The Celtics put up 61 3-point attempts against the Knicks on Tuesday night, a big number even for the Celtics.
The most they took last season was 58, so for some people, the immediate 3-point barrage was a bit jarring, even if they made a lot of them. I’ve already gotten the “is this what we can expect” kinds of questions from people wondering if Joe Mazzulla is trying to push some new boundary.
But what always seems to be lost is that Mazzulla doesn’t direct his team to take 3-pointers for the sake of taking 3-pointers. His mantra is always about taking the best shots, not specific shots. The best shots, though, are often 3s because winning math dictates that.
Let’s just start by looking at the box score.
New York made 43 baskets and 12 free throws. Boston made 48 baskets and seven free throws. That sentence on its own suggests a close game. Boston only made five more shots but made five fewer free throws. If someone were to ask me how the game went and I only gave them that first sentence, they might think Boston won by less than 10 points.
But then you glance over at the 3-point column and realize 29 of Boston’s makes were from deep compared to New York’s 11.
So five more 2-point makes is 10 points, minus five points at the free throw line, suggests a five-point win. Then adding the 18 extra points they got from 3-pointers is what brings you to the 23-point win.
But why 61? Why so many?
Well, two reasons. First, they were going in. If people are going to argue that they shouldn’t take 3s when they're missing, then they should also be arguing that they should take 3s when they're falling.
I’m throwing the final 13 3-point attempts out for now because those were different. I’ve already written about that. Those were what happens when the team indiscriminately jacks up shots and they know that. They were 29-48 from 3 with about eight and a half minutes to go in the game. That's 60.4% shooting, The best they shot last season was 57.1%, so before they started chasing the record and getting away from their normal offense, they were having perhaps the best team shooting night in history.
The second, and most important reason, is that's what the game dictated. The Knicks pack the paint defensively and overreact to threats at the rim. The Celtics weren’t out there executing a style of play that will dominate every game. They were executing against what the Knicks showed them. They made reads, and those reads led to open shot from beyond the arc.
This is an important distinction. It’s no different from running the football against a team with a weak defensive line or throwing against one with weak defensive backs.
Yes, the Celtics are going to be a 3-point-heavy team because, as I said, the math dictates that and the Celtics are full of skilled mathematicians. They have a ton of good shooters who have the skill and confidence to make the strategy work. They led the league with 42.5 3-point attempts last season and that number might tick up this year.
But if it does, it might just be because the Celtics are emphasizing playing at a faster pace. Before I continue with the 3-point stuff, I want to point out that no one is talking about the REAL number for Boston in the opener. They took 95 shots, which would be an amazing pace to keep all year long. If Boston can average 95 shots a game this season, their offense might be the best we’ve ever seen by a mile.
Playing uptempo basketball and getting more shots up requires (a) great defense, which they played on Tuesday night and people aren’t talking about that enough, either, and (b) discipline to push in transition and start possessions sooner in the shot clock. If they do the latter, even after opponent makes, they’ll put a lot of pressure on the other team to get back, get set, and find their matchups.
The uptempo play led to a lot of open opportunities against New York, and most of those were behind the arc because of the defense the Knicks play. Just look at how much space Jayson Tatum has right off the bat.
The Celtics know Tom Thibodeau is going to protect against drives, and they know Karl-Anthony Towns is going to struggle defending this kid of offense, so they took advantage of it by setting screen after screen to let Tatum step into in-rhythm jumpers.
Watch the big retreating on each of these shots. The Celtics set picks too low at first, and Tatum went to a step-back to create his own space and missed. The Celtics adjusted (who said Mazzulla doesn’t make in-game adjustments?) by setting the picks higher up, knowing New York’s bigs were still going to drop way back. Go look at the last two picks Luke Kornet set for Tatum. Those were at the logo, and Tatum suddenly had all the space in the world to start knocking down shots.
New York started to counter by bringing Towns up, which Boston was hoping for. When Towns came to the level of the screen, suddenly he was matched up one-on-one with Tatum up around the logo.
That's a lot of space for Towns to cover, and he’s nowhere near quick enough to handle that job alone. When the help came, the pass was easy.
Shout out to Sam Hauser who read that play perfectly and cut baseline at the same time to draw his defender away.
Again, the Knicks are conditioned to protect the paint at all costs. Hauser’s cut made him a threat to receive the pass from Tatum and he knew that. That's a sneaky way to take advantage of New York’s gameplan and create a wide-open 3-pointer.
It can get a little more subtle than that.
Because the Knicks are primed to take away the paint, it changes how their players are positioned. Here’s the setup:
Now look at Miles McBride a tick later
Even with Tatum surrounded by three Knicks, McBride has opened up, with his number facing Tatum, looking straight at the play. Because he’s so conditioned to protect the paint at all costs, he’s now positioned himself to head there should Tatum find his way through that mess.
This costs him on this play because (a) he’s not paying attention to Derrick White at all, and (b) when Tatum does make the pass, McBride has to take that extra half-second to turn his body to get out to the line. That's the difference between getting there and maybe even blocking the shot and allowing the 3 to get off cleanly.
Side note: White could have cut backdoor for an alley oop there. I bet if he and Jaylen Brown swapped places, it would have been a lob and dunk because McBride was just lost. Also, that's a hell of a pass from Tatum.
Let’s just use the 42.5 3-point attempts they averaged last season as the baseline. Even if it goes up, it’s not going up to 50 or more. Maybe they finish the year averaging 43 or 44. But that means that against teams like New York, they will get 50 or even 60 in the air. But against teams more primed to take 3-pointers away, the Celtics might take 30 or so. They had 29 games last season with less than 40 attempts, 10 of which were 35 or fewer. They had 11 with 50 or more.
So ultimately it will even out. This team is very good at adjusting how it plays based on how they're being defended. People are going to get fixated on the number 61 on opening night, but that's just because it’s a monster number few teams have ever reached.
The reality is Boston faced a defense that gave them a ton of great looks and they took them. They saw what the game was giving them and they took it. They will run their same offense against other teams and they could come up with 61 2-pointers instead based on how they're played.
“We know what we're trying to do. We know who we're trying to attack. We know what sets and actions to get in and we work on it all the time,” Tatum said after the game. “We work on reads every single day in practice and that's essentially all we do. … We know where to be, we know when to cut, we know where to space the floor, we know when to make the extra pass. And obviously, we got some super talented guys and more often than not, we got at least four guys on the court who can shoot 3s. We just always try to make the right play and get a great shot.”