Tag: Daniel Theis

Joel Embiid ranks second on Bleacher Report’s top 15 centers list

Sixers star Joel Embiid has been one of the top centers in the league the past two seasons.

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid probably has the most to prove of any All-Star in the Orlando bubble.

It’s not about the lack of rings, but more so the absence of a long playoff run. In two playoff appearances, Embiid has not gone past the second round. Still, he is recognized by many as one of the best at his position.

Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey and Dan Favale released their top 15 centers Friday, and Embiid slotted in at No. 2, right behind Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic. The debate between Embiid and Jokic isn’t new, with Jokic being more dynamic on offense and Embiid being a better defender.

This season, Embiid has continued to dominate in the low post. At the beginning of the video above, he squared up to the basket well and created space to score against Boston Celtics big man Daniel Theis. According to NBA.com stats, Embiid has led the league in points on post-ups (7.4) this season.

Along with his low-post dominance, Embiid has maintained his reputation for being a good interior defender. He has posted a defensive rating of 101.4 this season, and he has averaged 1.3 blocks a game.

As a playmaking center, Jokic is the better passer. Both players can score at about the same level, and neither is significantly better than the other at rebounding.

With Embiid and Jokic being the focal points of their respective offenses, it  comes down to personal preference in choosing who is better.

Jokic is the hub, but the Nuggets are nearly a by-committee offense, with Will Barton, Jamal Murray, Paul Millsap, Jerami Grant and Gary Harris all being viable scoring options.

The Sixers’ offense isn’t as efficient because of their lack of quality spacing. It feeds more on Embiid’s success, and if Embiid doesn’t play well, the rest of the team generally falters.

The Sixers will play their first seeding game Aug. 1 against the Indiana Pacers, with tipoff set for 7 p.m. ET.

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WATCH: Celtics back at Auerbach Center for start of mandatory practice

The Boston Celtics are back at it, putting in work at the Waltham practice facilities in anticipation of the Disney restart.

The Boston Celtics began mandatory workouts at their Auerbach Center practice facilities in Waltham, Massachusetts on July 1st as the franchise prepares to restart the 2019-20 NBA season at Disney’s NBA campus.

That campus — held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida — is designed to function as a safer alternative than having teams travel to play one another as the league seeks to finish the coronavirus-interrupted season.

The Celtics had been hosting voluntary individual workouts before Wednesday, with the same precautions in place to prevent the spread of the virus in their home market continuing for the first few days of mandatory workouts.

Those measures include each player using their own hoop and ball with careful cleaning of any equipment used after it is put away, and coaching staff wearing masks when assisting players.

On the first day of mandatory workouts, the folks at MassLive got their hands on some video of point guards Kemba Walker and Tremont Waters, center Daniel Theis and wing Romeo Langford putting up shots.

The second day of workouts saw Theis continue his conditioning with some new faces — forward Semi Ojeleye and big mam Enes Kanter.

If you want to catch a glimpse of how Boston is getting back into game shape, check out the two embedded videos above. There’s still a long way to go before we see these guys ready for live-game action, but if nothing else their aim seems as good as ever.

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Theis updates us on his, teammates conditioning, readiness for Disney

Boston Celtics center Daniel Theis shared his assessment of his teammates and his own readiness for the so-called ‘Orlando bubble’.

The Boston Celtics held another media availability event with Celtics beat reporters Thursday as the NBA and the Celtics gear up for the move to Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida next week.

Boston, which just began mandatory individual workouts along with the rest of the league on the first of July, revealed yesterday in another press conference with head coach Brad Stevens that no new players have tested positive for COVID-19 since testing has been ramped up in recent days.

Stevens was joined by point guard Kemba Walker, who shared his knee was feeling much better with the rest provided by the hiatus, and today’s presser began with Boston center Daniel Theis.

The big man revealed he’d also put the coronavirus hiatus to good use.

“I think it was good for me too, the break we had, to help my knees and get lifting in. During the season it’s hard to get lifting in between games,” noted Theis per The Athletic’s Jared Weiss.

The Saltzigger native has put in two days of conditioning work, noting that — like Walker — the time off was critical for his own sore knees to feel better.

As for returning to action after such a long layoff being a potential problem, Theis said (per the team), “It’s definitely easier. It’s the same team. We know what we do. We just have to refresh everything.”

The German pointed to his home country’s success with the Bundesliga Basketball League (BBL) using a similar arrangement when asked if he thought the planned Florida site presented risk.

Given the steadily-increasing new cases currently besetting Disney’s home state, such a concern has been growing in the media and more generally in recent days.

“My best friend (Elias Harris) played in the tournament,” he explained via Weiss. “In the beginning, he wasn’t sure about it either. But when I talked to him in the end, he was really positive with the way things were organized, testing & safety. They made sure you can just focus on basketball.”

Jay King — also of The Athletic — relates that Theis feels the time away from his family will be difficult.

He never really considered skipping the restart, saying (via NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg), “It’s my job.”

“I want to win,” he added. “Obviously, it’s going to be hard for me to leave … especially with my daughter. She’s 4 now, we’re so close.”

As to whether Theis expects players to follow the rules needed for a successful restart, the Celtic center replied, “I know on our team, all the players are going to follow the rules.”

“It’s not just about [us]. It’s about that [we] can get more people sick and potentially get the NBA season canceled,” he added.

“If somebody has real problems following the rules, maybe he should stay home,” he added.

His teammates — in his estimation — have been looking good in practice, according to Theis. “They look great. Especially [Jayson Tatum]. He walked in the first day and couldn’t miss a shot.”

Let’s hope that continues once real play begins.

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WATCH: Daniel Theis reads kids books for Boston Children’s Museum

Boston Celtics starting center Daniel Theis reads children’s books for the Boston Children’s Museum (and your enjoyment).

Boston Celtics starting center Daniel Theis recently donated some of his time to make a video of him reading kids books for the Boston Children’s Museum to help parents like himself keep their little ones busy in the coronavirus pandemic.

The German big man — joined by his daughter — read “Class Trip (Peppa Pig)” by Mark Baker and Neville Astley for the enjoyment of all, becoming the second Celtic to become a lector to the masses.

Teammate Tacko Fall recently read a “Clifford the Big Red Dog” book to young (and probably a few older) fans recently as well as members of Boston’s roster make use of their abundant downtime in this pandemic to do some community outreach for families struggling in this global catastrophe as well.

While younger Celtics fans are undoubtedly enjoying this novel (pun intended) trend and their parents perhaps enjoying the brief respite it brings them, one can’t but help wondering if we could perhaps get some chapter reads of some fitting classics for adults.

Perhaps we could have Brad Stevens reading “Moby Dick” given the elusivity of chasing a banner roughly compares to the difficulty of catching that cagy cetacean, or perhaps “The Iliad” read by Marcus Smart, given the epic defense he deploys on the court bears a resemblance to that of the Trojans and their fabled city.

Maybe we could even see Jayson Tatum reading “Great Expectations”.

If all that is a little too much, just enjoy the video of Theis reading tales of Peppa Pig.

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Daniel Theis linchpin of Celtics top-5 defense, says Athletic’s Weiss

Boston Celtics starting center Daniel Theis should get much of the credit for this season’s defensive success, according to The Athletic’s Jared Weiss.

It’s no secret that Boston Celtics big man Daniel Theis’ defensive excellence in the 2019-20 NBA season put the German center in the team’s starting role at center in a season most assumed it would be a position filled by committee and matchup.

But he didn’t just earn a starting role according to some analysts — he actually stepped into some very big shoes defensively and filled them well enough to hand the Celtics a top-five defense for most of the season.

Those big shoes would belong to Al Horford, who left the team over the summer in free agency to join the Philadelphia 76ers, causing many experts to assume the team’s defensive coherence would take a big step back.

It did not, surprisingly, thanks to Theis — and the Athletic’s Jared Weiss recently explained why on the popular NBA basketball podcast “Dunc’d On”.

“Daniel Theis is replicating so much of what Al Horford did defensively that it’s kind of remarkable,” he began.

“They’ve limited it so that his his main function in the defense is as a drop defender and pick and roll, and he’s doing it just about as well as Horford did — and Horford was maybe the best in the league at that. And Theis has been pretty close to that. He’s just he he reads the screens really well, he positions himself just right, [and] he’s able to take in pretty much anybody driving on him and go vertical without fouling and contests at the rim.”

“He doesn’t really block them, and … he’s one of the best in the league at contesting with verticality at the rim and getting a stop,” added Weiss.

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For the Athletic analyst, it’s not some overwhelming leap forward that has made the Saltzigger native so valuable this season, but rather a culmination of many small steps Theis has made to improve his game and make his teammates better in the process.

“He’s the perfect defender for the system, and he doesn’t do anything really exceptional, but he executes his job pretty much to perfection, and he puts an effort throughout the possession and he lets all their really talented perimeter defenders do their job.”

In many ways, Theis is hearkening back to the style of skilled big man that was long the hallmark of Celtics teams in their glory years of the 1960s and 1970s recently expounded on by Boston legend Dave Cowens.

But it also has a more modern twist in how Theis uses the gravity of his teammates to get open shots at the perimeter, or adapts big man Marcin Gortat’s offensive screening strategies to open lanes for his teammates.

All in all, the German big man is among the most criminally underrated players in the NBA in 2019-20 — but don’t expect that trend to continue long into the future if the veteran center keeps providing this level of pay.

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WATCH: the best play from Daniel Theis in each game of 2019-20 so far

Boston Celtics big man Daniel Theis was a critical part of Boston’s rotation in 2019-20; watch the video to see the best play from each game he played in the 2019-20 season so far.

Boston Celtics big man Daniel Theis snuck up on us in 2019-20.

Expected to be one of several options used as matchups saw fit to help fill the Al Horford-sized hole in Boston’s frontcourt, the German center used his excellent screening skills, improved defense and low-usage adaptability to steal the starting role for himself for most of the season to date.

Whether we’re talking his own take on “the Gortat” seal, his quiet ability to nail an open trey when one of his teammates is getting doubled, or his Marcus Smart-like ability to scrap for loose balls, the Saltzigger native has proven a key player in the Celtics’ rotation this season.

Theis has contributed to winning in every game he’s played, a big part of the reason why the team’s defense has maintained top-10 status despite the loss of Horford.

Watch the video above to see his best play from each game he appeared in in the 2019-20 season so far; hopefully we won’t have to wait too many more weeks to see the resumption of games — and more such plays from the German big man — continue.

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WATCH: the best of Daniel Theis’ 2019-20 seals – A.K.A. ‘Theising’

Boston Celtics starting center Daniel Theis has made a name for himself with his take on a classic sealing move.

For much of the first half of the 2019-20 NBA season, questions about the Boston Celtics big man rotation, but by the time January rolled around, it was clear big man Daniel Theis was the answer.

And much of his efficacy as a linchpin of the Celtics offense had little to do with his shooting, but instead how he executed a unique sealing action so well he usurped the name it had previously had — Gortat-ing — after retired center Marcin Gortat, who pioneered it.

Now called “Theis-ing” at least as often in the contemporary NBA, it’s being picked up by opposing teams keen on using the action to provide easier access to the rim.

It even ended up dominating a recent podcast hosted by Theis’ teammates Tacko Fall and Grant Williams due to its high rate of success in sparking easy buckets.

Watch the video above to see for yourself how “Theis-ing” (or Gortat-ing for you oldschool heads) is done — there’s no question the German big man is the right center for most matchups given this and all the other tools he can pull out of his bag.

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Boston’s Tacko Fall, Grant Williams talk ‘Theising’ – but what is it?

On the latest episode of the Athletic’s Grant and Tacko Show, Tacko Fall and Grant Williams discuss “Theising” — but what is it?

Boston Celtics big men Tacko Fall and Grant Williams got into the move bringing them arguably more success than any other this season on the latest episode of their shared podcast, so much so it’s being copied by many other teams in the league.

That move — originally called “the Gortat” after big man Marcin Gortat, who pioneered it several seasons ago — has found new popularity through its frequent deployment by Boston’s starting center Daniel Theis.

So much so, in fact, it’s being recast as “Theising”, which certainly rolls off the lips a bit more smoothly.

But…what is Theising?

Mostly, sticking your posterior out as a stealthy screening tactic, if we’re being honest.

The big man moves down low as if to prepare to get a rebound, using his rear end to block a defender and allow a teammate a clearer path to the cup.

“I’ve really been really trying to do some of that,” noted Fall on the podcast.

“But the way I Gortat is like — Theis would really box you out; he would turn around. But me, when I roll, I’m facing you and put my arms up.”

Suggesting it was an illegal play, the two way center was quickly corrected by his teammate. “It’s not because if you do it the right way,” said Williams, “it’s technically a duck-in; a post-up. That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”

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“You really think about side pick and roll when the man sets the screen, rolls and then seals back his own,” he continued.

“[It’s] as if he’s trying to get a post up and then they throw it back to the left, he drives a baseline and gets a wide-open layup, kind of the same concept as what we call Gortat or Theis. It’s just in the middle, you set a screen and instead of the ball handler giving it up, you’re rolling … instead of looking for a lob.”

Or … you get in front of your man and then post them up as if you’re trying to get the ball again and they say no, [then] your teammate who has just his defender on the side can then lay it up at the rim,” finished Williams.

The Tennessee product noted it’s not even a new aspect to Boston’s offense, as both center Aron Baynes and forward Al Horford were using the move in limited examples as recently as last season — it’s just that the nuances and frequency of how Theis has executed the move has remade it as his own.

“We do it consistently but it’s all about efficiency,” noted the Tennessee product. “It’s all about how you can put the ball in the basket easier and it’s an easy two points right there.”

To hear more about the rookie Celtics frontcourt duo’s thoughts on how Boston uses their bigs on both ends of the court, be sure to listen via the embedded player above, or visit the linked page here.

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Jayson Tatum, Celtics appreciating Theis for his hard, quiet work

Boston Celtics starting center Daniel Theis has been the glue behind the team’s success, and budding superstar Jayson Tatum is thankful for all he does.

It’s not often you get to watch a superstar emerge from the chrysalis of their earñy-career self, but for all intents and purposes we seem to be doing just that with All-Star swingman Jayson Tatum.

And some of what makes the Missouri native so special has been helped by teammates; point guard Kemba Walker’s leadership; guard Marcus Smart’s tenacious defense; Jaylen Brown’s increasing gravity.

And Daniel Theis, in particular.

Theis has been instrumental in helping set up the plays finding Tatum open, or clearing the lane for his drives.

“His screening angles are great. His rolls are great. And he’s very unselfish,” head coach Brad Stevens said via MassLive’s John Karalis. “He does a lot of unselfish things.”

“It’s not always fun to be the one that runs up, screens, and runs back on defense … Or runs up, screens, rolls, doesn’t touch it and then runs back on defense. But that’s the way teams function. And we appreciate that stuff as much as everybody else appreciates all the stats.”

Tatum especially recognizes the role Theis has played in his newfound excellence, and plans to do something for the German big man out of appreciation for his quiet, unflagging support.

“I told Theis I’m going to get something for his birthday,” said the Duke product.

“Like a watch or something. Especially for me, he opens the game up so much with getting me easy buckets. That opens the game up for me and he does it for everybody. That’s a thing that doesn’t show up in the stat book.”

“Theis is that dude,” he added.

And indeed he is, delivering near-flawless execution night-to-night on a bargain-basement deal of just $5 million this season for this season and next.

While the attention is going to be focused increasingly on Tatum and his high-octane teammates, the Saltzigger native continues to be the glue that ties the team together.

And for a franchise thriving off of chemistry, the importance of that to everyone’s game on the Celtics cannot be overemphasized.

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LeBron James hits go-ahead fadeaway jumper to seal Sunday win over Celtics

LeBron James hit a huge jump shot in the final seconds of Sunday’s game to help the Los Angeles Lakers get ahead in against the Celtics.

LeBron James hit an important go-ahead jumper with 25 seconds left and Anthony Davis sealed the game with a pair of free throws to help the Los Angeles Lakers escape with a 114-112 win on Sunday afternoon against the Boston Celtics. Boston’s Jayson Tatum finished with a game-high 41 points but he was called for an offensive foul on Boston’s final offensive possession as he tried to hit a shot to win the game or send it into overtime.

Although the Lakers ran out to a big lead early on, the Celtics were never far behind and helped create a game where they stayed on L.A.’s hip all night long. L.A.’s largest lead was 11, while Boston took a brief 7-point lead in the third quarter as Jayson Tatum caught fire in the second and third quarters, scoring 35 points before the fourth quarter had even started. For most of the night, Tatum was the best player on the floor.

Although Anthony Davis is one of the frontrunners for Defensive Player of the Year, the Lakers’ decision to switch him onto Tatum worked out well for Boston. Tatum did an excellent job of mixing up his drives and jump shots, getting to the line 15 times to lead everyone in the game.

In addition to the two stars, Kyle Kuzma provided a strong boost off the bench by scoring 16 points and being a part of the Lakers closing lineup against a very versatile Boston group.

Davis hit a huge 3-pointer with just over two minutes left in the game to give L.A.  a 108-105 lead. Gordon Hayward answered with a mid-range jumper to make it 108-107. Davis then missed a layup on the ensuing possession which led to Jaylen Brown 3-pointer to put Boston up 110-108 with 1:17 left. An exchange of empty possessions led to James being fouled on a lay-up attempt, but he missed the second free-throw leaving the Lakers down 110-109. However, the loose ball on the rebound was deemed to go off of Boston and gave the Lakers one more chance.

Brad Stevens also got called for a technical 15.5 seconds left, although Davis missed the free-throw. Davis then hit two free-throws on the next Lakers possession to give them a 113-110 lead. A loose ball foul on LeBron gave the Celtics two free-throws to cut the lead to 113-112.

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