Jabari Bird makes case for more opportunity with play vs. Kings

Back during the first week of the regular season, the Celtics were looking at the prospect of a 0-3 start in Philadelphia. They were down several key rotation bodies while facing a double-digit deficit against a hot-shooting Sixers team. Brad Stevens shocked in that contest by inserting two-way player Jabari Bird into the game to help slow down J.J. Redick. Bird did his job and the Celtics came back for the win, a victory that started the team’s 16-game winning streak.

“All the way through preseason and training camp, I felt like he was one of our better perimeter defenders,” Stevens said of Bird after the win over Philly. “I think he's got a huge upside. His rebounding spoke for itself in the preseason practices and his ability to guard on the ball, especially shooters cutting off screens. Just really good. He's not afraid.”

The 6-foot-6 rookie played 14 minutes that night in Philadelphia. Prior to Sunday’s game against the Kings, he had seen the floor for a total of 12 minutes over four NBA games since that surprise contribution.

The lack of playing time since then is understandable. The Celtics started to get healthy bodies back shortly after the Sixers game, which relegated Bird to G-League duty. When the team got shorthanded again in January and February, Bird was stuck on the injury list, dealing with back spasms that sidelined him for most of January and February.

The 24-year-old finally got a clean bill of health last week. He played in garbage time against the Pelicans last Sunday night, but his first meaningful minutes came Sunday night against the Pelicans. The Kings 3-point shooters were hot in the first half and Stevens did not like his options to slow down Buddy Hield, since Abdel Nader was struggling on both ends of the floor.

Bird got the call for the final nine minutes of regulation and did not disappoint.

The Celtics outscored the Kings by eight points over that span, and a game that was tight in the fourth quarter turned into a comfortable win for Boston. The box score will indicate that Bird didn’t do much to contribute (his only official stat was one offensive rebound) but a closer look at his play shows a player that knows his role and does it well.

The rookie replaced Nader (who has had a tough year on both ends of the floor) when he came into the game. Offensively, Nader has been an above-average 3-point shooter (37 percent), but he’s been absolutely miserable around the basket. In fact, he’s hit just 39 percent of his shot attempts in the restricted area (13-of-33) on the year, which is more than 20 percent below the league average.

Two plays from Sunday’s loss show Nader’s issues in that area. He doesn’t have the speed to create separation and doesn’t look for outlets when he faces strong contests from defenders. This leads to misses like this:





Bird is not known for his offense, but when he got a chance to make a play on Sunday night, he showed great awareness. He turned the corner well after a handoff and drove the lane hard. When he met some stiff resistance in the form of center Kosta Koufos, he didn’t force up a shot like Nader. Instead, he dished out to the wing. The Kings’ scrambling defense couldn’t recover against the C’s ball movement, which ultimately led to a corner 3 from Semi Ojeleye.



This is the type of awareness that should earn Bird a little more trust from Stevens over the next couple weeks here. Defensively, he was pretty good overall. He left Hield open for a corner 3 (he missed it) on one possession, but the lengthy wing contested Hield well on his other attempts. The sharpshooter scored just seven of his 20 points in the second half, as Bird stayed disciplined and denied him clean looks in isolation situations like this one:



Without Smart in the fold, the C’s are going to have trouble matching up on the wing on some nights. Longer wings like Jayson Tatum, Ojeleye and Nader don’t have the foot speed to stick with guys like Hield at times. Shane Larkin lacks the size to contest bigger guards as well on the perimeter. Bird has a nice mix of size and speed, and could be a useful alternative to Nader going forward in certain matchups, particularly against potential playoff opponents like Miami and Washington that are full of speedy wings. 

Sunday’s performance shouldn’t mean much for the big picture, but it was a step in the right direction for the second-round pick. Stevens has to figure out who he can trust to defend this postseason, since that’s how this team is going to get out of the first round if Kyrie Irving is sidelined for the series. Nader has received plenty of opportunities already in the past month, and has fallen short of expectations in the majority of them. It’s time for the Celtics to see what Bird is capable of with regular minutes.