The NBA Cup is the NBA’s attempt to make the early part of the regular season more relevant, but it has also made it disappear for a little while.
The month of November featured three stretches of three games in four nights and it kicked off a six-in-nine stretch that spanned into the first week of December. But then, because of the tournament schedule and breaks of breaks of being eliminated, Boston’s matchup tomorrow will be just their third game in 12 nights.
The Celtics really needed the break, but as Joe Mazzulla loves to say, too much of anything can be a bad thing.
"It's okay. I feel like it's been too long,” Al Horford said. “So I'm just ready to get back onto the court tomorrow."
The Celtics are balancing the need for rest and the need to get better. As good as they are, they still haven't played their best basketball. They need to be healthy but they need to get the reps on the practice floor and in games.
“Obviously, you get healthy, you get rest in. But you also get to practice the things that you want to get better at in the short term and then balance the things that you want to get better at in the long term,” Mazzulla said. “You just try to work on the details. You try to work on the things that matter. You try to make sure you have an understanding of that. It also gives you an extra day to start prepping for your opponent, which is always a good thing.”
The next opponent, the Chicago Bulls, are 12-15, but they’ve won four of their last six games. The Celtics have beaten them this season, but it was a close game until the Celtics pulled away late in the game.
“Their 3-point rate is up, their transition rate is up,” Mazzulla said. “So there's a couple of things they're better at than we are.”
The Bulls are second only to the Celtics in 3-pointers attempted (43.7) and made (16.3) and they're shooting it at a better percentage than Boston (37.8% to 37.2%). The Celtics have been pretty good about defending the 3-point line, but their numbers were better before Kristaps Porzingis returned. The Celtics have since shifted to better rim protection, but Chicago forces the focus to be back at the 3-point line.
“I think everything depends on just which ones you’re willing to give up,” Mazzulla said. “You’re not going to stop people from playing their game, so to speak, which you’ve got to be willing to give up there. So just going through the objectives of tomorrow is the focus of today: here are the points that you have to live with, here are the points that we have to take away and here’s how we’re going to go about working to take those things away. So I guess a team that plays like that — and teams in general — it’s just a matter of what can we take away, what can we control, what are we willing to live with?”
PORZINGIS PROGRESSING
Porzingis was on the floor after practice going through some shooting, which is a great sign after he left the Wizards game late in the second quarter with heel pain.
Here's Kristaps Porzingis shooting after practice today pic.twitter.com/j3YZo8qdUE
— John Karalis 🇬🇷 (@John_Karalis) December 18, 2024
“He got through practice well, looked pretty good,” Mazzulla said. “We’ll see how he is tomorrow, see how he responds to it, but I thought he looked good today.”
Porzingis was officially listed as “questionable” for tomorrow’s game.
Sam Hauser (back spasms) and Xavier Tillman (illness) were also listed as questionable.
3-POINT CHATTER
The volume of 3-pointers in the NBA remains a big talking point. So much so that Adam Silver was asked about it in an interview with national media outlets at the NBA Cup Final. He admitted that the analytics-driven approach might be too much for NBA fans.
“It’s not unique to the NBA, where analytics start to be too controlling and create situations where players are doing seemingly unnatural things because they’re being directed to do something that is a more efficient shot,” he said (via The Athletic). “And part of what we’re focusing on, too, is that what makes these players so incredible is the joy they bring to playing the game and the freestyle notion of the game too.”
Mazzulla is one of the NBA leading code-crackers; a driving force behind analytics-driving coaching and searching for the highest-value shots.
“It’s an interesting perspective, I think, because in the NFL people aren’t like, I want to see less scoring,” Mazzulla said. “They’re not going to make the end zones smaller. They’re not going to make the field smaller. So like, scoring is up in other sports, so I guess my question would be, why in basketball is scoring an issue as opposed to other sports? Does anybody want to watch a football game and see less touchdowns? So I think at the end of the day, I think anything new or changed is different, but I don’t know.”
The issue isn’t necessary the amount of points going on the board, but more so the way they're being scored. As I wrote yesterday, the copycats may have gone overboard and a lot of NBA offenses are starting to look similar.
"Whether there's some tweaks we should make, and my sense is I do think we should take seriously this notion of more diversity in offense,” Silver said. “I watch as many games as all of you do, and to the extent that it's not so much a 3-point issue, but that some of the audience, some of the offenses start to look sort of cookie cutter and teams are copying each other. I think that's something we should pay attention to."
Commissioner Silver says there are no changes coming to the game in the short term, but the league is always watching to see if there's anything that should change.
SHOOTERS SHOOT … AND IMPROVE
Sam Hauser on his progression as a shooter:
“I guess just being a basketball player in general is always constant progression and constant improvement. I feel like you can never perfect anything in the sport. That’s the beauty of it. It’s also the most frustrating part too. But I feel like I’ve come a long way. Even though I thought I was a good shooter coming into the league, I think I’ve only gotten better. Just being able to, whether it’s running faster off a screen, being able to shoot a little more off-balance, while also trying to be able to get on balance quicker in certain situations. But everybody kind of starts in a different place.”