Robin Lopez has become the Boston Celtics’ big brother through two games
Jimmy Butler has been fantastic in the first two games of the 2017 NBA Playoffs, while Rajon Rondo has looked like the 2012 version of himself. But, Robin Lopez’s steady play on both ends of the floor has made a huge difference.
It was Jimmy Butler‘s clutch shot-making in Game 1 (along with an emergence from Bobby Portis) and Rajon Rondo‘s performance in Game 2 that stole the headlines and a 2-0 series for the Chicago Bulls, but Robin Lopez’s 32 points and 18 rebounds in the first two games shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Before Game 2 on Tuesday, I wrote on how the Bulls have flat-out dominated the glass against the Celtics. There’s a big reason why the Bulls had grabbed almost 35 percent (!) of their offensive rebounding opportunities in the first five games against the Celtics this year and the man with the curly hair and cool clothes is a main reason why the Bulls are two wins away from the second round.
The starting front court for the Celtics — Amir Johnson and Al Horford — combined for 11 points and 13 rebounds on Tuesday night in Game 2. Robin Lopez had seven points and more offensive rebounds (5) by himself than the Johnson-Horford duo combined did.
It’s been more than just rebounding from Lopez that’s made him so effective. We’ll look into that further, but here’s a breakdown on how Lopez has created such a nightmare for the Celtic bigs to the point where C’s coach Brad Stevens had to call on Tyler Zeller for some kind of reinforcement on Tuesday.
Robin Lopez, mid-range sniper
The mid-range jumper is the most hated shot in basketball these days, but the Bulls (and DeMar DeRozan) still keep it alive.
In the first two games of this series, Robin Lopez has taken 20 total shot attempts and has hit 70 percent of those attempts (14/20). He’s taken nine of those attempts outside of the paint and has made seven of them. (He’s also shooting 63.6 percent in the restricted area, which means … yeah, Boston can’t block him out at all.)
Boston seems perfectly fine with giving these kinds of shots to Lopez in this series, but here’s the problem for the Celtics: Lopez is shooting 75 percent from this spot on the floor in the series (on just four attempts), but in the regular season, he shot 45.4 percent from this specific spot in 130 attempts, which is 5.5 percent better than the league average in that zone.
(When Lopez shoots slightly more towards the right elbow, he’s hit 17 of his 26 total attempts from that zone, including the first two games of this series. That’s 65.4 percent.)
Bulls guards have hardly had any issues getting Lopez the ball off one of his screens and the Celtic bigs have all basically given Lopez these shots and he’s hitting them.
Lopez has been ferocious on the glass
This season, Lopez has grabbed 42 total rebounds in the six total games the Bulls have played against the Celtics (including the first two games in the playoffs). He’s grabbed 18 of them in these first two games alone. Stevens has tried everyone virtually everyone up front and no one can seem to keep the Cool-Haired Sports Man off the glass.
Lopez was a big reason why the Bulls, who didn’t dominate the boards as much in Game 2 as they did in Game 1, still grabbed 28.9 percent of their offensive rebounding opportunities on Tuesday.
For the series so far, the Bulls are grabbing 56.35 percent of the total rebounding chances and Lopez’s SSS (small sample size) OREB% average over these two games is 21.15 percent, way ahead of his 11.5 percentage that was good for 12th in the NBA this season.
Next: Bulls at Celtics, Game 2: 3 takeaways from the Bulls taking two in Beantown
The Bulls are up 2-0 in a best-of-seven series against the top seed in the Eastern Conference and there’s a few different factors that go into this weird past few days. Robin Lopez and his fantastic hair is one of those factors.