With Isaiah Thomas being ruled out for the remainder of the postseason due to a hip injury, the Boston Celtics have had to adjust their style of play in hopes of keeping up with the Cavaliers. Ordinarily, Celtics head coach Brad Stevens runs most of his offense through the 5’9″ point guard. Now, coach Stevens has been forced to go with a bigger lineup.
During his media availability after last night’s 112-99 victory inside Quicken Loans Arena, James had high praise for coach Stevens’ ability to make adjustments on the fly, giving him credit for keeping the Cavs “off-balance.”
“They run different things just because IT being a huge piece of the puzzle for them offensively,” James said. “So they had to kind of reshape, and that’s the beauty of having Brad Stevens as your coach. You’re able to reshape what you do offensively and still be in a good rhythm. It’s been challenging for us to kind of — plays out of timeout, (they have) kind of been killing us on ATOs and keeping us off balance.”
James went on to explain how the series changed when Thomas went down with an injury. The three-time champion says he and the Cavs are beginning to have a better understanding of what coach Stevens and the Celtics are trying to do without their star point guard on the floor.
“It’s a difficult challenge because our preparation going into the series was going against a team with Isaiah,” James explained, “So now, they’re playing a lot differently now, so we’re trying to figure out exactly what they’re running and things of that nature, so it’s been very difficult on us without IT on the floor, but now this is two games that we’ve been able to see them and we’re going to get a better understanding. We should be a lot better in Game 5.”
In his closing statements, James gave credit to the Celtics for giving the Cavs “everything that they have.”
“They’re well-coached, and they’ve got guys that’s always kind of been counted out throughout their career, so they play with a lot of pride,” James said. “And then you add the green on their back and this is history, this is a franchise that you kind of no matter who’s out on the floor, you have to play for that franchise and play with pride. You know, they’re giving us everything that they have, and we’re expecting it, and we want the challenge. It’s the postseason. At the end of the day, you just want to win the game. It doesn’t matter who you’re going against or how you get the job done, you’re just trying to figure it out, and I think we did that. “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dzb65zy8HQ