The Celtics absolutely pulverized the Cavaliers Sunday at TD Garden, beating their former Eastern Conference rival by 46 points to improve to 3-0 in the preseason.
Boston is going into this season looking for a fresh start after a turbulent 2018-19 season that ended in a second-round playoff exit and free-agent departures from Al Horford, Kyrie Irving, Terry Rozier and Marcus Morris.
The preseason has been promising for this new version of the Celtics, and the main reason they've had two blowout wins over the last three games has been their defense. Boston currently holds the league's best defensive rating during the preseason (81.4), and while yes, it's just the preseason, players like Larry Nance Jr. have taken notice of how difficult the Celtics have made it for opposing offenses.
“You know, they’re a pretty big team," Nance said after Sunday's game. "You know, obviously Brown, Tatum, Hayward on the wings is not easy. This is historically a really good defensive team, so I assume they’re going to be that this year.”
Without Al Horford and Aron Baynes, the defense was Boston's chief concern heading into this year. Their only way around their unproven front line was, as Brad Stevens put it earlier this week, was to put more pressure on the ball.
Through their first three games, they've done exactly that. Opposing offenses are shooting 36.5 percent on their field goals (1st in NBA), 24.8 percent on threes (2nd) and are turning it over 25.3 times per game (1st).
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The defensive question marks are still there in the frontcourt and it'd be naive to think the Celtics can sustain this level of stinginess on the defensive end into the season, especially against teams like Philadelphia, Denver and Milwaukee.
But hey, at least they're looking like they could be a top 10 defense this season instead of sowing their fatal flaws early in the year.
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