ORLANDO, Fla.Glen Davis is not a player that comes to mind when you think about an enforcer.
But he understands all too well that Boston's Avery Bradley's on-the-ball pressure has to be curtailed tonight if the Magic are to avenge Boston's decisive win on Monday.
"He'll be seeing me today," said the former Celtic, who will look to set more screens in hopes of freeing up the Orlando ball-handlers from Bradley's suffocating on-the-ball pressure.
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Orlando head coach Stan Van Gundy said the key to not allowing Bradley's defense to dominate tonight's game is two-fold.
Orlando point guard Jameer Nelson has to do a better job of handling Bradley's pressure, and the Magic as a whole have to take some of the ball-handling pressure off of Nelson as well.
Van Gundy has been around long enough to know that on-the-ball pressure is a given most nights.
What made Bradley's pressure wasn't that he did it; but that he did for so long.
"It's generally with backup guards like Avery Bradley, that you're going to see that kind of ball pressure," Van Gundy said. "What Avery Bradley did, he did it for a lot of minutes in that game. You gotta give him a ton of credit pressuring the ball.
"But if you had to to do that 82 games a year, this year 66, as a starter, it would be very difficult. So it's generally those guys who don't have to play 3,000 minutes in a year who can come in and use that energy. So you're not used to seeing it a lot. You might see it a possession or two, but that full-game thingI give him a lot of credit. It's the best job of anybody doing it, I've seen in a lot of years in this league."
Davis, in his first season with Orlando after four seasons in Boston, said he saw signs of this kind of potential in Bradley during his rookie year last season.
"Avery is a great player. His defensive game is unbelievable, the way he approaches the game defensively, the way he attacks," Davis said. "I've seen it. It's just about him getting on the court and doing what he has to do.
Davis added, "I've never seen a point guard dominate the game like that, in a way that got us out of our offense, got some key steals."