The Celtics are very much a modern NBA team. They shot 52 3-pointers and 42 2-pointers in their win over Brooklyn. Two players took double-digit 3-point attempts. A look at their heat map shows the basic, preferred shot distribution: 3-pointers and layups.
No one is going to accuse the Celtics of trying to rewrite how the game is played. Joe Mazzulla is a believer in the math that has led the NBA to its 3-point heavy present, and his teams are geared to deliver that.
But sprinkled into that is a hint of the past. Their emphasis on crashing the offensive boards and posting up, both elements of the game mostly eschewed as overall strategies, gives them the slightest hint of a classic mentality.
“I think we’re doing it a little bit more than we have in the past, but I think we’re still playing the way I think Joe wants us to play,” Jaylen Brown said. “Being able to take advantage of smaller matchups … I think we have a lot of guys who are good at that. (But) we don't want to play in the half court and slow the game down every time down. We want to get out and run.”
It’s a balancing act for the Celtics. Yes, they want to run, but they also want to score and control the game. Sometimes when a defense wins the battle by getting back in transition, they can still lose the war by being cross-matched to oblivion against Boston. And that's when they pounce.
“We do a good job of getting the match up quickly that we want,” Mazzulla said. “I think it does breed an opportunity for us to get to the free throw line … (it) breeds a level of physicality, a level of opportunity to get to the free throw line. And then forces teams to over-help because of the shooters and the personnel that we have spaced.”
Just like most things in Mazzulla’s approach, the old-school principles are geared toward getting modern results. Creating post-ups against mismatches forces help, which can then lead to easier baskets for someone else.
The entire goal of the Boston offense is to create advantages. When those happen, they open opportunities all over the floor, even after the shots go up.
That's where Boston really did their damage against the Brooklyn Nets. They got 94 shots, winning the field goal attempts battle by nine. To get there, they needed 17 offensive rebounds, including six from Luke Kornet, three from Jrue Holiday and a career-high four from Payton Pritchard. Two of his were off his own misses, one of which came off a free throw. It all added up to a 29-5 second chance points advantage for Boston. That's a 24-point edge, exactly the amount of their biggest lead of the night.
“I think it’s just what we learned from last year,” Mazzulla said. “We play this exact same team a year ago, and we don’t win the shot margin by nine. And so I think it’s the effort that the guys have made and what are ways that we can win a game whether we are shooting the ball well or not.”
The Celtics shot the ball fine in this game, but not so well that it carried them. Guards crashing while bigs were occupied by switching around the perimeter helped fuel that pursuit of winning the 3-point battle. Brooklyn shot 40.5%, which is good, while Boston shot 36.5%, which is average. But by taking 52 3-pointers, Boston made four more than Brooklyn.
That's 12 points in a game won by 14.
“You win the shot margin, and You win the offensive rebounding battle, those are the things that we’re going to have to do consistently,” Mazzulla said “They’ve done a good job of buying into that, understanding how important the shot margin is and different ways you can affect it and what goes into it.”
The Celtics are averaging 12 offensive rebounds per game so far this year, up from 9.7 last season. They're grabbing nearly 31% of the available offensive rebounds, up from 25.5% last season. They're averaging 16.6 second chance points per game compared to 12.7 last year.
The crashing is working, and guards crashing, especially from the corners is a big reason why. Pritchard has never grabbed more than 33 offensive rebounds in a season, and he has 11 through just eight games. Even Holiday, who isn’t a stranger to the occasional putback, is nearly doubling his offensive rebounding production this season compared to last year. He had three against Brooklyn.
“It’s also fun. It throws energy for the team,” Holiday said. “Home games, it throws energy for the crowd getting those extra 3s up, so yeah I feel like it’s really big for our team.”
Boston won’t always shoot well from the field, but the more chances they get at making one, the more likely it is that they’ll get a shot to fall. Post ups and crashing for offensive rebounds were tossed into the scrap heap to focus more on stopping transition layups and finding more efficient 3-point shots. With this little nod from time to time to how things used to be, the Celtics are starting to find the modern results they're looking for.