On Monday night, the Boston Celtics faced off against the New Orleans Pelicans, managing to come away with their first win of the season. In what was a close game throughout the night, the Celtics managed
to create plenty of separation in the fourth quarter, finishing the night on a 31-4 run.
As part of that run, Sam Hauser hit two much needed threes. He shot just 3-10 for the night, all 10 of his attempts coming from behind the three-point line. It took a while for his offense to get going, but he was solid defensively from start to finish.
Sam came off the bench, subbing in at power forward for Josh Minott who had an excellent night himself. Both teams played relatively small, which forced Hauser to cover the paint more than usual on defense. He held his own, bodying up and preventing easy baskets.
New Orleans shot 5 for 12 (41.7%) from the floor when going against Sam, 1 for 5 from range. Of the four baskets in the paint, Sam was mostly caught navigating screens while chasing his man off the three-point line, and still did as much as he could to keep to his man’s body.
For example, in the following clip Hauser was defending Trey Murphy III. He stuck to his hip for nearly the entire play, and still put up a contest on the shot, but was constantly fighting around and over screens from Yves Missi.
Just a few minutes later in the game, Sam was again covering Murphy, and this time even forced Trey to pass out of his shot to a cutting Derik Queen. Sam tried his best to get a second contest up, but ultimately there wasn’t much more he could do. With Neemias Queta stepping out of position to help, Hauser was left with no chance as Queen strode down the lane.
There were several plays like this where Hauser was able to jam a drive and force his man to rethink their shots. They don’t show up in the box score as attempts or contests, but they make a big difference in disrupting the opposing team’s offense. And speaking of disrupting, Sam was second on the team and third overall in deflections at 4. He finished the night with one block and one steal.
Given Boston’s massive roster turnaround and deficiencies in the front court, Hauser stepping up defensively goes a long way. Joe Mazzulla is surely going to ask a lot of him on that side of the floor, but Sam has been up to the task so far. He was an underrated defender just a couple seasons ago, which ended up being an important part of the team’s championship run. He took a step back last year, likely because of the back issues he was dealing with, but he seems to be getting back to form now that he’s healthy.
