For a team like Boston, the post-All-Star stretch is almost like a second training camp. It’s a chance to clean up whatever stuff they’d let slip during their coasting phase of the season. The eye test confirms that they’ve tightened up a few things recently, so this might be a good time to look at some of the interesting stats that have popped up over the last 10 games.
Ten games isn’t a great sample size, but some of these things are worth watching over the last 17 games of the regular season to see if they grow into sustainable trends.
Team 3-point shooting:
Post All-Star: 39.0%
Pre All-Star: 36.7%
What’s most interesting about this trend isn’t just that they have climbed to an elite number after a long stretch of mostly just okay shooting from deep, it’s how they’ve done it.
They went from making 17.7 3-pointers per game to 18.1, not a big jump at all. But they’ve dropped from 48.3 attempts per game to 46.4. Before the break, 46.6% of their field goal attempts were 2-pointers. After the break it’s up to 47.6%.
There has been an uptick in fastbreak points and midrange points to account for that change. So why the shift to a couple more 2-pointers and a couple less 3-pointers? Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum are part of the answer.
Brown is taking 1.4 more shots per game since the break, but his 3-point attempts have dropped from 6 to 5.4. Tatum is taking 1.6 more shots per game but has only seen a 0.3% increase in 3-point attempts.
The numbers aren’t stark, and they could easily be thrown off by the combined monster shooting nights from Sam Hauser, Payton Pritchard, and Derrick White, but again, we’re not looking at definitive things in a sample like this. We’re looking to see if trends are emerging.
Defenses are keying in on Boston’s 3-point shooting, so a little bit of a recalibration between 2s and 3s isn’t shocking as the Celtics get run off the line a little more often. Maintaining a nearly 40% 3-point percentage, which is third in the NBA since the break, would be a nice offensive boost.
Here’s why I said Tatum and Brown are PART of the answer:
Al Horford getting to the rim
Percentage of total attempt from 2 post All-Star: 48.1%
Percentage of total attempt from 2 pre All-Star: 29%
Before the All-Star break, Horford made 35 baskets in 43 games inside of five feet, or .81 per game. He’s made 11 in seven games since, or about 1.6 per game.
Even though the numbers aren’t huge, his production at the rim has doubled. That aggression has shown up at the free-throw line as well, where he’s gone from 0.4 attempts to 1.4 attempts.
“When our bigs can get advantages versus switching, we want to take advantage of that, especially if you can catch the ball with a foot or two in the paint,” Joe Mazzulla explained. “If that's something that the defense gives us, then we want to take that. And I think some of it is also coming from just the reads that the guys are making within the offense, kind of how we're being defended.”
If the defense is spread out, Horford is taking advantage of switches to just pound it into the paint and take the points. Will this be a trend, or is it just a big set up to create open space for him to take more 3-pointers in the playoffs?
Fourth quarter woes
Net rating pre-All-Star: 2.7
Net rating post-All-star: -27.8
This is directly related to them blowing a few 20-point leads, which you can say is an aberration of sorts but it’s also something that has happened. Their fourth quarter net rating is -31.7 in five March games and they're 5-0 in those, so on one hand it’s a problem and on the other, it isn't costing them.
There are a number of potential factors here, the biggest of which is that they get away from things that work when they think they have the game in hand. Their assist ratio (assists per 100 possessions) in these fourth quarters is 15.4. In the first through third quarters, it’s 20.9, 20.7, and 19.1, which means the ball isn’t moving as much and guys are missing shots. Their defensive rebounding percentage in these games is 69.7% but it’s 60.9% in fourth quarters, meaning they're giving up offensive rebounds.
Opponents are shooting 52.7% in post-break fourth quarters as opposed to 45.5% before the break. They shoot 43.8% in first quarters, 45% in second quarters, and 45.4% in third quarters, so they are suddenly getting hot late in games.
Another issue is the lineups being used. Mazzulla has been forced to throw some weird ones out there to start fourth quarters, which means they're not as able to make up for lapses when they happen. Those lapses happen and other teams will make their runs, but lineups heavy on “stay ready” guys without Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown can struggle to shut the water off once an opponent starts flowing.
But even with the mitigating factors, the numbers are what they are, and it’s easy to fall into bad habits. The Celtics could easily be up 20 or more on, say, Atlanta in the first round or New York in the second and feel like they have the game in hand. Both of those teams have explosive offenses that can burn that kind of attitude and cost Boston a game or two. So this is an area they need to tighten up.
Again, a 10-game sample is small, so none of the stats here tell us anything that is set in stone. We won’t know what they mean until the season is over. For now, they point us in positive and negative directions and give us a glimpse of what may be as the regular season winds down.