Terry Rozier has emerged as a steady scoring option for Celtics

Slowly but surely, the Celtics' offense has come around since the start of February. Despite dealing with a multitude of injuries, they still have the sixth-best offense in the NBA since the All-Star break and have managed to stay competitive against playoff teams despite missing up to six key rotation players during the past week.

There have been a number of contributing factors to Boston’s offensive resurgence. Marcus Morris has gotten healthy and turned into a reliable double-digit scorer. Jayson Tatum has snapped out of a midseason funk and looks aggressive again seeking out his shot. Same goes for Al Horford (season-high 18 attempts Friday night). However, since the start of February, the man who has emerged as the second top scorer is none of these names. Instead, it’s been Terry Rozier.

The reserve guard finished with a team-high 17 points in Friday’s win over the Orlando Magic, which marked the 18th-straight game Rozier has tallied double figures in the points column. Over that stretch, he’s averaging 15.8 points per game, placing him a strong second among seven Celtics players that score 10 points or more per game.

The transformation of Rozier as a consistent offensive weapon has largely come on the back of the 24-year-old’s 3-point shooting. He is actually a better shooter from 3-point range (45 percent) than he is from the field (42 percent) over the past 18 games and that’s perfectly fine from the Celtics' perspective. Not only is the athletic guard red-hot from beyond the arc, he’s taking more than half of his shot attempts (6.1 per game) from downtown. For a head coach that loves to spread the floor with shooting, that has to be an encouraging development for Brad Stevens.



A look at Rozier’s season shot chart shows where he’s doing most of his damage. He has been elite at the top of the key and the left side of the floor. His consistency has also been worthy of note during this stretch. He hasn’t propped up his 3-point average based on one or two hot shooting nights. In fact, Friday marked the 12th-consecutive game he has hit multiple 3-point field goals, the longest streak this year on the team. That’s no small feat for a squad that has Kyrie Irving on it as well as two of the best 3-point shooters in the league this year (Horford, Tatum).

While the 3-point shooting remains the headline for Rozier's improved production, the undersized guard has made progress in other parts of his offensive game in the past couple months. He’s been subpar at getting to the free throw line over his first two seasons but has turned the tide there quite a bit. Over the last 18 games, Rozier is second on the team in free throw attempts per game (3.6 per game) just behind Irving at the top of the C’s leaderboard. That nearly doubles his average (1.9 per game) for the season. Trips into the paint are still an adventure for Rozier (he’s shooting just 50 percent from the field in the restricted area) but he’s getting better at drawing contract from opponents. Some of that is likely the result of more aggressive closeouts by opponents at the 3-point line. Rozier has the athleticism to get past defenders who are on their heels and he’s turning that into more points at the charity stripe.

In the wake of a potential season-ending injury to Marcus Smart this week, Rozier’s emergence is all the more important for this team. He already brings an invaluable skill set for a reserve guard with his phenomenal rebounding and low turnover play. By turning himself into a steady scorer and knowing his limitations, the Celtics offense still will be a handful for most opponents once Kyrie Irving and Jaylen Brown return to the fold.

In the meantime, it is Rozier’s time to shine. The Celtics are going to need him to sustain something close to this type of production heading into the postseason with Smart out of the fold. While Stevens will surely miss having Smart’s distribution and defensive skills down the stretch of games, he will get an upgrade a shooter by having Rozier in the fold as a crunch-time option. The third-year guard showed during last year’s run to the Eastern Conference Finals that he was ready to handle big moments and that role is only going to increase this spring. That could be a good thing for this team.