Harper: How Celtics failed defending Korver

The high-volume, hyper efficient 3-point shooter is a massive weapon in today’s NBA. Not everybody is able to be Stephen Curry, especially off the dribble. However, there are a few players around the league that have a relatively similar gravitational pull around the 3-point line when they’re on the court. If you make a stupid mistake when you’re covering them, they’ll roast you from deep. If you stick to them in non-traditional ways, your team is likely to give up an easier shot inside.

Atlanta Hawks sharpshooter Kyle Korver is one of those guys. He’s one of the greatest shooters we’ve ever seen and as he’s become more and more a staple of this Hawks offense, he’s become a huge problem for opposing defenses in how they decide to cover him. You can’t defend him the same way you defend most shooters, and Game 2’s dominant 17-point performance was a perfect example of that.

The Boston Celtics are struggling to score against the second-best defense in the NBA, and because of that it puts more pressure on their defensive possessions. Through a lot of bad decisions early on, the Celtics allowed Korver to get clean looks at the basket from beyond the arc, and he burned them at nearly every opportunity. Overall, he was 6-of-9 on the night and hit 5-of-7 from 3-point range. His impact stretched beyond that deep range, though, and it was no coincidence he had a team-high plus-25 in the box score.

Mistakes in covering Korver

Part of the problem early on was the personnel covering Korver. A couple of times, rookie R.J. Hunter was forced to give defending Korver a try. Ideally, you’d love for Avery Bradley to be healthy, but that’s not an option for Boston anymore in this series. Instead, they have to get creative and just try to troubleshoot defending such a devastating shooter.

There were two times in the first half of this game that Hunter just lost his focus.

This first one came on a baseline out of bounds play in which the Celtics were zoned up a bit. Amir Johnson was trying to bother the inbounder Jeff Teague, and the trio of Jared Sullinger, Isaiah Thomas and Hunter were trying to figure out which way to switch to keep the defense tight. But as Korver came around the double screen from Paul Millsap and Al Horford, Hunter got confused and started moving toward Millsap. He tried to recover to Korver as soon as he realized his grave error, but it was too late.

The second mistake happened after Hunter navigated defending both Korver and Mike Muscala on the weak side quite well. The ball was kicked out to Korver in the corner, but Hunter recovered to take away a 3-point shot. Then as the ball was moved around to the top and Kent Bazemore drove down the middle of the lane, Hunter just left Korver to either worry about a dump-off pass to Muscala or to attempt a blocked shot he’d have to be Inspector Gadget to reach. You just can’t leave Korver like that.

It wasn’t all just Hunter, though. …

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