The Celtics' bench is starting to show its bigger flaws

Amid injuries and illnesses to the starters, the majority of the Celtics bench has played above its head for the entire 2019-20 regular season, which is a credit to its personnel. Marcus Smart has been the sixth man in theory but has started nearly 75 percent of the games he’s been active in due to injuries leaving the rest of the Celtics bench ‘shorthanded’ on an almost nightly basis.

The injury bug is life in the NBA but it’s also been prevalent a bit more than usual for this team. The reality of how this group has been constructed is that this team’s success is going to be largely dependent on its top talent being fully intact. For awhile the Celtics were able to navigate through the injury turmoil with an underwhelming bench on paper. The second unit defense was elite early in the year with strong defense from the likes of Brad Wanamaker, Javonte Green and Semi Ojeleye along with timely offense from Enes Kanter and others on select nights. It wasn’t pretty but the reserves gave enough on both ends of the floor most nights to give the Celtics a chance at winning without leaning too heavily on the starters, effectively giving the front office enough confidence to stick with this mismatched group through February.

Normally, this is the time of year when a team is gaining more confidence in its personnel and sharpening its rotation ahead of the postseason in the race for better seeding. However, days after giving up a league-worst 51 points in the fourth quarter with a host of reserves featuring prominently in the collapse, the Celtics bench took another step backward on Friday night in a 99-94 loss to the Utah Jazz.

The box score will show that the Celtics lost this game on the offensive end and that’s true to a degree. 37 percent shooting and 94 points (the C’s are 1-6 when scoring less than 100) are not going to get the job done and poor shooting from the starters played a part in that. However, this was always going to be a game that the C’s were going to need to win with their defense with two 20-point scorers watching from the sidelines and Kemba Walker on a minutes limit.

In those circumstances, it is essential that Boston’s bench play well on the defensive end even with its two best defenders in the starting five (Smart, Ojeleye). Instead, the Jazz dominated a battle of the second units in the first half, using a 32-10 run midway through the first half to build a double-digit lead the C’s were never able to recover from.

Brad Stevens did his best to prop up the shorthanded effort but Smart pulled no punches in his postgame assessment.

“Our effort was sh*t,” Smart said. “We gave them the first couple punches and then, after that, our effort died down. We picked it up towards the end, but it was too late at that time. We definitely couldn't make a shot. They did a great job of coming out and executing all the way through, and that really put us on our heels. So we've got to move on from it. Game's over. Give credit to Utah. They came in and did their job, and we just have to bounce back on Sunday.”

That crappy effort he was referring to came almost entirely from the bench (with a couple of miscues mixed in from Walker and Tatum while each was trying to carry the offensive load for that overmatched group). Amid injuries to the wings, one player (Ojeleye) has stepped up his play and provided some useful minutes with the starters. The rest of the bench? Beyond Rob Williams, no one is inspiring confidence that they will be able to hold their own with the best in the East during the postseason right now or help this group regularly win games in the next month against solid teams.

Outside of Jordan Clarkson and Joe Ingles, the Jazz has no ‘name’ players off their bench but that did not stop them from walloping the C’s in the scoring department by a 39-13 margin. They played fast, crisp basketball, hunting out mismatches and forcing mistakes by the C’s in high leverage spots on both ends of the floor, something that we’ve seen plenty from this group over the past week.

MVP-level play from Tatum over the past month have covered up some of the bench faults offensively but that guy was not in the building on Friday night (18 points in 32 minutes), which made Utah domination of the C’s second unit on both ends of the floor a game-changing result in both halves. Every player on the Utah bench had a +22 or higher in plus/minus while Javonte Green (only played in the second half) was the only Celtic reserve who didn’t have a double-digit plus/minus.

After the game, Stevens did his best to sugarcoat the performance and lack of offensive firepower that has been a common issue for the C’s over the past month-plus.

“It’s so hard to know,” Stevens said when asked if scoring is a concerning issue for the reserves. “We had a guy score 22 the other night, we’ve had a number of our guys play well off the bench. And we’ve never really had our full bench intact because we’ve never had our full starters intact. Hard to know. When we’re full we’ll see how it looks and see how it goes, but it is what it is. Thought we had a lot of good things tonight. Just didn’t score well enough. Some of that was decision-making at the rim, where they did a great job, some of it was excellent pressure defense by them, and some of it was missed open shots. Just part of it. I don’t want to make any generalizations about our bench until I see our whole team moving forward.”

I understand Stevens trying to give his guys confidence but this is also game 62 of the regular season. We know what these guys are from an offensive standpoint and they aren’t dependable scorers no matter if the team is fully healthy. The one guy that’s expected to do that with the bench (Enes Kanter) beyond Smart can barely stay on the floor long enough most nights to contribute anything on that front because his perimeter defense is such a liability. This will remain a problem even when the Celtics are at full health.

Elsewhere, there is no one else emerging from the masses to act as a reliable 8th or 9th man for the postseason when this group is healthy. Brad Wanamaker (team-worst -25) was burned by Mike Conley and Jordan Clarkson for much of the night and airballed a pair of critical 3s in crunch time. He has been consistent early in the year but has looked overmatched against elite playoff teams in recent weeks on both ends. Romeo Langford’s inability to score (2 points in last five games) is a continual issue as well, giving the team essentially nothing when he struggles on defense.

The same goes for Grant Williams who is suddenly in a 3-point shooting funk again (11 straight misses from deep), having not made a 3 since Feb. 11. Rob Williams provided some nice rim protection in the second half against Utah but his offensive game is always going to be solely dependent on lobs and cutbacks and those are going to be tough to come by against any good playoff defense. The offensive spark from Javonte Green that we saw earlier in the season has been non-existent as well lately (three points over his last 75 minutes of action).

With the rest of Boston’s bench in Maine (Tremont Waters might have helped in this contest provide a spark), the end result was the C’s stars being dealt with a steady diet of double teams and Marcus Smart trying to do too much (9/23 FG) which generally does not lead to good things in the win column.

The Celtics don’t need everyone on their bench to turn it around but they need someone besides just one player to step up from the pack down the stretch here if they want to have any chance of winning the second seed. Walker knows its essential that the second group gets some confidence back.

“It’s tough, but we have guys that are very capable of playing minutes and playing well when our starters go out,” Walker said. “That’s what this league is about. It’s all about guys stepping up and being there for your guys when other guys step up, other guys are injured. We have guys. We have the bodies that are very, very capable of doing what we need them to do. We just fell short tonight.”

Was the C’s shorthanded success a bit of fool’s gold earlier this season? We are going to find out in the next week with more tough battles looming against the Thunder, Pacers and Bucks, particularly if Jayson Tatum falls back to earth a little bit and play less like he did on Friday night to protect some wear and tear.

“If I had to do it again might have got him back a little bit earlier, but also we just have to play without him some,” Stevens said. “We have to figure it out.”

For now, Ojeleye and Rob Williams are the only usual bench players (besides Smart) that are providing steady play in the past week and the rest of this roster is starting to get exposed. That’s simply not good enough when there are players at the end of the roster that will not be playable in the postseason (Edwards/Poirier) since Stevens clearly doesn't trust them with regular-season minutes.  With injuries likely to continually pop up in the final six weeks of the regular season and strategic rest for the starters turning into a priority, it’s on Brad Stevens to find a way to get this group of reserves functioning again defensively or providing some sort of stronger offensive support. Otherwise, Ainge’s decision to stand pat with this group on the trade and buyout market could prove costly when it comes to regular season seeding and if any injuries end up popping up during the postseason.