The Celtics are 11-10 after 21 games, a tick over 25% into the season. This really is the first marker with any significance. We’re starting to get a sense of who teams are and where they might be headed. There has been time for hot and slow starts to level off, and for adjustments to be made and start to take hold.
For example, the 11-9 New York Knicks have determined that Kemba Walker is out of their rotation. After a fair amount of evidence, it’s been shown that New York is better without Walker on the floor. That evidence is strong enough at this point of the season to make decisions like this.
So where do the Celtics stand? What can we glean from them at the first turn? Here’s a look at a few big storylines from the beginning of the season and where we stand with them.
The offense and defense in general
Their offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) is 106, 21st in the NBA. Their defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) is 104.9, sixth in the league.
The defensive rating is trending way up from its 107.7 rating over the first six games in October. Their 15 games in November saw the Celtics post a 103.7 rating for the month, fourth-best in the league. Once they started to incorporate a wider variety of schemes and got away from the much-discussed “switch-everything” of the first few games, things started to click.
The offense, however, is stagnant. Sure, their October rating was 103.5 and their November rating was 107.2, but that seems to be a league-wide adjustment to how the game was called by officials early on. The October rating was good for 21st, but the nearly four point jump was only good for 19th in November.
Poor shooting is at the heart of Boston’s offensive woes. Their 3-point percentage is down nearly 5% from last season. Here are the changes in percentage over last year for Boston’s top five 3-point shooters
1. Jayson Tatum: -7%
2. Jaylen Brown: -2.7%
3. Marcus Smart: -4.3%
4. Dennis Schröder: -1.3%
5. Al Horford: -7.9%
They account for 29 of Boston’s 3-pointers per game. The only players out-performing last seasons’ 3-point shooting percentages are Grant Williams, Romeo Langford, and Josh Richardson. Richardson’s percentage is better because he’s taking fewer 3-pointers, not making more.
Langford is 15-35 this season after being 10-45 combined over his previous two seasons. Grant Williams is truly outpacing his past performances, making them Boston’s two best rotation shooters so far this season.
That’s a fun stat for them, and the outright aberration of it all suggests some level of regression to the mean for everyone involved. Grant and Romeo probably can’t keep this up all season and the rest of the guys can’t shoot that poorly. It’s reasonable to expect a few games here or there of some hot shooting to get guys closer to their averages, even if this ends up being a down shooting season.
Simply put, Jayson Tatum made 39.6% of his 1507 regular season 3-point attempts coming into this season. There’s no reason to believe him shooting 31.6% on his last 177 attempts is just how things are now.
Tatum’s evolution
Much has been made about Ime Udoka’s push to make Tatum and Brown better distributors. Brown’s injury and recovery has pushed back the timeline of his analysis by a few weeks, so for now the focus is solely on Tatum.
According to NBA tracking data (which is admittedly imperfect but, for now, the only available tool for measuring this kind of stuff) Tatum’s per game passing numbers looked like this last season:
- 49.5 passes
- 4.3 assists
- 0.7 secondary assists
- 8.5 potential assists
- 11.5 assist points created
Here are this season’s numbers:
- 44.2 passes
- 3.7 assists
- 0.7 secondary assists
- 8.5 potential assists
- 10.7 assist points created
There are fewer passes per game overall, but the secondary (or hockey assists -- the pass that leads to the assist) and potential assists (passes that could have become points) are the same.
Again, we’re looking for trends. Let’s see how we’re trending
Last 15 games:
- 43.9 passes
- 3.7 assists
- 0.7 secondary assists
- 8.6 potential assists
- 11 assist points created
Last 10 games:
- 41 passes
- 3.8 assists
- 0.7 secondary assists
- 8.7 potential assists
- 11.9 assist points created
Last 5 games:
- 43.8 passes
- 4.6 assists
- 1.2 secondary assists
- 11 potential assists
- 14.4 assist points created
For the sake of comparison, I think we can all agree that Tatum’s ball movement vs. Toronto was where Udoka wants it to be. Here are the numbers for that one game:
- 58 passes
- 10 assists
- 0 secondary assists
- 15 potential assists
- 31 assist points created
Tatum’s passing trend, at least as it pertains to assists, has slowly moved upward, but hasn’t quite gotten to where the coach wants it to be. The one flashpoint to watch for is this Raptors performance that Udoka should splash on a loop on Tatum’s laptop.
While we can expect Tatum’s shooting to level off, the passing is more of a work in progress. There’s a positive trend line over the course of the season, which is nice. The higher potential assist numbers suggest a bump in his assist numbers will come when the team’s overall shooting levels off. Still, Tatum needs to get better to be who Udoka wants him to be. If the Raptors game shows Tatum his full potential as an offensive player, then we could see a stark difference in his passing when we do this again at Game 41.
Marcus Smart the point guard
When the debate started about Smart the point guard, I argued that his passing was good enough to handle the job while doing so would make him more of a corner 3-point shooter, and thus would lead to a higher 3-point percentage.
I was so close.
Smart’s 3-point shooting is swirling the same toilet as Tatum’s right now. He’s down from 33% last season to 28.7% so far.
Yikes.
He has, though, seen an uptick in his corner 3’s. Last season, 14.5% of his 3-pointers came from the corner, and he shot 48.7% on them. This season, 20.8% of his 3-point attempts come from the corners, and he’s hitting 52.4%. The problem is that he’s still taking 70% of his attempts from above the break.
This could something that changes as Jaylen Brown works into the starting lineup and Dennis Schröder slides back to the bench. Smart has spent a lot of time doing what he did last season: starting in the corners and rotating up for catch-and-shoot opportunities higher on the floor.
In his last four games with Brown back in the starting lineup, Smart has taken 24 3-pointers. Of those, 10 have come from the corner, with 14 coming from above the break, lending credence to my assessment that Smart as the point guard will get better shots. He’s shot 33% over those four games, but 50% from the corner, and 21.4% from above the break.
We’ll have to wait and see how this levels out. While Smart has been on the floor during this first quarter of the season, he’s one of the most impacted players by the absences.
As for his point guarding, let’s dive into those passing stats again.
Last season:
- 48.8 passes
- 5.7 assists
- 0.4 secondary assists
- 8.6 potential assists
- 14.3 assist points created
This season:
- 48.3 passes
- 5.7 assists
- 0.5 secondary assists
- 11 potential assists
- 14.4 assist points created
So the passes are basically the same, but the number of potential assists has jumped. So unlike Tatum’s numbers, Smart’s assists seem to be impacted by the Celtics' poor shooting percentages. It seems like at least a few more of his passes are leading to scoring chances that aren’t being converted.
Let’s go back to the trends.
Last 10 games:
- 48.5 passes
- 7.1 assists
- 0.4 secondary assists
- 12 potential assists
- 18.2 assist point created
Last 5 games:
- 49.6 points
- 7 assists
- 0.4 secondary assists
- 13.8 potential assists
- 18.4 assist points created
Not only have the assists taken a step forward, but so have the potential assists. The trend line for Smart in this role is moving up in a meaningful way.
If the C’s shooting levels off and the team stays healthy, then we could be looking at a second quarter of the season bump for Smart in both shooting and assists.
So where are we with these elements of Boston’s season?
The defense is good and the offense is pretty average. However, there’s evidence that some normalization of the shooting will help raise that as well. If the Celtics can stay healthy for a while, we can find out if Smart’s evolution as a point guard will hold, and if Tatum has cracked some kind of passing code. Tatum is a young man being challenged to do something uncomfortable by his coach, which could be feeding into the rough shooting numbers.
The Raptors game is a bit of a flashpoint for the C’s. Did it unlock something or is it a one-off. The answer will dictate how this Celtics offense evolves moving forward.
