Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens has a history of going deep into his bench during the postseason to find a spark. He followed that trend yet again in Game 1 of the 2021 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals by turning to late-season addition Jabari Parker.
Parker had fallen out of Boston’s rotation just two weeks after being signed in mid-April as his defensive limitations outweighed his scoring contributions in his first six games as a Celtic. He only appeared in 10 regular season games for the Celtic in all after a strong 11-point debut against the Warriors on April 17th. Earlier this week, Parker only played garbage time minutes during the team’s win over the Washington Wizards in the play-in game on Tuesday night.
However, against the Nets, Stevens was on the hunt for some scoring punch off his undermanned bench to help keep pace with Brooklyn’s scoring firepower. That resulted in an early call to the 6-foot-8 Parker in the first quarter, who knocked down a pair of early buckets. Stevens ultimately stuck with him for 22 minutes in Boston’ 104-93 Game 1 defeat with the 27-year-old forward serving as one of the team’s bright spots n the defeat. Parker finished with nine points and four rebounds on 3-of-6 shooting from the field, providing the Celtics with some efficient offense on a night the team struggled mightily to hit shot consistently (36.9 percent from the field).
“You go into this and you think ‘We got a score. We’ve got to find points.’ Brad Stevens explained. “And again, I think we can do a better job of putting ourselves in better position. They deserve a lot of credit. Both teams guarded really hard. That was a highly intense playoff game. But we need to attack a little bit better. And I think Jabari showed himself well.”
A major weak spot in Parker’s game has always come on the defensive end of the floor, due to a lack of foot speed and effort which led to underwhelming stints in Sacramento and Atlanta over the past two seasons before he landed in Boston. There is perhaps no bigger challenge for a player in today’s NBA than trying to match up with this version of the Nets but Parker acquitted himself well on that front, holding his own in isolation matches against the likes of Kevin Durant and James Harden over the course of the night. Parker was a team-high plus-7 for the Celtics over his 22 minutes.
“He got backcut the one time but other than that, I thought he was pretty darn good,” Stevens said. “And I think one of the things when you start thinking about how you’re going to guard Durant and Harden and the bigs and all that stuff, and obviously Irving, but we did a lot of switching. So obviously Jabari has real size and he’s long. I thought he did a good job today on both ends.”
Stevens stuck with largely an eight-man rotation off the bench with Parker, Robert Williams and Aaron Nesmith logging big minutes and that group outplayed Brooklyn’s reserves, outscoring them by a 25-11 margin. Parker’s solid two-way play within that group likely earned him another chance in Game 2.
“Jabari played well, played amazing for us, especially for a guy who is coming in for something that is new for him,” Marcus Smart said after the loss. “The chemistry, we’re trying to build with him. It’s not all the way there but he’s coming in and giving it everything he has. He’s learning, he’s a great player and he helped us. We’re proud of him and we just got to keep going.”
Meanwhile, Stevens will need to go back to the drawing board to try to help his starting five improve their offensive chances alongside Parker after that group shot just 34.9 percent from the field collectively on Saturday night.
“We had some miscues, but not a ton,” Stevens said. “We’ve just gotta attack their switching better. They’ve got a lot of athletic guys out there and prideful individual defenders. And they know how to play. So we’ve gotta be better at manipulating actions to get what we want.”
