Isaiah Thomas has taken a leap and so has the Boston Celtics offense

http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2017/01/isaiah_thomas_has_taken_a_leap.html




Jaylen Brown thinks Isaiah Thomas has eyes in the back of his head



Jay King | mjking@masslive.com By Jay King | mjking@masslive.com



on January 04, 2017 at 6:00 AM




BOSTON -- Isaiah Thomas has been such a killer lately that he had 29 points, 15 assists and just one turnover Tuesday night, and the outing seemed pretty normal by his recent standard.

While beating the Utah Jazz, 115-104, the Boston Celtics All-Star arced one jumper so high it might have brushed the TD Garden banners prior to falling through the hoop. He spun in a lunging, off-handed layup that impossibly escaped Rudy Gobert's never-ending arm, and, later, catapulted past Shelvin Mack just so he could bounce off Gobert for another layup at the rim. Thomas knocked down 10 of 18 shots, didn't commit a single turnover until the fourth quarter (by which time he had already smashed his career high for assists), and managed to throw five of his eight 3-point attempts through the rim.

So much of what Thomas did should have felt crazy to witness in person, but he has produced so much offense lately that even the most astonishing plays seemed normal. Several of them provided thrills, yes, but over the last month Thomas has crackled with constant electricity. His offensive brilliance hasn't sputtered in weeks, and, with him, the Celtics have morphed into one of the NBA's most powerful attacks.

Check out Thomas' numbers over the past eight games:


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Brian Robb ✔ @CelticsHub
Isaiah Thomas in last 8 games:
33.3 PPG,
7.5 APG
51.6% FG
41.9% 3-pt (9.3 attempts/game)
95% FT (10.1 FTA/G).
8:08 PM - 3 Jan 2017 · Boston, MA
 87 87 Retweets   102 102 likes


During that span, the Celtics have scored 114.9 points per 100 possessions, which would lead the NBA for the entire season. They're not just picking on cupcakes, either. They shrugged off the Memphis Grizzlies' top-ranked defense twice and ripped through the Utah Jazz's second-ranked outfit Tuesday night. (After giving up 115 points to Boston, Utah dropped to fourth in defensive efficiency.) Thomas has rolled through opponents like Sonic the Hedgehog lately and nobody has been able to stop his team.

Remember when the Celtics couldn't score? They now start the Eastern Conference's leading scorer, two high-volume 40-percent 3-point shooters (Jae Crowder's all the way up to 43 percent) and an All-Star big man who knocks down jumpers, hurts low-post mismatches and racks up just a hair under five assists per game. Of all lineups with at least 150 minutes played this season, the Celtics starters rank fifth with 114.6 points per 100 possessions. Boost the minimum to 200 minutes and the Celtics first unit trails only a pair of lineups in offensive efficiency: the starting groups from the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets. The Celtics own the top fourth-quarter offense overall and have been outscored only by the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs during crunch-time (the last five minutes of games in which one team is ahead by five or fewer points).

"I think (the Celtics are) a unique team because they have their pick-and-pop 5s, which is different than a lot of teams," Gordon Hayward said. "We have to change the way that we play defensively. Tonight we struggled with that, we gave up way too much in transition so they got rolling and saw the ball go through the basket and it made it a long night for us."

Even with Thomas on the bench lately, the Boston offense has been roasting teams since shifting Marcus Smart into a power point guard role. The Celtics won't always shoot 17 for 31 from behind the arc, like they did against the Jazz. Still, they rank fourth in 3-point attempts, fourth in 3-point makes, and ninth in 3-point accuracy. They hardly ever commit turnovers and trail only the Warriors in assist-to-turnover ratio.

In a stunning twist, the defense has emerged as Boston's less productive unit. The Celtics are 21-14 (third in the East) despite a below-average defense.

"Sometimes when we go small now we're really small, and so we've had to adjust that," said head coach Brad Stevens. "The first seven games of the year we were atrocious defensively, which would actually be a compliment to how we were. And then the last seven we haven't guarded great. Middle 20 we were third in the league, so we've got to be great. We've got to be great on that end if we want to improve. Hopefully we can be better at that as we head into this month and a half before the All-Star break because we don't have a chance to really compete at a high level if we don't guard better."

At another time we can examine Boston's defensive slippage and wonder just how good the Celtics can be if they start locking down like last year's club. On this night it feels more fitting to kowtow to Thomas' current role as the eternal creator of buckets.

"He's having a hell of a year so he's not just doing it against us," Hayward said. "He's doing it against everybody."

"No, I'm not at my peak," Thomas said. "I've got a lot more. A lot more to go."

You almost believe him even though you wonder what more he can do with the ball in his hands.



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