The Celtics are testing the limits of 3-point shooting in the NBA. They are the only team taking more than 50 per game. No team has ever finished a season averaging more than 45.4, which is what the 2018-19 Houston Rockets averaged.
(Just for fun, the Rockets led the league 10 years ago with 32.7 per game).
Last season, they averaged 38.8 3-pointers per game and people were freaking out about taking too many then. They took 50 or more 11 times last year. This year’s team has already done it seven times.
Maybe this has something to do with Kristaps Porzingis being out. Perhaps a few of those shots will move inside the arc when he comes back. I doubt it, though, considering one of his superpowers is being a stretch big.
This is who the Celtics are. They will probably make history this season as Joe Mazzulla and crew try to break the league. They have a philosophy, a tank full of Liquid Schwartz, and they're ready to go to plaid with it.
But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t attack the basket. I never have an issue with 50 good 3-pointers but I’ll sit here and rail against 15 bad ones all night long. Early in their win over Brooklyn, it felt like they were settling into settling instead of really searching for the best shots possible.
Mazzulla will be the first to tell you that the mandate isn’t 3-pointers, it’s just that the math points in that direction and they should be taking every good 3 they can get.
The problem generally can be found inside that grey area where “good looks” and “good shots” intermingle. They are often conflated, but they are not the same.
The Celtics are so good that they don’t need to always go for that first good look that comes their way. They may be the exception to Mazzulla’s own thinking that NBA defenses rarely give you more than one good shot per possession. When the Celtics are at their best, they can probably conjure a relatively clean look from beyond the arc at will. Because of that, it’s probably worth probing the defense a bit more to see if a better shot might exist somewhere.
Boston came back from an early 13-point deficit by attacking the Nets rather than hunting 3-pointers. Of Boston’s first 15 shots, 11 were from 3 … a rate of approximately 1.29 3s per minute. Over the next 39:29, they took 35, or a rate of .89 per minute.
Instead of firing away, they put the ball on the deck and went to work inside. For only the second time this season, the Celtics shot more 2-pointers than 3-pointers (47 to 46). They did it once against Charlotte (44 to 42). They also had an even 45-45 split against Washington. This was only the fourth time they’ve hit 50+ points in the paint and only the second they’ve scored more PITP than their opponent (they tied once as well).
“It’s just the flow of the game,” Jayson Tatum said. “Just trying to make the right read all the time … the game is so fast, sometimes you might misread it. But just trying to be intentional about who’s on the floor with you, what are we trying to accomplish, who are we trying to attack?”
Against the Nets, the Celtics focused on turning corners on a lot of those attacks. They still took plenty of 3-pointers, but they were great 3-pointers generated by ball movement. Even when Jaylen Brown missed a layup, some great hustle by Luke Kornet to get the offensive rebound turned the miss into a wide-open 3-point shot.
The thing about that style of play is that it’s harder than just running a high pick-and-roll and stepping into a 3 or working the ball around the perimeter to get a good look. Generating a good shot means driving, which also means creating contact and playing a more physical brand of basketball.
“I think we're more than capable of playing that way,” Brown said. “We just got to have that right mindset … owning your space, getting to your spots, being sharp, taking care of the basketball, no turnovers, and just not being careless, just being aggressive and assertive.”
I think Mazzulla and the Celtics are trying to thread a needle with this offense. There is a point where the 3-point shooting hits a tipping point and it has to be supported by drives and attacking the basket. There is a point where making a defense work and think requires doing some extra things, just so these opponents don’t get comfortable defending Boston one way.
At the same time, a fully healthy Boston team has at least eight guys who can hit those “good look” shots at a pretty good clip. It’s so easy to feel that open space and let the muscle memory take over. It’s hard sometimes to realize, in the moment, that they are settling.
To Boston’s credit, they did that in real-time against Brooklyn and it changed the game. They read the game better than they have in recent games. They realized things weren’t working in the first quarter and they adjusted. The Celtics turned corners instead of stepping back and it led to a much-needed blowout.
But just because they did that on Wednesday doesn’t mean they’ll do it on Saturday night.
“Just because you do it one day doesn't mean you're gonna do it tomorrow,” Mazzulla said. “(Tatum and Brown) played at a high level on both ends of the floor … offensively, taking the shots that they want to take, and getting the ball where it needs to get to.”
The Celtics are who they are, but they are also still a work in progress. They found more balance than they’ve had all season long, but maybe that's a situational thing. Maybe this game will become the norm or maybe it will live on as an outlier. We won’t know until the end, even though I know I’d like to see more of what we saw at Barclays Center. But the reason I want to see more of it is because I think it’ll get the Celtics where they want to be.
“Nothing's fixed, but also just because you don't play well doesn't mean it's broken,” Mazzulla said. “It's just a process, day in and day out. We just got to commit to it. You gotta do it. So we're in the process of fine-tuning that and building that and that commitment towards the process of winning every day.”
