The Boston Celtics’ 3-point percentage is like the yodeling guy on The Price is Right Cliffhangers game, climbing its way higher and higher as the season progresses. And just like the game, the Celtics are hoping it can stop high enough to become big winners instead of having it come crashing down to earth right at the end.
After shooting below 33% in October and November, the Celtics have raised their percentage to 36.8% in March. Just for context, a full season at 36.8% would be good for fourth in the league, while a full season under 33% is Detroit Pistons/OKC Thunder territory.
Raining hellfire on the Sacramento Kings at a 55% clip, and getting a combined 10-15 from Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, certainly helped. Brown dropped 16 points in the first quarter and Tatum followed it up with 17 in the second, forcing Ime Udoka to change things up a little to ride hot hands.
“We have a pretty set pattern, rotation-wise, unless somebody is kind of on fire,” he said. “I mean especially when they're blitzing them and getting everybody else shots. Obviously, they're going at a high level, but everybody else will feed off them at some point. And so just want to still stagger them. Not cool one guy down but you can't run them both the whole quarter and so somebody has to sacrifice and they're fine with it, knowing they'll come back in a few minutes.”
Getting everyone else shots might be as impressive as making the shots they took. It’s not often two guys score 30-plus points while each taking 18 or fewer shots. In fact, I just spent way too much time trying to look it up and I can’t find an instance of it happening with two teammates, though I admit I might have missed something.
Either way, it’s not something you see much of, and it’s very impressive to see in action. Tatum and Brown followed the gameplan of giving the ball up when they're blitzed or doubled. Sometimes it showed up in the stats, like in Tatum’s four assists, or not (at least not unless you dig) like this pass out of the double team from Brown that led to Al Horford’s touch pass alley oop to Robert Williams.
L💥B WILLIAMS pic.twitter.com/UkePTby5Nq
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) March 19, 2022
On one possession, Tatum passed out of a double team in the right corner, and the ball went to Daniel Theis, then to Derrick White, and finally to Payton Pritchard for a left corner 3-pointer.
Udoka has been trying to take more advantage of Pritchard’s shooting by playing him off the ball, and it’s been paying off in a big way, especially in fourth quarters where Pritchard has scored 10 and 9 points in consecutive games, mostly from behind the arc.
He spent November shooting 14.3% in spotty playing time. Since the trade deadline, when the Dennis Schröder trade opened up significantly more minutes, he’s been bombing away at a 44.7% clip.
“People want to look at stats and numbers. But like, beginning of the year, I was playing sometimes at the very end of games, (it's) different,” Pritchard said. “My job was to just come in and be ready, knock down shots, play hard defense, make plays, be a winning player. So for me, once the trade deadline happened, I was just stuck in my mindset to come in and compete and keep earning more trust in the coaches and do that.”
Even with Grant Williams, at one point the only player still with the Celtics surpassing his career 3-point shooting averages, cooling off a little, the Celtics are starting to find a little more of their shooting touch. Now the goal for them is to get White somewhere close to league average. His new teammates seem confident in him figuring it out.
“You put so much work in and you go through a stretch where you may not be playing as well or hitting as many shots as you want,” Tatum said. “But just tell him to keep shooting, keep playing, be aggressive at all times because that's what we need as a team."
The Celtics are in the middle of the NBA 3-point shooting pack this month, but it’s not critical that they climb too much higher. Obviously, every team wants to shoot 40% or better on their 3-pointers, but Boston’s defense is so good, they just need to hit an average amount of shots to score enough points to win.
Getting to the average is the key. It’s not good enough to just shoot blazing hot right now and level-off the overall numbers from this season. They have to just start hitting this 36% number or better from now on. If they can just keep that number right around the middle of the pack, then Tatum and Brown can do what they do best while relying on an elite defense to keep the other team in check.
And if Brown and Tatum catch fire, then great. Udoka will find a way to accommodate that.
“If they’re going hot they’ll ask me, ‘Do you want to keep this.’ And obviously it’s a feel thing there. Nothing is set in stone. And when a guy is rolling the way Jaylen was in the first quarter and Jayson in the second, it’s easy to extend them.”