It’s clear that this isn’t about winning. They have room to improve as they are 15-5. It wouldn’t be honest to argue against a style that has helped them get to the top of the NBA.
This isn’t about (sometimes) losing either. After losing to the Pacers on Monday night because of 15 mistakes and 12 of 21 shooting from three-point range, they are out of the In-Season Tournament. We shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about what was probably just a bad game in their regular season. It was bad, but it was an exception. They’ve been a strong defense team most of the time, but a bad shooting night tripped them up.
No, it’s just a matter of taste.
There is truth in numbers and mirrors. The Celtics are 25th in assists per game and 14th in mistakes. Even though they try more three-point shots than anyone else, they’re only 16th in 3FG%. Those numbers make sense. Their scoring approach has been based on hitting mismatches, which is why they don’t have many assists. Mazzulla Math has put a lot of stress on making a lot of threes, and Brad Stevens has doubled down on that by signing Kristaps Porzingis and keeping a second unit mostly made up of shooters.
In other words, they find shooters in their five-out spread offense when they’re not spamming good situations. And this person thinks this type of basketball is ugly.
There is no doubt that Jaylen’s rim strikes in semi-transition look very cool. Tatum’s back-to-the-basket technique is very well put together, and I respect that.
But I don’t really love that game, at least not in its best form. It seems like a team sport to me.
Like a fighter in a twelve-round fight, Joe Mazzulla uses strengths against flaws in a tactically skilled way. But give me the creativity of Brad Stevens’ ATO during the Hospital Celtics years any day. It’s like we live in a picture book, where heroes always save the day. I watched Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13 and The A-Team when I was a kid.
There will be some beautiful games, but the ones that stand out are when they plan a play for Sam Hauser. A bunch of screens will click together like a complicated Rube Goldberg machine, and then the ball will fall into Hauser’s soft hands. Its path to the basket was planned by the basketball gods, not by hours of working out in the gym last summer. It’s magical.
Okay, that might be it. It’s no longer a mystery how a whole can be greater than its parts when Boston plays “bully ball.” Instead, it’s just a matter of a player being faster or bigger (or both) than his defender.
Some of this stress has come to the surface while Porzingis has been out, which is not an accident. Even though the Unicorn might be the Celtics’ biggest mismatch advantage, he plays the game with a lot of ease and wonder. Someone that big shouldn’t be able to shoot so well from outside, but he can. Big men shouldn’t be able to step over defenses like this Euro, but they can. He’s become the perfect way for the Jays to let off steam, matching their rough, forceful playing with his smooth, seemingly easy skill.
I think part of me is just scared that they won’t be strong enough to beat everyone, especially the favorites. We know that because we lost to Philly, Minny, and Mickey. As someone who plays more than 100 games a year, the first twenty games have mostly been hard to watch.
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