NEW STORY: Sam Hauser went off on Saturday night, but his under-the-radar impact has been there all year. He’s shooting 43% from three in January, but that’s not all. “He’s one of the better defenders that we have,” said Joe Mazzulla.
The thing I’ve found most impressive about his defense is how well he plays his angles
He’s limited as a lateral mover but he turns and spaces nearly perfectly
He cuts off attacks and passing angles really really well simply by how he positions his body, definitely maxing out his defensive ability relative to his lack of athleticism
Yes! A testament to very high basketball IQ.
IMO he’s not even a slow defender.
As far as 6’7” 3 point specialists go, he’s a great defender.
Certainly not the fastest, but not a traffic cone either.
Net net, he’s a good defender who also rains threes, and I think we can drop the narrative that he’s a bad defender over performing at this point.
People on this sub a month ago were talking trash about him as a defender. I felt like I was taking crazy pills.
IQ and effort > athleticism, every single time.
The Aaron Nesmith piece
Yeah, i have been impressed with how he keeps his body between the offensive player and the hoop.
I always thought he and Kornet were similar in this. They’re not as quick as a lot of the guys they guard so they have to play the geometry perfectly to use their size and not get beaten.
To your point here about how he turns and spaces, how he positions, etc. - I think this is all on the Celtics coaching staff. Pritchard defends in a similar way, and the young wings this year are also showing the same pattern. Clearly they know how to teach team defense and individual positional defense and it pays massive dividends to both the teams and the individual players. I’m a believer that defense can be taught up to a certain level as long as the player is willing. Not necessarily to become a good defender, but at least not a net negative.
But I coulda sworn a bunch of people on Celtics Reddit said he was a terrible defender
Skin tone tells them that
Casuals didn’t listen to Jrue last year
I thought to start the year his defense was not great. He just started slow on offense and defense. He being playing much better on both ends right now.
Yeah he’s definitely picked his defence back up, there’s a reason we weren’t getting these quotes from Joe earlier on in the season.
Being hurt was still probably a factor back then too.
I think part of it that even though he’s been solid, he was often de facto the worst defender for us in most lineup which is more of a testament to our other defenders than a knock on him.
Like last year, would you rather get a mismatch on Hauser or one of Tatum, Brown, Holiday, White, etc.
Sam is a very solid and sturdy defender.
There’s a lot of people in here who think he sucks at defense because he’s white. Same with PP.
Like it or not, there’s a lot of prejudice applied to white players still. Pathetic really.
Even our white boys defend
Didn’t see the game so just looked at the stat sheet when I woke up
FG 10-21
3PT 10-21
He was 10-15 then they were like go get the record and he kept missing
Few days ago people calling him to be benched. They won the night before. Some on FB group never happy. I think he was #3rd in scoring. Bad night from White and Peyton
The Hauizter stays underrated. Stud.
one of the best but not cracking top5 ?
Sam can hold his ground one on one when someone is trying to bully him but lateral quickness is not there.
He literally led the league in defensive rating 2 years ago. Nobody ever focuses on him. Good. We’ll keep him!
He’s been fine all year on the defensive end. His shooting his main skill has got much better after a shaky start to season. He seems to have stopped taking any 2’s last season he hit quite a lot. A valuable part of our depth
He was on fire last night until he hit his tenth 3, and then everything got super forced and increasingly desperate as he tried to hit the next one — missing next seven attempts or so.
The game briefly shifted and that was its only purpose, to get Hauser his eleventh (and then hopefully his twelfth to take the franchise record from Marcus Smart). Instead it was just miss after miss after miss, not a great way to end the game.
I agree about his defense. He’s been great out there.
But I do wish he didn’t take those last 6 horrible 3s last night. I know he was going for the record, but it was a bad look and they weren’t even remotely decent shots to take
Who cares they were up like 45 and the hawks were on suicide watch
We subbed in Amari Williams to get him some much-needed developmental minutes, and then made a mockery of those minutes with some ridiculously bad play that wasn’t his fault.
The result of the game wasn’t in question at that point but that was a missed opportunity.
I agree with the Hawks announcer that it just made a mockery of the game. He might as well have just been shooting hook shots blindfolded from half court.
I wouldn’t have cared if he took regular shots, but it just looked selfish. Borderline Ricky Davis throwing the ball up at the opponent’s hoop to get the triple double
The hawks defense was the mockery
It was ugly to watch, but I also don’t care if the team doesn’t care. Those are his stats to tank.
Yeah, that’s true. Dude turned an epic, scorching 10⁄15 3pt performance into essentially his average shooting game from 3 just with higher volume. All in the span of a minute or so