Draymond breaks down the Celtics' sweep of the Nets, crediting Brad Stevens for max-ing Marcus Smart and re-signing Al Horford. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving couldn't generate quality shots against Boston's defense, turning the ball over repeatedly. Jayson Tatum's confidence and leadership have grown into the team's foundation.
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What's up everybody? It's Draymond Green. Make sure you subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel below so you don't miss any more of this great content going forward. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Draymond Green Show. This is our 24th episode and we had originally planned to record this on Monday, but with the Celtics and Nets series winding down or going into a game 4, we wanted to kind of wait and see. what would happen with that series? Could, could Jackson Celtics pull off the sweep? Or was Brooklyn going to at least send it back to Boston and make it a Game 5? As we know, that did not happen. Boston pulled off the sweep of Brooklyn and Boston is moving on to the second round to what seems like they will be facing the Milwaukee Bucks. Um, Chicago has lost the, well, they did lose the last two games at home by, both by 20-plus points. So that one is looking like it's a bit over. And so it seems as if the Boston Celtics will now go on and play the Milwaukee Bucks. But before moving on to that series, just wanted to touch on that Boston and Brooklyn series. Boston continued to look like they've looked since January. Defensive juggernaut and, you know, has a couple guys on the offensive end that they can form their whole offense around and everyone else kind of fills in. And, you know, Marcus Smart is doing a great job of playing the point guard position. And, you know, one thing I really want to talk about, about this Boston Celtics team is this. Brad Stevens' first two moves as GM, or president, I'm not sure exactly what Brad Stevens' title is, so forgive me for that. But his first couple moves as GM or president, most people thought were two of the most questionable moves that he could make in starting his tenure. One was everyone thought Marcus Smart shouldn't be receiving a max contract extension. You know, you probably need to trade Marcus Smart, this hasn't worked, blah, blah, blah. Draymond Green. Brad Stevens believed in Marcus Smart, gave him the max contract extension and cleared the way for him to be the point guard of the team. He also brought back Al Horford who had kind of been, you know, trending down being an OKC and not playing on a contender, which I can only imagine being in your 16th year, if I'm not mistaken, how that feels. And so he brought back Al Horford in a very guard-heavy, guard-dominant NBA. He brought back another big and everybody's kind of looking like, why is he doing that? And those two moves has proved to be so genius for the Boston Celtics. Al Horford, the Boston Celtics are playing two bigs next to each other all year. Al Horford's versatility actually allows them to do that. And then Marcus Smart has been an incredible point guard all year. So those two moves that started off so questionable are paying dividends. And we saw that in this series. Jason Tatum looked to take another step forward in his development and another step forward in becoming the Jason Tatum that we all have been kind of expecting him to become. I think the thing that most people forget about Jason Taylen— Draymond Green. Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown is that we started watching those guys so young. I think Jason's rookie year, they made it to the conference finals, the Eastern Conference Finals. And so you start to see that and you like, man, this guy next, this guy next. And you forget, no, he still has to take those lumps that you take in year 2. And he still has to go through what you go through in year 3. It's still a process. But because we saw them flourish so early, Everybody was just ready to jump and kind of wipe the process out. And Jason Tatum, the way he's stepped up and like just become that guy. Like when you're watching him play, you know he's the guy. And to me from the outside looking in, it looked like Jaylen Brown supports that. It looked like Marcus Smart supports that. It looks like all of those guys are pushing him to be that. Yeah.— he's becoming more and more comfortable in being that. Obviously, again, he's getting older, he's getting more mature, more experienced. He's becoming more comfortable within himself. He's learning who Jayson Tatum is. And I think it's such a beautiful thing. And if you saw Marcus Smart Instagram caption the other day, I took that as him saying, talking about Jayson Tatum. And what he said was, I'll go in the alley "with any of these guys, as long as Batman lead the way." And when I read that caption, I took that as our young goon just dominated this series. And as long as he lead the way into that dark alley, we all right behind him. We're pushing through with him. We gonna stand rock solid. And that's how we going. And that's the way those guys played. You flip over to the Brooklyn Nets. You know, the question I'm seeing constantly is what happens next? You know, does Kyrie sign his extension? Does he not? You know, if you're the Brooklyn Nets, do you want Kyrie to sign extension? I mean, I've seen something that says Steve Nash, that the Brooklyn Nets want Steve Nash to quit. Like, I mean, you're starting to see everything kind of unfold with whatever, what everyone's thoughts are on the Brooklyn Nets. What were my takeaways on the Brooklyn Nets? I just thought in that series, Boston made it a point that Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving will not beat us. We know those two guys can beat us. They're not going to beat us. And what it looked to me as, there was no one to get those two guys in position to score the ball where they like to score the ball from. And so you end up seeing a ton of turnovers, You know, I saw the numbers with like KD and his turnovers versus Jayson Tatum and all the different things. But the reality is Brooklyn struggled to get stops the entire series. You struggle to get stops, you come down against a set defense every single time you come down the court. I don't care how good of an offensive team you are or what offensive players you got on your team, playing against a set defense every time is nearly impossible. Yeah. Everybody in the NBA, if they can get their defense set, they know the principles, they know where their rotation should be. That's kind of how it goes. And that's what we saw with the Brooklyn Nets is every time they came down, they're looking at Boston's length at boxes and elbows. KD get the ball, it's 6 eyes on him, it's 8 eyes on him. What that means is you have his 2 eyes, the guys guarding him, the 2 eyes of the guys to the right, the two eyes of the guys to the left, maybe the two eyes of the guys right behind, you know? And so when you say six eyes or eight eyes, that's what that means. And you know, those guys are coming down the court against this set defense and they're seeing all of these eyes. The whole defense is shifted towards them, loading up, making those guys either have to swing it to somebody else to beat us, or you're gonna have to beat us with tough shots. And it proved not to work. Mm-hmm. And so, I don't know what's going to happen in Brooklyn. We'll see. I mean, you know, you can just run it back and say Kyrie was, you know, he missed most of the season. We weren't able to gel, but there seems to be more that'll come of that situation. So we'll sit back, we'll wait and see. But I was not, I was actually very surprised to see KD and Kyrie get swept. But that just shows you how good that young Boston team is. And those guys aren't playing, but the true test now comes. You gotta go through the defending champs if you wanna move on. And this is going to be another series for JT, for JB, for Marcus Smart, for those guys to take another step forward if they're— if they want to win this series. Now, a key factor in this series, as we all know, no disrespect to the Chicago Bulls, but I can only go off what I just watched those last two games in the series. So I don't want to jump the gun, But if the series end up, if it ends up how we all think it's gonna end up, Milwaukee-Boston, that Khris Middleton injury become, I mean, it's gonna become more magnified because that's one of your best scorers against a very good defense again. And you take that score outta there, they're gonna load up on Giannis more. They're gonna load up on Jrue more. They're going to make Connaughton beat you. Or beat them. You know, they're going to make Grayson Allen beat them. Grayson Allen's been playing extremely well. They're going to make Bobby Portis beat them. And so I'm looking forward to that series, but Milwaukee does have to take care of their business first. And I don't want to be disrespectful, but it's happening. And I'm looking forward to that series.
