Don’t look now, but this Boston Celtics team might be for real.
21 games into the season, Joe Mazzulla’s squad boasts a 12-9 record, splitting their road games 5-5 and winning at home 7-4. They’ve won 7 of their last 10 games, and on Tuesday, they shut down the New York Knicks for an impressive dub.
The Eastern Conference is still pretty tight. Boston is just two wins behind the Miami Heat, who occupy the third seed. And, if last night’s performance is going to become the rule, rather than the exception, there’s no reason why they can’t make up that ground over the remaining three quarters of the season.
Game 21: Knicks 117 — Celtics 123
📊 Key Stats
At various points in the game, the Celtics looked to attack Jalen Brunson on the perimeter. Six different members of the Celtics rotation took a shot when being guarded by New York’s star guard.
In total, Brunson defended 21 shots, with Jaylen Brown accounting for 7 of them.
Boston shot 17-of-21 on those attempts.
Interestingly, only 8 of those 21 looks came from deep; the rest were either in the mid-range or at the rack.
Mazzulla had his team running double screens, turn screens, stagger screens and any other type of screen to force Brunson into some difficult matchups.
This shouldn’t come as a shock. Attacking Brunson has been a key part of the Celtics' offensive strategy against the Knicks in recent years.
However, unlike the postseason, where New York had Brunson hedge-and-recover rather than switching, the Knicks lived with the results of Brunson being dragged into actions throughout the night.
The Celtics’ ability to create offense for themselves was on full display.
67.4% of the Knicks’ buckets came via an assist.
However, 63.3% of Boston’s makes were self-created, with just 36.7% coming via dimes.
Neemias Queta continues to develop into a highly talented screener.
He had multiple buckets — especially early in the game — where he read the defense and reacted accordingly. Be it a slip, a hard roll or a re-screen, Queta is reading the court much better.
It’s no surprise, then, that he led the game in screen assist points with 10.
To put this into context, the Knicks had a total of 11 screen assist points, and that’s a team that has both Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson in the rotation.
Jordan Walsh (2), Josh Minott (4) and Hugo Gonzalez (5) also produced some screen assist points as the Celtics tallied 21.
