It’s always best to keep all of your cards close to the vest during the NBA postseason.
You never want to tip the opposition off on your gameplan and you almost certainly don’t want to give them any bulletin board material. If you tell the opposing team who you’re about to attack and how you’re about to attack them, you kind of throw all of that out the window.
That’s what Bruce Brown did on Tuesday after the Nets beat the Cavaliers through the individual brilliance of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to move up to the 7th seed and face the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.
In his postgame press conference, Brown was asked about the matchup. He noted that Celtics’ center Robert Williams was out with a torn meniscus and that Brooklyn could “attack [Al] Horford and [Daniel] Theis.”
He really said that.
Bruce Brown: "Them not having Robert Williams is huge. Now we can attack Horford and Theis."
— Matt Brooks (@MattBrooksNBA) April 13, 2022
That’s…almost certainly not a great look. Not only are Theis and Horford two rock-solid defenders at their position, but now they’ll be motivated to step up to the challenge of protecting the paint.
Probably not the best idea. Kevin Durant knows that. That’s exactly why he immediately pushed back on it.
Kevin Durant wasn't a fan of what Bruce Brown said about the Celtics' bigs at tonight's press conference 😅
"That's caffeine pride talking" pic.twitter.com/9XiziXyQcK
— Nets Videos (@SNYNets) April 13, 2022
“That’s caffeine pride talking. He takes something before the game. Those two dudes can do the same stuff. It ain’t going to be that easy, I tell you that.”
He tried to soften the blow a little bit and for good reason. The Celtics take this stuff to heart. That’s almost certainly going up in their locker room.
They used Joel Embiid simply saying their scheme was easier to defend because it was iso-heavy as motivation back in February. Those comments actually might be what sparked their turnaround.
Ime Udoka said before last night’s game, he showed the Celtics the quote from Joel Embiid when he said they weren’t as difficult to guard as Charlotte.
— Jay King (@ByJayKing) February 16, 2022
So, yeah, for Brown to give them something else to push themselves with? Not the best move, certainly. Of course, it’s easy to talk that sort of trash when you’ve got what might be the best player in the world on your team.
We’ll see how it all works out on Sunday when these two teams finally meet up. From the look of it, things just got a lot more fun.
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