The record doesn’t exactly show it, but Boston has been improving all year. After starting 11-9 through October and November, they steamrolled through December at 9-3, and slogged through a road-heavy January 10-6.
Despite the travel, last month was supposed to be the soft part of the schedule with nine games against teams under .500. Nailbiting losses to the Pacers and Bulls notwithstanding, the Celtics have been fairly consistent and to the chagrin of the haters, actually been getting better.
Without the three-point differential to count on, that’s meant gaining an advantage in possessions and more so, quality possessions.
After the Celtics talked so much about playing fast in training camp and during the preseason, they stormed out of the gates as, well, the slowest playing team in the league. As the season went along, it was more about re-defining the term “pace.” It wasn’t necessarily about getting out in transition. As I wrote after boat-racing the Clippers in early January:
Paradoxically for the Celtics, the slower “pace” is a matter of utilizing their speed and athleticism. They grind teams in the halfcourt with ball and player movement and constantly putting teams in jeopardy and making them make decisions with every screen, cut, and misdirection.
After averaging 97.13 possessions per game in December, they cut that done even further to 94.89 in January. Against the Bucks on Sunday, they beat Milwaukee by 28 points in 86.5 possessions. What Mazzulla has been able to do is condense the game in order to limit mistakes in a perfect 48-minute game.
We’ve seen improvements across the board. The genesis of this article was Sports Illustrated’s John Karalis tweeting this out Monday morning about the Celtics rebounding:
They’ve turned one of the biggest perceived weaknesses to a strength at Game #50. Part of that is inserting Luka Garza into the rotation. Jaylen Brown has also made it a priority for him to hit the glass, too. Defensive rebounding and closing out possessions has played a large part in Boston knocking on the door of a top-10 defense.
Boston has also benefitted on the league-wide trend of allowing defenses to play a little more physical. Opponent free throws have trended down since the start of the regular season: 28.7 in October to 26.1 to 20.8 to 18.8 in January.
It’s not as if they’re generating more turnovers and easier buckets on fast breaks. Instead, the trend is further allowing them to grind teams in the halfcourt. Roughly half of NBA shots are taken with 15-7 seconds on the shot clock and Boston allows the fifth-lowest eFG% (52.3%).
Offensively, Mazzulla has found ways to win the margins, too. the Celtics turnover rate has remained fairly consistent at around 12.2% or just under twelve TO’s a game. However, what’s been improving has been their assists. They averaged two more assists in January than they did in October and much of that has been from the bench. The Celtics second unit has the second highest true shooting percentage (59.2%) in the NBA; Anfernee Simons, Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, Josh Minott, and Luka Garza all shoot about 39% from behind the arc with Hugo Gonzalez trailing behind at a respectable 36.8%.
Here’s the scary thing: we can assume that anything that happens ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline will only improve the team and, oh yeah, there’s the impending return of Jayson Tatum.
