The Celtics are quickly morphing into an elite offense

The assumption by most NBA experts at the start of the regular season was that the Celtics would be an offense-first team this year. With shooting spread across the floor, the offensive playmaking ability of Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, and Gordon Hayward, as well as the brain of Brad Stevens, the possibilities seemed endless. Things obviously changed when Hayward went down and Marcus Morris was sidelined for the first few weeks. Stevens figured out quickly that the Celtics would need to win games with their defense early, and they did play at an elite level on that front for the first few weeks of the year.

However, at some point in the past few weeks, the tide started to shift within the team’s identity. They are on their way to becoming an offense-first squad. Part of it is Celtics players growing more comfortable in their roles, and part of it is Morris returning to full strength. The net result has been a steady climb for the Celtics up the NBA offensive rankings over the past few weeks. Statistically, the hosts played their best offensive game of the season on Saturday afternoon, and they needed it to pull out a 116-111 win over the Phoenix Suns.

Phoenix has one of the worst defenses in the NBA and the C’s still got everything they wanted pretty much all game against them, continuing a trend over improved offense over the past couple weeks. Boston scored 27 points or more in all four frames, shot 52 percent from the field and 45 percent from 3-point range and had a season-high 32 assists on 42 field goals. Devin Booker had his best game of the season (38 points), but it didn’t matter. The visitors couldn’t figure out a way to stop the C’s several weapons.

The most encouraging part of the outburst for the Celtics was that no one on the roster did anything out of the ordinary offensively. Five players finished in double figures. No one scored more than 19 points (Irving had the team-high 19). Nine different players scored six or more points. Horford dished out a career-high 11 assists, while serving as an offensive maestro at the top of the key. It was beautiful and efficient, which is something we’ve been seeing more and more of out of these Celtics over the last few weeks.

“It’s a big part of the way the offense is set up with the big guys,” Horford said. “We have the ball a lot of the time, I have the luxury to hand it off to Kyrie – guys are knocking down shots left and right. That’s just the way it is – any of us bigs, we’re handling the ball, going to dribble hand-off, making the extra pass.”

Over the past eight games (one-third of the season) the Celtics have the sixth-best offense in the league (scoring 111 points per 100 possessions) which has helped to catapult them up to the 12th best offense for the season. The defense has dropped off lately (Saturday was another ugly performance), but the C’s are still the top ranked defense in the NBA, and more importantly, are finding they can win games now with their offense as well. The scoring lulls have become fewer and even the bench unit has been providing a spark at times, as was seen in the second half, when they led a 18-2 run.

Even with Hayward out of the fold, the Celtics have enough offensive weapons to give opposing defenses a headache on a nightly basis, particularly when the starting unit is on the floor. Teams have to decide between defending Irving, Horford, Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown since they can’t stop everything. The C’s are doing a great job at seeing what the defense is trying to take away and finding the advantage, as was the case in the fourth quarter when Tatum scored six points in the final six minutes.

“Just opportunities are opening up,” Irving said. “Defenses having to make decisions out there on what they’re going to do – what they’re going to try to do to stop either me and Al’s pick-and-roll or me and Marcus’s pindowns. And Jayson’s just flying off, and did a great job of just making himself available tonight and being effective when he caught the ball.”

The end result has been a team that has shown it can win games in a multitude of ways. As long as the Celtics can kick up the defense a notch once again when they need to, this is the makings of one of the best two-way teams in the league. Irving has seen the development coming for a few weeks now.

“I’m not necessarily surprised,” Irving said on the Celtics being first in the NBA to 20 wins. “I think that the surprise is coming from outside of the locker room. We have a few goals that we want to hit throughout the season, but the most important thing is to build consistency. When you do that, you can start to develop and go from a good team to a great team. We still have a long way to go to consider ourselves a great team, before anyone considers that, which we understand. When you’re hitting marks and it’s consistent and you know what you can expect from the team, then you can start getting into that conversation. We’re doing an incredible job, we’re just trying to continue to build.”