WASHINGTON, DC -- I’m a big believer in silver linings. I think the worst thing that happens can often be the best thing that happens. And in this game, we saw the worst 3-point shooting we’ve seen from the Celtics in a long time.
It wasn’t just that they shot 11-46 from deep. That's an inherent risk that comes with the territory of a high-volume shooting team. Some of the misses were not even close, though. Even the most fervent disciples of Mazzulla Ball had to admit that this might not have been the night to keep firing.
“I felt like we shot too many 3s,” Jaylen Brown, who took 13 of them, said. “I definitely feel like I shot too many 3s. Settled too much.”
This is the constant challenge for the Celtics. They have a light greener than their NBA Cup court when it comes to shooting the 3. They are all capable of having big nights from downtown, so when a decent look comes along, there is a temptation to take it. And sometimes that feeling is worse on cold-shooting nights because players are searching for the one to fall and open up the floodgates.
The siren call of good looks is hard to ignore for a team like the Celtics.
“It’s definitely a line. It’s kind of a feel thing from game to game,” Brown said. “Against certain opponents, you feel good about some of those shots. And then against other opponents where you see somebody in front of you, even if it is a good look, I can still get two feet in the paint and either get to the free throw line or draw the defense and create something for my teammates. It definitely is a line and we just have to be able to read it night to night.”
Brown admits they weren’t great at that in this game, but they figured it out when needed. On a night they shot seven more 3s than 2s overall, they went inside the arc in the fourth quarter to close Washington out. Twelve of their 21 shots were 2-pointers, five of which came in the paint. They shot 9-12 on those 2s, with Brown and Jayson Tatum combining to go 6-10.
“I thought we ran good offense for the majority of the game, it just didn’t happen to fall,” Joe Mazzulla said. “But when we needed a basket, they were able to get to the spot that we wanted and it’s a credit to them and you need to have guys like that. We were able to get to the free throw line, we were able to get inside the paint, and it’s good to win a game when you’re not playing at your best offensively.”
Sometimes the flow of the game will let a player know when a particular shot is just better than what might normally be taken. Sometimes it’s just a matter of recognizing the what you’re trying to do isn’t working at all and you have to change the approach.
"We felt like we had a bunch of open looks that just didn't go down tonight. We just had to make that transition,” Brown said. “Sometimes you need to make that transition a little faster to just get to the paint, create opportunities at the free throw line. But tonight was a decent example of that.”
It’s clear this is a different Celtics team than last year. There's the obvious caveat that things will probably change some when Kristaps Porzingis returns, but it’s not going to change drastically. The Celtics are challenging the limits of high-volume 3-point shooting, and with that comes a tougher task of real-time self-evaluation.
Confidence is necessary to shoot through cold nights and slumps, but confidence can also lie to you when you need to hear the truth. Even the best of the best don’t have it some nights, and confidence is always there to whisper “the next one is going in” into a player’s ear. Sometimes that confidence needs to be channeled into another thing, which also happens to be a thing Brown and Tatum do very well.
“Having the versatility, having the humility to see it’s not going the way you want it to and be humble enough to just do whatever it takes to figure it out,” Brown said. “Obviously we would love for our threes to go in each and every night but tonight they weren’t. We’ve gotta find other ways to win: on the glass, score in transition, defend at a high level, keep a team under 100 (points). So we figured it out and we’re still figuring it out as a team. It’s a new season but all of this is adding to our learning process and it’s great to be able to win games and learn at the same time.”