I think this all went exactly how Boston wanted it to go … minus, of course, Mitchell hitting ridiculous shots. Horford, to his credit, thinks he could have challenged those shots a bit more.

“We have to do our best,” Horford told BSJ. “He’s such a dynamic player, and for me, the challenge individually is to be better. I gave up a lot of those and I have to find a way to be more effective in that matchup.” 

The key, though, is not selling out too much that Mitchell is able to get by Horford. The worst-case scenario would be a blow-by where someone has to rotate over and a cutter getting behind the help catches a lob or a spot-up shooter gets a kick-out for 3. 

By playing Mitchell straight up, the Celtics were able to avoid getting crushed by other players like they were in Game 2. The key is to maintain that discipline and let Horford handle the assignment instead of throwing a bunch of help at Mitchell. 

“I thought the shots that he hit were not necessarily game-plan shots, but they were really tough shots,” Joe Mazzulla said after the game, “ You have to have a defensive poise to be able to withstand some of that. … We still threw some different stuff at him, but I thought our guys withstood that and it's a credit to them.”

I disagree with those shots not being “gameplan” shots. Maybe Mazzulla can say that because the plan wasn’t to force him into taking some of the wild 3-pointers he was getting. At the same time, those are shots they're going to live with. 

Horford took some heat for his defense against Mitchell. And yes, Mitchell won that matchup pretty easily, but it didn’t hurt Boston the way it might have felt as it was happening. He didn’t involve other Cavs, and shutting all those other guys down is how Boston wins this series. Horford took responsibility for giving up 16 points because he’s a competitor, but even he admits the plan worked.

“Ultimately, I have to make sure that I hold my own down against him,” Horford told BSJ. “If he's gonna try to score on me, we're okay with that.”