The opening night starting five of Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward and Al Horford was officially put on ice on a Monday night in Charlotte back in November, just 17 games into the regular season. The Celtics had stumbled out to a 9-7 start with the highly touted unit, even though that grouping had just started 13 of those games collectively due to injuries/rest (7-6 record in those starts).
Stevens rode that group heavily in those first 13 games, playing them collectively 137 minutes together, which made it his second-most used lineup all year. Incredibly, after pulling Hayward from the starting five in Charlotte on November 19th, Stevens barely gave that unit a second look all year long. The head coach played the original starting five together again in only six(!) of the final 66 regular season games for a grand total of eight minutes.
It’s clear, however, that while Stevens put that lineup on the backburner over the past six months, he didn't forget about it entirely heading into this postseason. He closed with that group for the second straight game on Friday night in Boston’ 104-96 win over the Pacers to take a commanding 3-0 series lead. Through those two contests, Stevens has now played the unit more (10 minutes) than he did in the final 66 games of the regular season (eight minutes).
While an injury to Marcus Smart may have forced Stevens to turn back to his original starting five in crunch time, the postseason returns have been stellar through two games. Boston has a 42.1 net rating over the 10 minutes of crunch time the Irving/Brown/Hayward/Tatum/Horford group has played together, including outscoring the Pacers 13-8 in the final 5:45 of Game 3.
Irving reflected on returning to that original starting group after posting a double-double (17 points, 10 assists in Game 3).
“It just shows we’ve come a long way, honestly, in terms of our maturity as a group,” Irving explained. “Just our mindset of whoever is on the floor, making sure that we’re all giving each other confidence, we’re all in the right spots and we’re all doing the little things in order to assure a win. When you have that type of camaraderie going into huddles, everyone is talking and everyone is feeling great, then going out there executing on the offensive and defensive end, it makes it a lot easier.
“When you have that group starting off — and we started off pretty horribly this season — we had time to figure it out. Now that the stakes are at its highest, the pressure, whatever you want to call it, we are settling into who we want to be and that’s just an overall great team. Everyone is ready to play and it could be anyone’s night. You just got to be ready to support that.”
So why exactly did said lineup not work to start the season? And what has changed now? Let’s look at what has gone into arguably the best five Celtics on the roster reuniting and what it means for the rest of this postseason run
An ugly start
The original starting five started poorly in the first month of the regular season but the reasons why were somewhat surprising given the personnel: They couldn’t score. The Celtics starting five averaged just 98 points per 100 possessions, which was a whopping 10 points worse than the team’s season average. Despite plenty of offensive firepower at each position, it just wasn’t working together collectively, making them look like a lottery team on offense instead of a contender.
The reasons why are easy to see in hindsight. Brown and Horford opened the season in a miserable 3-point shooting slump. Hayward was playing his first basketball in 12 months and was a shell of himself on the offensive end of the floor with his mobility and explosiveness. Collectively, that group shot just 30 percent from 3-point range over their 13 starts together and that’s even with Irving playing fantastic basketball during that stretch.
That starting unit was also very jump shot happy back in October and November. They averaged an anemic 12 free throws per 48 minutes together and hit the offensive glass together worse than any team in the league. When the jumpers weren’t falling, there was simply no way this group was scoring regularly and good teams (Toronto, Portland, Indiana, Denver, Utah) took advantage of this early on, leading to the .500 start
The defense was actually strong (96 points per 100 possessions) with this small-ball lineup but it wasn’t good enough to overcome the woeful offense. Ultimately, Stevens pulled the plug and sent Hayward to the bench. Brown lost his job a week later after getting hurt in Dallas, opening the door for Smart to take over the starting two spot until his injury this month.
Smart’s injury opens the door to a second chance
We don’t know just yet why Stevens elected to keep this group on ice in the final 66 games of the regular season. Some of it just might be bench rotations or perhaps a bit of it was strategic to limit other teams from seeing it until now. However, once Marcus Smart went down with an oblique tear in Game No. 81, it was pretty clear that the original starting group was going to get a shot again at some point.
Aron Baynes was handed the starting role next to Horford ahead of the first round matchup with the Pacers but his perimeter defense makes him a liability in crunch time with the Pacers shooting ability at the big spots (Myles Turner). With Marcus Morris and Terry Rozier a rollercoaster ride on both ends on a nightly basis (both have been more good than bad in this series), Stevens has been left with a pretty clear cut choice to close games: Going with his best five guys remaining on the roster.
After a back-and-forth final few minutes of Game 2 with Indiana which saw this original starting group closing out the game with an 8-0 run, we got an extended look at the Irving/Brown/Tatum/Hayward/Horford unit for the final 5:45 of Game 3. The Pacers ran into all sorts of problems trying to contain this lineup and it’s easy to see why in a few specific instances, despite a change in their personnel.
No easy way to matchup
4:20 left: Celtics lead 91-90
Nate McMillan stuck with the twin towers of Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis for the first couple minutes of crunch time, a duo that would seemingly give the Pacers a big advantage in the paint and on the glass. However, having two true bigs on the floor played right into Boston’s hands as pick-and-rolls forced Sabonis to switch onto Irving in isolation. With Boston having great 3-point shooting all over the floor, not much help can be sent for Sabonis. Irving pulls up for a jumper here to give the Celtics a three-point lead.
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) April 20, 2019
Kyrie dazzles with the handle and finds Horford on the wing! ?#Celtics 100#GoldDontQuit 94
1:21 left on #NBAonABC pic.twitter.com/Be5HrweohY
— NBA (@NBA) April 20, 2019
Hayward with the HUGE tip in for the #Celtics pic.twitter.com/2BNaWFOfpc
— Celtics on NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSCeltics) April 20, 2019