The Celtics Are a Team Without an Identity

It's been far from pretty to begin the season...

In the summer, the noise coming out of the Boston Celtics camp was that there would be a change in the style of the team’s play. It made no sense for Joe Mazzulla to stick to his previous system, considering the amount of talent heading for the exit door, and, of course, Jayson Tatum's long-standing presence on the injury report.

“I definitely think we need to adapt. We do not have the same team, a lot of different players. I think we need to play a lot faster,” Payton Pritchard said before the season got underway. “It’s a great opportunity for the new faces to show what they’re capable of doing and helping win.”

Pritchard’s comments echoed those of multiple players and team personnel. Yet, over the first eight games, Boston has been anything but lightning quick. In terms of pace, the Celtics are dead last in the NBA, averaging 96.7 possessions per game. As we’ve touched on multiple times in recent weeks, playing fast is more than stacking up possessions by sprinting the floor; it can also be by making quicker decisions.

Yet, the Celtics are also lingering in mid-table purgatory for the average time of their possessions, with the team using up 21.1 seconds of the shot clock. So, you ask yourself, maybe the lengthy possessions are due to a lack of playmaking, and maybe the decisions are coming fast, they’re just not translating to success yet…Well, if you asked yourself that, you’d be frustrated to find out they’re 20th in the NBA for average seconds per touch.

That is not 0.5 basketball…

The one area they do rank highly in?