C's Offense Continues Surging During Blowout of Blazers

https://www.nba.com/celtics/news/sidebar/post-20211204-bostons-offense-continues-to-surge-during-blowout-win-over-blazers







C's Offense Continues Surging During Blowout of Blazers


By Marc D'Amico |  @Marc_DAmico
Celtics.com
December 5, 2021


Boston’s defense has been one of the best in the NBA all season. If its offense ever catches up – watch out.

With that being said: you’d better be watching.

The Celtics on Saturday scored a season-high 145 points in Portland during a 145-117 rout of the Trail Blazers. That scoring effort arrived less than 24 hours after Boston tallied 130 points during a narrow loss to the Jazz in Utah.

These two games mark the first instance in the past 31 seasons that the Celtics have scored 130 or more points during consecutive games, per our Taylor Snow. Even more impressive is the fact that they just accomplished that feat on back-to-back nights, which says a whole lot about the type of rhythm the offense is in right now.

“It’s about time that we as a group, on the same night, hit some shots,” said Jayson Tatum, who, along with Dennis Schroder, scored a game-high 31 points Saturday night. “I know that’s something we’ve been waiting for.”

And finally, it has arrived.

Boston’s shooting splits were absurd Saturday night. The team shot 56.3 percent from the field, 56.8 percent from long range, and 89.7 percent from the free-throw line. Believe it or not, all three of those percentages were actually better than the numbers Utah logged against the Celtics Friday night, when it felt as if everything that left a Jazz player’s fingers was falling through the net.

To Boston’s credit, they nearly matched the Jazz during Friday’s matchup as well. Boston shot 51.6 percent from the field, 35.9 percent and 100 percent from the free-throw line, compared to Utah’s clips of 55.6 percent from the field, 52.9 percent from long range, and 87 percent from the stripe.

According to the Celtics, there are two catalysts behind their offensive surge: pace and driving to the basket. Head coach Ime Udoka said following Saturday’s win that the former is a strong area of focus right now for the team.

“The pace,” he said of what has changed offensively the last two nights. “That’s the first thing that we really started to talk about going on this road trip was just up our pace.”

The use of the term ‘pace’ in this instance not only describes Boston getting the ball up the court quickly from defense to offense, but also quick and decisive ball movement in the half court, which keeps defenses on its heels.

Boston came out of the gates Saturday night and excelled in that category during the first quarter. It scored 38 points while hitting 14 of its first 15 shots. The team logged eight assists during the first quarter alone.

The pace and ball movement lacked during the second quarter, however, which led to a significant drop in production. The C’s logged only 26 points on 41.7 percent shooting during the second quarter, and that led Udoka to deliver a reminder to the team during the halftime break.

“What I said to the guys at halftime and on the bench is, ‘You can see the difference, where in the first, second and third quarter when the ball is moving, less holding, less isolation,’” he recalled. “We see it as coaches. I said, ‘I’m not crazy out here. I see it. You guys gotta feel that too.’”

Boston got back to what worked after the break as it pulled away for the runaway win. The C’s scored 81 points during the second half alone as they pulled ahead by as many as 31 points. The pace of the offense was outstanding, but the team also put an emphasis on driving to the basket.

The Celtics applied so much pressure to Portland’s defense that they got the line for a whopping 23 free throws during the second half alone. They cashed in on 21 of them. Overall on the night, they shot 26-for-29 from the stripe.

This performance came one night after the team shot a perfect 22-for-22 from the line against the Jazz in Utah.

“All of our guys were in attack mode, getting downhill,” Udoka said. “We talked about not settling all the time and playing for your teammate [instead of] isolation. That’s what we saw there with the aggressiveness of all our guys, but that’s really what’s improved over the last 10, 15 games with us, is getting downhill and getting to the free-throw line, and that continued tonight.”

Note that Udoka said 10 or 15 games, not just two. Some may not have been noticing the fact that Boston’s offense has been climbing the charts for a while now.

Over the team’s last 10 games, dating back to Nov. 17, the Celtics rank sixth in the league in offensive rating. That’s a good sample size, and one that indicates that Boston’s offense can be elite.

The NBA already knows that Boston’s defense is elite. The offense is slowly catching up, so like we said: watch out.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Time for some stats!  Stats!  Stats!  Stats!  Get your red-hot stats here!  As a team we are

4th in the league in rebounding (46.5/game. Last night we had 47).  

2nd in the league in ftas.  Seems clear to me that means go inside more, create more contact.  

10th in the league in +/-.  This stat becomes more and more relevant as the season progresses.  Winning big regularly indicates dominance.

Tied for 9th in turnovers/game. Giving ourselves good chances to score.

13th in offensive rebounds/game (10.3). We only need to improve .2 offensive rebounds/game to be in the top 10. I cannot tell you how much I want this to happen.

13th in ppg.  We were something like 27th a few weeks ago.  BIG improvement.

DEFENSE!
We are tied for 6th in blocks/game and are only .1/game away from 5th.  What a difference a year makes, huh?  

Tied for 9th in ppg allowed.  Tied with Utah, of all teams.  .2ppg away from Milwaukee for 8th.  That's good.

Tied for 7th for fewest points given up off of turnovers. Combined with our turnover rate these are very good stats. You have to play well to beat us because we're not beating ourselves with sloppy play and poor transition defense as badly as most teams.

Tied for 3rd for fewest points given up off of 2nd chances.  Excellent defensive rebounding.

10th for fewest fast break points given up.

4th in fewest points given up in the paint.

The downside of having big scoring games, like we have had the last 2 games, is that you tend to give up a lot more points too.  Last night we had a rockin' 147 points.  We also gave up 117, which is a lot.  All good, we won by 30, but last night's 117 and the previous night's 137 to Utah didn't help our defensive rating.  Our 277 total points (130 + 147 = 277; 138.5/game) sure helped our offensive rating though.


.

All good and improving! Great stats, bobh!

Next little mini-test...B2B in LA! If we can clobber these two that are on the outside looking in, we might just officially be on our way and ready for the real game of this road trip...PHX!

db

I believe Ime's thinking is correct.  The Law of Averages has to come into play.  We can't suck this bad offensively even with a couple of players out at a time.  

He's seeing the full day-to-day since the beginning.  I like his combination of the Greg Popovich and Phil Jackson not getting too bent out of shape unless the house is on fire approach.  The players respect that.  We're all adults.  No sense yelling at us like we are kids.  It's basketball.  

db

P.S. If nothing else, we are certainly becoming more intriguing to the league and the rest of the world especially if this rubber band effect offense continues with no flashbacks to games past this season nor last! We might be onto something! Let these guys play!!

One thing that needs to be mentioned.

Our shooting percentage was horrible, but we were missing lots of open shots. As of late, we are not.

If we had open looks and just missed 6-8-10 or more each game, that not only means lost points but it also has a psychological effect on our players. Hitting the shots flips the switch on everything.

Like dbrown said, the law of averages has come into play.