Robb: The Celtics' offense is officially a problem, with or without Kyrie Irving

Ever since Gordon Hayward went down on opening night, offense was always going to be the biggest issue for this Celtics team. A 20-plus per game All-Star scorer is never easy to replace and it’s particularly challenging when he’s only one of two efficient shot creators on the entire roster.

For the better part of the first half of the season, Brad Stevens managed to overcome Hayward’s absence in the win-loss column due to a variety of factors. Some games, the Celtics’ defense played out of its mind. Other times, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum exceeded expectations and Al Horford couldn’t miss from 3-point range. More recently, Kyrie Irving had the best shooting month of his career (December). The combination of these elements and some superb coaching by Stevens guided the C’s to the best record in the East over the first three months of the year

While the some of these factors (i.e. the top-tier defense) have proven to be the real over time, reality has started to set in on the offensive end. Over the past month (13 games), the Celtics have the best defense and second-worst offense in the NBA (100.5 points per 100 possessions), which was capped off by Thursday’s ugly 89-80 loss to the Sixers at the TD Garden. The performance was a season-low point total for the hosts and a perfect example of the team’s glaring scoring issues among the supporting cast without the services of Irving (sore shoulder).

For the better part of four quarters on Thursday night, the Celtics couldn’t execute with the ball in their hands. They took contested shots (40 percent from the field), they turned the ball over (season-high 19 turnovers) and they couldn’t get to the free-throw line for the first 27 minutes of the game. It was an embarrassing performance, one that Brad Stevens blamed on a lack of effort.

“I just didn’t think we played hard enough on offense,” Stevens said. “I thought we played hard on defense. And it’s, I guess, a unique game when you’re playing hard on one end of the floor but not on the other, but we just, you know, we were very sloppy, over-dribbled — dribble didn’t take us anywhere — not moving the ball, not getting to spots. And when Kyrie’s out, you’ve got to be even better at those things.”

While there’s no question that Irving’s absence impacted the putrid outing, Boston’s offensive problems go beyond the All-Star’s absence on Thursday. This group is starting to reveal its true colors on offense, and it’s problems are youth and inconsistency.

Over the past month, the Celtics have the second-lowest field goal percentage (43 percent) in the league. Tatum and Brown are still averaging 13 points per game, which is a highly respectable number given the youth of both players, but their 3-point shooting has lingered between 30-35 percent for both players during that stretch. It’s unrealistic for the team to expect either player to match their outputs over the first two months of the year. In fact, the better bet might be regression. Without either player serving as efficient or aggressive offensive options as much lately, the bench pieces have taken a bigger chunk of the offense and therein lies the problem.

Marcus Smart, Terry Rozier and Marcus Morris have all been eager shooters the entire season. Some nights it works, but all three of them can get into “shoot-first” mode at various points. On those nights, isolation sequences and questionable shot selection add up, killing Celtics ball movement and any offensive flow.

“I mean there’s been a lot of stretches where it’s been good,” Stevens said of the offensive struggles. “But you have to do it every night. We did a lot of east-west dribbling, we did a lot of staring, we did a lot of not reversing, and we did a lot of hoping. And that’s no way to play. The ball didn’t move, the ball didn’t whip around. It’s not a fun way to play. It’s certainly not fun to watch. I’m sure you all feel that way. And it’s not good enough, not against a really good defensive team like Philadelphia. So we have to be better.”

The problems don’t stop for the Celtics with the poor shooting over the past month. The team ranks dead last in free-throw rate, and close to the bottom of the league in offensive rebounding rate as well. The C’s are missing a lot and they aren’t giving themselves many second chances off those bricks. Smart and Rozier have very low free-throw rates for guards, which makes many of their forays into the lane low percentage plays (as seen by their sub 40 percent field goal percentage).

Ultimately, the Celtics are an elite defensive team and a team that’s full of trick-or-treat offensive players such as Rozier, Smart and Morris within their supporting cast. This group still has the talent to make a deep run this postseason without Hayward based on the defense alone, but the front office is going to need to give Stevens some additional offensive options off the pine, to give him alternatives on nights that Rozier, Smart and company are sinking the offense and outweighing their defensive contributions.

A shot creator (Tyreke Evans) or pure outside shooter (Marco Belinelli) would both be welcome additions and could fit into the disabled player exception that this team has. A potential return by Hayward at the end of the year would obviously be a welcome boost as well, but can’t be counted on. All of those options will be covered in greater depth in the weeks to come here at BSJ.

For now, though, it's evident that this issue needs to be addressed in the next few weeks (via trade or free agency) if the Celtics want to right the ship. The Celtics will give themselves a chance in most games with their defense, but they aren’t going to stay atop of the East for long if the offense stays in this rut.