One early topic of conversation about the Celtics is how well their opponents are shooting 3-pointers. Miami hit 48.5% against them on Friday night (16-33) and New York opened the season hitting 43.9% (18-41).
It’s obviously way too early to call this a trend. Washington and Indiana could shoot in the low 30% range and none of this will matter. But it’s something that's happening right now, so let’s look at it.
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Step one: Find out how this looks in relation to everyone else. Is this just a thing that's happening across the board, or is it just happening to Boston?
In two games, Boston has the highest opponent 3-point percentage at 45.9%. Milwaukee and Philadelphia are second and third, also above 45%. Five teams have opponents shooting better than 40% against them (Washington, Dallas, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Portland).
I count two elite teams (Boston and Milwaukee), one very good team (Cleveland), one playoff team (Dallas … probably), a possible upstart wildcard team (Brooklyn), and two rebuilding teams (Washington, Portland).
So off the bat, it feels random. It impacts good and bad teams, but Boston is the worst of the bunch so far.
Step two: Why is this happening?
I looked at all the three-point attempts over the first two games. The best conclusion I can come up with is …
… There's no single reason why the Celtics are getting burned the way they have been from 3. But there are definitely two ways the Celtics can change things.
Some of them have come in transition, where it’s hard to stop. There are cross matches, there's confusion, a good shooter gets lost and he steps into a good look. It happens to everybody.
Some of them have come from simply good offense. The ball gets moved well, guys get pulled out of position, and someone hits an open shot. This also happens to everybody.
Some of them have just been tough makes. Kyle Lowry hit a couple with a hand in his face the other night, and there's nothing that can be done about that. A team plays good defense, contests a shot well, and it still goes in sometimes. No big deal.
All of these things will average out over time. Again, there's so little that can be determined definitively over two games, so you have to trust that the historical percentages will eventually level out a bunch of what’s happening.
But there are definitely a couple of ways Boston can make life a little easier on themselves here.
1: Grab rebounds
The Celtics have been roasted on glass (though they also did a lot of roasting of their own against Miami). It was a big reason why New York was able to put up 20 more shots than Boston in the season opener. Here are just a couple of examples.
Donte DiVincenzo isn’t going to miss those very often. Immanuel Quickley didn’t miss his.
And this particularly frustrating one against Miami really hurt.
Giving up offensive rebounds is an easy way to give up open 3-pointers. A lot of guys turn and look at shots going up, so when the ball is rebounded, they’ve lost sight of their man long enough to be confused and lost when the pass goes out to the perimeter.
And because the ball is often rebounded in the paint, a player is surrounded and looking to kick out nowadays, rather than go up for a contested shot. There are too many good looks coming after opponent misses so far this season. Clean up the rebounding, and the opponent percentage will drop.
2: Stop letting guys get comfortable.
Quickley and Tyler Herro were the biggest problems in the first two games. Both hit five 3-pointers, and both might have benefited from the Celtics defense letting them get into a rhythm.
These are Quickley’s first two looks against the Celtics.
Jayson Tatum didn’t exactly put up much of a fight here. Neither did Jaylen Brown on the second look.
The third look was the offensive rebound I showed you earlier, so it’s no wonder he killed Boston from deep. The looks were way too clean, and by the time he got cooking, Boston’s defense started scrambling a bit and other guys fed off his confidence.
That's how it goes sometimes. One guy gets hot, and the rest of the guys want a piece of the heat. It can snowball quickly.
Here’s how Herro started the game Friday night:
The Celtics fell apart in transition there, but there could have been some more resistance. Jrue Holiday is better than an undisciplined fly-by, and no one else challenged him.
Then he took advantage of Boston’s drop coverage
Kristaps Porzingis was just too low. That was a bad read from him. Bam Adebayo didn’t roll, so there was no need to drop as far as he did. He could have been a step higher, maybe more, to make Herro a little uncomfortable.
Herro started making tough shots after that, and then he started hitting from 3.
There's nothing to really worry about when it comes to this stuff right now. The Celtics are going to clean some of this up naturally as they progress through the season. They are well aware of their need to rebound better, and that falls on the wings to crash and grab some of the longer rebounds.
They are also going to see the defensive mistakes in the film sessions and start to rectify those. Obviously no team will be perfect, so they will screw up from time to time no matter what. But they need time to get on the same page. The Holiday trade isn’t even a month old and the preseason was so meaningless that Porzingis needs more reps to get his reads right in drop coverage.
The Celtics need to be better, but there is plenty of time to clean this up.