When we played them a month ago, I was just blown away by how good they were. Every team has a different set of circumstances. The Celtics sure aren't used to being an afterthought and they kind of were before the season with Jayson's injury and the departures of Kristaps and Al Horford.
The Celtics were fairly clear about their strategy in defending the Spurs superstar: Give up threes rather than twos and hope he can't shoot you out of the game. The strategy makes some sense - Wembanyama is solid, but he's only making 35 percent of his 3-point attempts this year. Joe Mazzulla loves to try to manipulate the math in his favor, and when part of the equation is a 7-foot-4 center that can do a little bit of everything offensively, the numbers become more difficult to square.