Bounce-Back or Band-Aid?
The Boston Celtics secured a blow-out win over the New Orleans Pelicans
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A win over a depleted New Orleans Pelicans ended the Boston Celtics’ three-game slide and gave them their first dub of the new season. To put a cherry on top, the victory was a blowout, as Joe Mazzulla’s team walked out with a 32-point margin:
Game 4: Celtics 122 — Pelicans 90
📊 Key Stats
For the first time in this young season, I don’t have to point out Boston’s struggles on the glass. In fact, they dominated the Pelicans, ending the night with 54 boards compared to New Orleans’ 35.
The Celtics still gave up 11 offensive rebounds, though, which, when factoring in the absences of Zion Williamson and Kevon Looney, remains concerning. The Pelicans absolutely would have feasted if those two rounding machines were in the rotation.
Back to happy thoughts! Neemias Queta ended the game as Boston’s rebounding leader (11) — which is a massive improvement from the frontcourt’s abject display just 24 hours earlier.
Sticking with the happiness that a win brings, let’s give the Celtics some credit for grabbing 16 offensive boards of their own.
3-Point conversion is still an issue. The C’s shot 18-of-53 from the perimeter (34%).
The Celtics are 25th in the NBA for 3-point percentage this season, averaging 31.9%. How the mighty have fallen…
We’re still waiting on the backcourt pairing of Payton Pritchard and Derrick White to click from deep. The duo combined for 3-of-16 shooting from three…
The duo is now a combined 17-of-73 from deep, giving them a 23.3% success rate over the first four games.
I do wonder whether Mazzulla will test out moving Pritchard back to the bench and pairing Anfernee Simons with White, if nothing more than data-gathering purposes…
The Celtics showed huge improvements in converting on passes.
Over four games, the Celtics are 30th (dead last) in the NBA for assists per game with 19.3.
Against the Pelicans, Mazzulla’s team registered 25 dimes, with Pritchard leading the way.
According to NBA Stats, the Celtics registered 51 potential assists on the night, 10 more than the Pelicans with 41.
Interestingly, the Celtics' increased shot-making off passes came on a night where they averaged fewer total passes than normal. Boston ended the game with 268…
They currently rank 25th in the NBA for total passes per game with 273.8.
The Celtics won the possession battle, with an eFG of 57%, compared to the Pelicans’ 40.1%
Interestingly, despite it feeling like there was more action at the rim (at least for stretches) only 21% of Boston’s offense came within four feet.
However, 53% of the offense came from 3-point range, with only 7% of those shots coming from the corners.
💫 Star of the Game
Anfernee Simons went full “human torch” mode. He embraced a high usage rate and found some much-needed efficiency. Simons ended the night with 25 points on 9-of-17 shooting with 6-of-13 from deep.
The Celtics have been in dire need of someone outside of Jaylen Brown stepping up on offense. Simons has the reputation of being an elite scorer, and at the fourth time of asking, finally showed Celtics fans what he’s capable of.
“We know that at some point it’s going to click for us, and tonight it clicked for us,” Simons said after the game.
Simons also chipped in on the glass, grabbing six rebounds.
We’re still in the very early stages of the season, but there’s no doubt this performance set the bar for what will be expected now. Of course, we have to contextualize how short-handed the Pelicans were…However, the Celtics will need more of this from Simons.
📈 Improved Performer
Two players deserve a mention here. I’ll start with Josh Minott, who bounced back from a DNP-CD against the Knicks to have a strong bench showing vs. the Pistons and then thrive as a starter last night.
Minott’s athleticism was a big plus, especially when running the break or operating within the Celtics’ switching system.
His 9 boards were a major boost, as was his efficient 15 points. However, it was his positioning, ability to push the tempo and length on defense that gave the Celtics a boost.
Luka Garza also deserves his flowers.
He got hurt on opening night. Missed game two, and then tried to find a rhythm against the Pistons. However, it was last night that we started to see what he can bring to the rotation.
He knocked down some three’s, rebounded, screened well and showcased his movement skills.
It’s still very early, but Garza has the potential to become a reliable backup big…Although…As we already know, his defense needs a significant amount of work.
📋 Playbook Observation
A super quick one today. I don’t have a specific play that I want to break down. Instead, I want to point out this short-roll pass from Queta:
After a few years of Luke Kornet’s short-roll game, we’ve become spoiled in thinking these passes are easy to make. Queta has made a few of these looks to begin the season, which is an important development in his game.
As a non-shooter, Queta needs other ways to force the defense to make tough decisions. If he can continually find shooters on the short-roll, he will, in turn, become a bigger threat as a lob option or rim-runner.
White will make that shot more often than not throughout the season, too.
Queta has clearly been putting in work this summer. His short-roll game could become a key wrinkle to his game as the season progresses.
⚾ Curveball of the game
Hugo Gonzalez sat out the entire game, despite impressing against the Pistons.
The decision came after Gonzalez saw just 18 minutes of playing time against Detroit, despite being one of the more impactful members of the rotation.
I mentioned this yesterday, but will double down: I’m starting to wonder whether Mazzulla is struggling to fit both Minott and Gonzalez in the rotation. If that is the case, it could be great for both players, and that level of competition is what forces improvement and ensures both guys are locked in all year long.
💬 My Take on the Game
The Celtics needed this win. A 0-3 start had led to talk of tanking far earlier than I expected. Still, one win won’t change the overall feeling surrounding this team, especially when the opponent was missing two of its top three players. However, as I’ve said countless times in recent years, both in this newsletter and at home (where my daughter is sick of hearing it) you can only control what you can control.
The Celtics don’t choose who is and isn’t suiting up against them. They don’t choose what teams they face or at what point in the season. All they can do is try and give 100% for every second the game clock is ticking. Human nature means that, at times, the effort level will dip, but in the grand scheme, playing hard leads to unexpected results.
I’m still not sold that sticking with such a high 3-point volume is the right decision with the current roster (the Celtics are 3rd in the NBA for 3-point attempts) — especially when there’s so much athleticism and downhill scoring talent within the rotation. Expecting a Mazzulla-coached team to not focus on the perimeter is likely a foolish endeavor, though.
Against the Pelicans, we saw what this version of the Celtics can do when (some) shots are falling and they’re not overmatched in terms of talent and skill. This win doesn’t mean they’ve turned a corner. It doesn’t mean a mini win-streak is guaranteed, either. What it does mean is that at least for a day or two, the Celtics have a reprieve from the external noise, and maybe, just maybe, some momentum they can try and build on moving forward.
As there isn’t a game tonight, let’s use tomorrow as an opportunity to begin peeling some additional layers off what we’ve learned over the last week. Please use today’s comments section like a mailbag request…drop your questions or analysis requests, and I’ll work through them during the off-days this week!
One more thing. This group is going through a lot of change. It is hard to keep processing a lot change at once. Our visual processing parts of the brain process like an mpeg video. Much of it is repeated/ignored background information so that the screen only changes in small pieces. We do the same thing with our vision processing.
These guys are built to make quick/wired decisions and it is hard to do when so much thinking has to happen and slows everything done in a really fast environment. I think that we are starting to see them chunk more information so that they can make smaller, hence, quicker decisions.
I wish they had a longer camp to integrate the change more deeply. It will just take a few weeks longer. I think that we should see these first 20 games as that integration period.
"I’m starting to wonder whether Mazzulla is struggling to fit both Minott and Gonzalez in the rotation." I think the issue is that Mazzulla also has Scheierman to count in that group, too. I am classifying them as the energy wings. BS seemed much more focused in this game and was a pain in his own way like Minot and Gonzalez. My guess is that Joe is looking at their rotation of minutes across games rather than within a game.