“Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee.
The Celtics have played 22 games so far this season and only once have they had a fully healthy roster. Their main lineup so far (Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Al Horford) has played 163 minutes together over nine games. After that, they have nine lineups which have played between 22 and 39 minutes apiece.
Let’s compare that to their counterparts at the top of the East.
- Cleveland: Main lineup 134 minutes, then lineups of 67, 54, 42, and 36.
- Orlando: Main lineup 152 minutes, then 74, 60, 45, 40, and 29.
- New York: Main lineup 356 minutes, then 61, 60, 56, 53, and 31.
First of all, LOL Tom Thibodeau for playing his main lineup twice as much as everyone else. I look forward to them running out of gas … again … in the playoffs.
Beyond that lunacy, you can see how other teams have a main lineup and then a couple of secondary ones they like to go to before the different combinations get jumbled.
Boston, though, goes right from their main five guys to a hodgepodge of trying to figure things out. The absence of Kristaps Porzingis forced Joe Mazzulla to search for combinations that worked, and his return has added a new element into the mix. Neemias Queta, for example, is in five of Boston’s nine most-used lineups, including the second most-used one, but he was a DNP-CD against Detroit.
It won’t be his last. He’ll get plenty of those along the way this season, and yet he’ll probably get a couple of starts, too. Guys like Jordan Walsh and Drew Peterson will also get their chances to fill in, but this is about more than the end-of-bench guys figuring out how to help.
Whether it’s injuries or a ridiculous stretch of the schedule, Boston has had to throw everyone into roles that expand and contract. Usually when that happens around here, we get a bunch of potholes that we have to navigate. But those don’t show up in Boston’s lineups. The Celtics have a roster full of guys who can do a lot, a little, or nothing at all, depending on what the team needs.
“I think the cool thing about our team is that even if on certain nights (guys) have a smaller role because we have everybody playing, they still play like they play. They still play the same way,” Porzingis said after Boston’s win over Detroit. “The minutes might go up and down, but everybody's so professional, everybody's so locked in and so ready for the moment … it doesn't really matter, because people are ready and hungry to get that extra minutes, shots, whatever it is. And that just speaks about the character of the guys that maybe are not getting the minutes they would get on a weaker team. And that's why we're so good.”
Sam Hauser has three games of playing less than 18 minutes but has played 30 and 36 in his last two. He has four games with three field goal attempts but he took a season-high 12 against Detroit.
Payton Pritchard has four games of less than 23 minutes and four games of more than 34. He’s gotten single-digit shot attempts seven times this season but has just as many of 14 or more.
Both of those guys are good, but they are good in a lot of ways. Hauser’s 20 against Detroit was a season-high, but his best +/- game was a +27 while scoring nine points against the Clippers.
“We have such a talented team,” Porzingis said. “We have, I don’t know how many guys that can score 20, and it will not be a surprise. We'll be like, yeah, this guy can get 20, easy. So it's a big privilege we have.”
The ability for players to jump in and out of whatever boxes Mazzulla needs is a skill that not only helps them win games now, but instills the confidence that they can overcome whatever obstacles they face. Without Jayson Tatum or Jrue Holiday, the Celtics didn’t just need more scoring from players who normally play supporting roles, they needed the stars who did play to do more.
Jaylen Brown obliged with perhaps his best passing game of the season.
“It’s been fun to him grow over the last few years in his reads,” Mazzulla said. “If you’re watching, you’ll see him be able to process the game in real time and see the adjustments that are being made on him and recognizing the matchup, recognizing the spacing. … It's fun watching him just continue to grow in the game and understand it in real time and get better.”
If I could hop into a time machine and tell myself five years ago that I’d be writing this piece, I would react to myself by saying (a) what a bad use of a time machine, but also (b) there's no way Brown ever gets to be that good of a passer. He’s a scorer through and through who only passes when he’s in trouble.
“I've improved on things. A lot of my weaknesses in the past I've attacked,” Brown said. “So being able to run a team and an offense is something that I look forward to in those moments. Obviously, on our team you won't see it as much because we've got a lot of guys that are ball-dominant and that are really good players. But in these moments, you gotta step up and make plays. Tonight, I was just trying to get my teammates involved."
The true testament to Brown’s evolution is his willingness to not try dunking everything. I know that's weird to say on a night he demolished Isaiah Stewart, but his kick-outs when he feels a contest can lead to easy looks, whether he gets the assist or not.
“It's like a hockey pass,” Porzingis said. “He kicks out, it’s the next guy in the corner, boom, corner 3 … I think sometimes it even goes unnoticed but he’s JB. We almost expect this from him, but he’s really, really good.”
Brown has grown into a guy capable of running the offense, even though he’s not usually the guy running the offense. Pritchard has grown into a guy capable of closing a team out, even though he’s not usually the guy closing teams out. The Celtics are full of capable guys able to do more than what they're normally asked to do, but who are cool with what they're normally asked to do.
They are like water. Put them into a scoring role, they become the scorer. Put them into a facilitating role, they become the facilitator. And even if there's an occasional crash, they find their flow more often than not and figure out how to win games no matter who is out of the lineup.