The Boston Celtics dropped a disappointing game on Wednesday night, falling to the upstart Pistons on the road in a high-profile matchup against the surging young Detroit roster. It was the Celtics’ second game in as many nights, which certainly goes some distance in explaining why they appeared to be a step or two behind the young legs of the Pistons in the second half. But while the schedule certainly contributed to the loss, it also put on display one particular hot-button element that has made the Celtics feel volatile: three-point shooting.
We can get the discourse out of the way at the start. The Celtics’ free-flying ways from behind the arc have been subject to much discussion, from social media up to the NBA’s national broadcasts. It’s a polarizing issue, the subject of a miniature culture war within the sport itself. Are they shooting too many threes? Has basketball as a whole fundamentally lost its identity in how teams now rely on the three-point shot for scoring?
Those discussions have felt — and continue to feel — overblown, and we’re not here to answer them today. What we can do instead is discuss the facts of this team’s shooting, and what the Pistons loss might tell us about the Boston offense.
The Celtics have deployed a staggeringly three-point-heavy shot diet this season. More than half of their total shot attempts (53.4%) have come from behind the arc, per NBA Stats (Detroit loss not included). The three-point shot is the clear foundation of this offense, to a perhaps uncharted degree in NBA history. Even as they’ve regressed somewhat from the championship season, they still feature the league’s most devastating combination of volume and efficiency from range — first in three-point attempts (48.4), tenth in three-point percentage (36.8%).
This isn’t entirely new. The championship squad also launched a massive amount of three-point shots, and with all of their top eight players in minutes played connecting on 37% of them or better besides Jaylen Brown (35.4%), they simply buried the rest of the NBA under an avalanche of triples.
On Wednesday night, per the NBC Sports Boston broadcast, these Celtics set a new team record for fewest made two-pointers, making just 12. They launched up 49 threes and just 31 twos. This made for perhaps one of the stranger box scores in the league this season; one in which the Celtics made 21 threes on 43% shooting from range and lost by 20 points to a team who only connected on 13. Detroit blitzed them in the paint, making 61% of their two-point looks. A visual comparison of the two teams’ shot charts tells a striking story.
It must be noted, though, that the second quarter gave us a glimpse of what this team is capable of when everything aligns. Lagging behind the Pistons after a poor finish to the first, the Celtics trailed by as many as 15 points. When Porzingis connected on a three with 6:35 remaining in the half, though, it kick-started an absolutely absurd finish to the quarter: eight threes in under seven minutes of play, leading the Celtics to enter the halftime break in an improbable tie at 55 points apiece.
When Derrick White found the bottom of the net on this circus shot as the shot clock expired, you’d be forgiven if you thought the Celtics’ comeback win was a foregone conclusion.
Furthermore, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a team whose recent results suggest this is a massive problem. This is a team that has now won 10 of their last 12 games, and they’ve picked up those 10 wins whether they’ve been on schedule in their offense or not. They’ve had their burn-down-the-nets nights, such as their post-All Star break debut where they buried Philadelphia under 24 made threes, but they’ve also picked up wins over Cleveland, Miami, San Antonio and Toronto on nights when their shooting produced sub-standard results. If we’re going to put a critical eye on their shooting in a tough loss, we have to credit it when it’s been a positive, and these Celtics have generally resembled their 2023-24 form since the end of January.
So, what does this all mean? Perhaps nothing more than a feeling. The Celtics are the reigning champs, and it’s clear that the game they’re playing this year is an intended one. Joe Mazzulla is a coach with conviction, willing to sink or swim with his gameplan, and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt from his impressive track record to this point.
It just feels as though this Celtics team dances a little closer to the proverbial line with their shooting than they did last year. Taking more than 53% of your shots from behind the arc is extreme to a historically unprecedented degree, and it leans into a shot that is, from a sheer mathematic perspective, more inconsistent than any other. Their counter options have been deemphasized from last season, and that leaves them more dependent on the shots finding the bottom of the rim than ever before.
After last night, two statements are true: the Celtics showcased their unfathomable offensive ceiling with a three-point barrage before the halftime break, and they suffered a blowout loss in part due to unbalanced and ineffective offense in the second half. There were other factors behind the loss, yes — as mentioned above, this was a SEGABABA, and they were also lacking the services of Brown and Luke Kornet — but for the moment, it felt like a microcosm of the strangeness of the offense that we’ve seen all season to this point.
