Before tip off, CelticsBlog’s Bobby Manning asked Jazz head coach Will Hardy about Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s affinity to the three pointer. After sharing a seat next to Mazzulla for a season, he has intimate knowledge of how Mazzulla ticks. Hardy laughed at first at the question and complemented Boston’s spacing and decision-making around the perimeter, then said, “there spacing is really good and they also have guys that can squeeze off threes in tight windows and for those players, they’re good shots.”
Since training camp, Mazzulla has stressed that for the team to win consistently, they have to win the hustle margins of between turnover differential, rebounding, and defending without fouling. That may have been true if the Celtics were hitting their average from 3.
Even without their floor-spacing front court of Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford and Jayson Tatum and Jrue Holiday in their rotation, Boston is still leading the league in three-point attempts at 47.8 a game. Unfortunately, they have an inverse relationship with the cornerstone of their offense; the Celtics are making just 31.2% from behind the arc.
Against the Jazz, the Celtics were 11-of-51 from 3 (21.6%), “their fourth-worst mark in the Mazzulla era.” That was down from their 13-of-44 performance in their blowout loss to the Rockets on Saturday night. And in their combined losses, they’ve made just 66-of-227 (29.1%).
Despite the cold hard fact of their cold shooting, Mazzulla remains positive. “We’re not making them at the average rate —you mentioned Payton — not making them at the rate he has been in his career,” Mazzulla said. “The thing I tell him the most is you’re not defined by your shot-making. You’re defined by doing so many other things for us.”
There’s hope that this is all just bad luck and that eventually, one Brad Stevensism is true: water will find its level.
To wit, the Celtics are #1 in the league in creating open and wide-open shots (as of November 2nd). By comparison, last year’s Finalists, the Thunder and Pacers, are third and fourth respectively; Phoenix comes in at second at 59.1 field goal attempts. Boston’s democratic approach is generating good shots, but they’re just not making them.
“We shot a lot of threes, but I felt like a lot of them were good looks,” Jaylen Brown said after missing all nine of his triples. “A lot of the threes I shot, I felt like I was wide open…they didn’t go in tonight for whatever reason.”
In eight games, Brown is still shooting a respectable 38% from 3 (19-of-50). Sam Hauser (24-of-59) and Anfernee Simons (21-of-56) are also taking advantage of the green light, too. However, Derrick White and Pritchard are a combined 33-of-137 (24%) to start the season and opposing defenses are beginning to suffocate them as soon as they cross halfcourt.
A statistical blip can be explained as small sample size theater, but at some point, the 3-5 Celtics might have an existential question they’ll need to answer soon.
