The Boston Celtics wrap up their preseason schedule with an early 6:30 game tonight against the Miami Heat. Consider it an appetizer before the ALCS main course.
This is already a disappointing finish to the preseason considering the Celtics will be without Jaylen Brown and Al Horford due to health and safety protocols and Marcus Smart due to suspension.
“We're missing a few guys tonight, obviously,” Ime Udoka said after the team’s morning shootaround in Miami. “Rotation-wise, we're not going to get to see what we wanted to.”
That puts the Celtics behind where they had hoped to be by this point, which will push the learning and development of the team deeper into the regular season than Udoka wanted.
That doesn’t mean this game is a wash. There is still plenty to look for and pick useful information out of it.
1. Jayson Tatum and bench lineups
One thing we’ve been able to glean from the preseason is that Udoka will probably play Tatum much like Brad Stevens did. Tatum will obviously start, but then he’ll be among the early subs and come back to carry second units at the end of the first and third quarters and into the start of the second and fourth.
The starting lineup will, in a way, act as a lineup that enters the game with 2:30 to go in the first quarter during the regular season. Grant Williams, Romeo Langford, and Dennis Schröder will all be in the starting lineup with Tatum, so this is a chance to see who can complement Tatum the most and still create enough matchup issues to maximize the whole group.
This means it’s also a test of Tatum’s passing skills and trust, since there’s little doubt that he’ll draw a bulk of the attention. Where is Tatum’s head in terms of trusting teammates, what can he do to set them up better, and how can he use whatever threat they provide to open up opportunities for himself?
2. Tatum’s bad habits
Tatum has a real chance to become an MVP candidate, but he still has habits that he can improve. In particular, he’s still leaving the ball too exposed on drives.
Extended minutes of Tatum + bench units will give him more time to tighten up the handle and get into the better habit of either (a) selling that he’s going right with high dribble and -then- crossing over or (b) keeping the crossover low in traffic.
Tatum is going straight down the lane with the ball up high. That’s an easy strip for a lot of NBA defenders. If he’s going to keep the ball that high, he needs to sell a hard drive to the right so the defender is thinking of beating Tatum to a spot instead of poking at the ball. That’s when Tatum can crossover and go left.
If he’s not selling that drive and is facing a defender, he needs to get that crossover down below his knees so it can’t be ripped from him. A game like this against a tough defense like Miami’s is going to provide some real opportunities for Tatum to work in tight spaces.
3. Someone stealing minutes
This whole preseason has provided ample opportunity for guys to demand minutes. Aaron Nesmith made his case against Orlando and he’ll get another chance against a better team tonight. Langford and Grant Williams will have similar chances, especially alongside Tatum, to prove their worth.
Considering Langford, Williams, and Nesmith have already been put in these positions, we might deduce that they’re already in the mix, but Udoka is very fond of telling us how much we already know about certain veterans. “We know what we have with...” followed by a veteran’s name is, probably, Udoka’s most common refrain this preseason, so the extended minutes for younger guys could be more data gathering than anything else.
Basically, the formula is: if we know what we have with the vets, and we don’t know what we have with the younger players, then the younger players have to play a lot more so we can see what they’ve got.
Got it?
Instead of reading all the minutes they’re getting as a sign that they’re going to play a lot, we probably should read it as a sign that this is a Celtics Squid Game determining which players will get eliminated.
So this is another big chance for all of those guys and, maybe, one of the end-of-bench candidates to make his case. Miami is the best team the Celtics have faced in the preseason, and if they’re approaching this like the Celtics and playing their regulars, then we’ll see just how real the success of Nesmith, Langford, and Grant Williams has been.
