The Celtics are ahead of schedule. They are 24-14 and currently the third seed in the Eastern Conference, which is both a testament to how much has gone right for Boston, and how much has gone wrong for some of the competition.
“I would say we got here faster than I thought we would,” Jaylen Brown said last week. “I thought we would just kind of take little baby steps along the way, but right now we're playing some really good basketball.”
The Celtics are jockeying with the Denver Nuggets for the league’s best offense. And despite their defense being in the middle of the pack, their historically good scoring numbers have pushed their net rating into a second-place tie with Houston at +7.3.
They are one of the best offensive rebounding teams, and they are right there with Oklahoma City in terms of protecting the ball. No matter how you measure their shooting, their percentages all fall in the top 10.
That's all really good basketball. Unless, that is, the game is close.
Of Boston’s 14 losses, 11 are “clutch” losses, or games that were within five in the last five minutes. The Celtics are 8-11 in those games, and this is where the numbers show Boston’s underlying weaknesses.
Boston’s clutch offensive rating (111.9) is exactly 10 points worse than their overall rating and is currently 13th in the NBA. Their clutch defensive rating is 128.2, last in the league and almost 14 points worse than their overall rating. Their net rating is -16.3. So while the Celtics normally out-score their opponents by 7.6 points per 100 possessions, they're getting blown out by 16.3 per 100 possessions in clutch situations.
Their turnover percentage drops from second-best to third-worst in the clutch, jumping by 4%. Their shooting is still good, but their offensive rebounding percentage drops by 7%. Their defensive rebounding percentage drops off a cliff in the clutch, going from 68.2% to 57.1%.
So to sum up that section up, Boston is shooting about as well as usual but not grabbing as many offensive rebounds, all while giving up a bunch more second chances on the other end. They turn the ball over more, too.
Turning it over and allowing more offensive rebounds tends to lead to fouls. The Celtics are out of position or just fouling to make teams “earn it.” Then, as the game gets out of hand, Boston has to start fouling to extend the game.
It hasn’t all been bad in the clutch this year. Boston did have a stretch of winning four out of five, and it looked like they were turning a corner. But this is where the real Celtics actually are. When games are on the line, they have struggled more than they have succeeded, and it’s because of all the things we thought would hold their record back more than it has so far.
The Celtics have one superstar now instead of two, and Brown is being targeted more aggressively by teams looking to disrupt Boston’s offense. He’s being double-teamed and blitzed. Sometimes he’s great at accepting those, passing out of them, and creating advantages, sometimes he’s not. Sometimes his teammates are in the right position for him to make those passes, sometimes they're not.
Derrick White is a clutch performer, but he only gets two or three shots per clutch game. He’s shooting 47% from 3 in those situations, but he is also a player defenses react to, and he’ll try to make the right play versus forcing shots. He used to be the guy players kicked the ball to, now he’s the one doing the passing.
This is where the Celtics' construction and concerns coming into the season show up most. When the pressure is ramped up, it suddenly gets very obvious that Neemias Queta, while very good and exceeding expectations, doesn’t always finish well in traffic. It becomes clear that outside of Sam Hauser, the rest of the wings Boston can throw out there are guys the defense will live with shooting the ball.
Defensively, the Celtics are putting smaller units on the floor, with Queta as the only real defensive option to protect the rim. But once teams pull him up to the perimeter, the paint is open for shots and second chances. This is all stuff we’ve known and been worried about, but the Celtics have largely avoided while piling up regular-season wins.
“When you get into those clutch games, there's two things to focus on,” Joe Mazzulla recently said. “There's your clutch-time execution on offense and defense, and then there's the 10-15 possessions that can cost you regardless of (whether) you win or lose. And you just focus on both of those. We have to be able to win close games, but it's a combination of ending quarters, it’s a combination of those 10-15 possessions that we have to get better at that are really game plan specific discipline. And then at the end of games, we have to be better at executing offensively and defensively.”
When the Celtics are doing well on those 10-15 possessions, closing quarters well, and getting good nights from their role players, they are avoiding the clutch and winning games. When those other things are happening and they head into clutch time, opponents ramp up their energy and defense and the Celtics aren’t good enough to keep up.
The good news is that will change next season … or maybe later this season … with the return of Jayson Tatum. But that's a different story for a different time. This year’s team will have to figure out how to consistently win these clutch games if they're going to be more than a fun surprise, because clutch play portends the playoffs. They’ve figured out a lot, so it’s not out their reach, but it might be their toughest challenge for the rest of the season.