Boston Celtics
“Ain’t nobody looking at the basket. Ain’t nobody thinking downhill.”
Kevin Garnett AP Photo/Matt Krohn
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The Celtics play a distinct brand of basketball, and over the last few years they’ve stuck with it through good times and bad.
They are believers in the power of the 3-ball. Boston has finished in the top-four of 3-point attempts every year since 2021. They’ve led the league in two of the past three seasons, including this year.
The Celtics won a title in 2024, capturing an NBA-record 18th championship. It was the first for the Celtics since Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett captured their only one in 2008.
Garnett and Pierce shared their perspectives on the current state of the Celtics’ offense during a recent appearance on their podcast, “KG Certified.”
“They’re so heavy on the 3-ball, P,” Garnett said to Pierce. “I know it saved you but it can also be — I think there’s like two or three times that they’ve lost just like this where they didn’t hit the three, you know what I’m saying.”
The Celtics have suffered three epic defeats over the last four seasons, losing to the 8th-seeded Heat after dropping the first three games in 2023, blowing two 20-point leads at home against the Knicks last year, and dropping the final three games after leading 3-1 against Philadelphia this year.
This season marked the first time a Celtic team had blown a 3-1 lead in the playoffs. Garnett said the Celtics did not seem prepared to deal with 76ers star Joel Embiid, who came back from an emergency appendectomy to play the final four games of the series.
But there was more to this Celtic defeat than just Embiid’s presence. Boston struggled to get easy looks and the results were surprising, Garnett said.
“I was shocked that nobody read the game,” Garnett said. “The threes weren’t falling, try to get to the cup, or get to some middies, or set up your layup package, or set up playmaking. I didn’t see no adjustments to that. They just kept going with the same thing.”
Pierce said winning the 2024 championship, along with having plenty of regular season success with that style has made it difficult for the Celtics to make adjustments.
Boston has won at least 56 games in each season since Joe Mazzulla became head coach.
“It’s hard because you’ve won like that, and when you win a lot like that, how are you going to tell them not to do that?” asked Pierce.
The lack of adjustments was still startling, Garnett said. Pierce mentioned the numerous personnel changes that the Celtics made in the offseason and how those departures impacted the way the team can play.
“Before, when they had Porzingis, they had a post presence,” Pierce said. “They can get him the ball down low, get him an easy one. What do they have outside of the three to go to?”
“I think you’ve got to have something like that just to balance it. Let’s get the ball inside then out,” Pierce said. “Let’s not just come down, dribble, dribble, dribble, shoot … you’ve got to have some variance in that. There’s got to be somebody in there like, ‘look we’ve got to attack the basket because if we’ve got all shooters out there there should be layups.”
The Celtics finished second-to-last among the 16 playoff teams in points in the paint and free-throw attempts. They were first in 3-point attempts by a wide-margin. So far in these playoffs, the Celtics are the only ones averaging more than 40 3-point attempts. They averaged 46.1 attempts per game. Portland was second with 38.4.
“I’m almost looking at a robotic system at some point, bro,” Garnett said. “When the big gets it if he ain’t a playmaker, guess what he’s doing? He ain’t even looking at the basket … ain’t nobody looking at the basket. Ain’t nobody thinking downhill.”
Mazzulla said he loved the looks that the Celtics got during the Philadelphia series, before adding that he hated the result that came with it.
Brad Stevens said the Celtics struggled to generate open looks and that the team needs to make personnel changes to give them more options to get good looks inside.
Everyone on the Celtics would prefer getting a dunk to getting a three, Stevens said, but the pieces have to be in place to make that happen. Boston lost a ton of talent in the front-court last offseason, with Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet all ending up elsewhere.
Those departures hurt the Celtics during the Philadelphia series, Pierce said.
“Those plays would kind of calm the offense,” Pierce said of the looks Porzingis and Horford used to get. “You usually get a good score or a foul with that play. It’s just like when you ran into some type of adversity when the shots weren’t falling.”
“Nobody gave us something that we could kind of look to to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to select this play’ when we get a switch, Tatum or Brown on the post vs. a point guard vs. Maxey, let’s look at that. I think the variances of the offense because of the lack of a post presence hurt them.”
Khari A. Thompson
Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.
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