Avery Bradley, Boston Celtics focused on taking fewer long 2-pointers

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Avery Bradley, Boston Celtics focused on taking fewer long 2-pointers







Boston Celtics player Avery Bradley smiles during an interview at the Boston Celtics media day at their training facility in Waltham, Mass., Friday, Sept. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)
Print Email Jay King | mjking@masslive.com By Jay King | mjking@masslive.com

on September 30, 2015 at 4:48 PM





BOSTON -- Back in Golden State, the court felt wide open because Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson drew the eyes of all five defenders. But David Lee was traded to the Boston Celtics this summer and now must adjust to life without two of the NBA's greatest shooters.

"The spacing is different," Lee said Tuesday night before an open practice. "That's for sure."

It's no knock on the Celtics young guards to point out they cannot compete with Curry and Thompson from deep. Combined, those guys might be the greatest shooting backcourt of all time, two ridiculous shotmakers who can fire from many feet behind the arc, on or off balance, with hands in their faces if necessary. The challenge for Celtics head coach Brad Stevens is to coax spacing and efficiency out of an offense that doesn't feature anybody like those two guys.

So far in training camp, Stevens has put an increased focus on the type of shots Boston attempts. The goal is to shift another chunk of those shots from inside the arc to behind it, in order to boost the team's offensive efficiency at least a bit. Since Day 1 of practice, Stevens has preached the small difference between fourth place and 12th place in the Eastern Conference. He knows eliminating a few midrange jumpers per game -- typically inefficient looks -- in favor of threes or layups could lift the Celtics up the standings.

"He just wants us to try to eliminate the foot-on-the-line twos or long twos," said Avery Bradley. While the coaching staff has always taught 3-pointers are better looks if all other things are equal, Bradley agreed the message feels more powerful now. "Yes, it does because the best teams do those little things."

Remember when the basketball world wanted to take Twitter away from Phil Jackson? It was because the great former coach took a shot at teams that relied on 3-pointers, wondering how they were doing in the playoffs. In reality, the four teams with the most postseason 3-point attempts all reached at least the conference finals. Golden State, which won the title, launched more triples per playoff game than any other team.

Likewise, the four conference finalists were the best at limiting their midrange attempts. The Celtics, not so much. They finished ninth in midrange tries last season, according to NBA.com. While that stat encompasses all shots between the paint and the arc, Boston also took too many deep twos. Avery Bradley alone took about 3.8 midrange jumpers per game (between 10 feet and the arc) with a defender either "tight" (between 2-4 feet away) or "very tight" (within two feet). Some of those were by design on dribble-handoffs, but Bradley and some of his teammates tended to get carried away with jumpers from just inside the arc. Switch out a few of those per game and the Celtics offense -- which was 19th last year even after adding Isaiah Thomas -- could threaten to rise into the top half of the league without many other differences.

According to NBA Savant, Bradley finished second in the league with 255 two-point shots from greater than 20 feet. In that zone only one guard, J.J. Redick (168), finished within 100 attempts of Bradley. The other players in the top five were all big men, who more frequently benefit from defenders sagging off. Bradley's actually a strong shooter from that range, capable of sinking shots on the fly with defenders chasing after him. In January, he held off Denver by curling around a screen into a tough 21-footer. There is a time and place for midrange looks. They're not all bad.

Still, simple math shows Bradley would need to shoot greater than 50 percent from midrange to make that shot as efficiently as he does 3-pointers. He hit long twos 41.7 percent of the time, according to NBA Savant, but kept firing from that distance. Every year Bradley has also taken more threes, where he's pretty good, but he needs to continue that trend.

Asked about his reliance on midrange looks, the shooting guard pointed to his role in the offense.

"I think with the plays, like I said, that's the main thing because the majority of our plays were dribble hand-offs with me in that space," he said. "I couldn't do a stepback back to the three, you know what I mean? So I was just taking what the defense gave me."

This year, according to Bradley, the Celtics plan to run more of their offense for 3-point looks. He said he has already held a conversation with the coaches about what to do with dribble handoffs -- whether he should use them to run behind the arc -- but declined to spill the details.

"We spoke about it, but I don't want to give away too much," Bradley said. "I'm not sure what we're going to do, but I know a lot of the other plays we used to run will be for threes."

"I feel like the plays that we're going to be running are going to be for threes," he added. "It will help me out a lot more and help me get a better rhythm."

To fully capitalize, the Celtics will need to sink a higher percentage of threes after finishing last year at 32.7 percent (27th place). While they did not acquire an established knockdown threat this summer, there is reason to believe internal development should push them ahead at least a tick or two. Jae Crowder and Isaiah Thomas could both be due to bounce back after career-low stretches in Boston, and youngster Marcus Smart has worked diligently on advancing his craft. If a share of Jared Sullinger's attempts from last year go to Jonas Jerebko and Kelly Olynyk, the Celtics could be due for a bump up the rankings. At media day, Danny Ainge said he expects to field an improved shooting team.

One regular command from Stevens has been for the perimeter players to sprint to the corners. Despite finishing 13th in overall 3-point attempts, Boston took only 5.3 corner threes per game, a number that ranked in the bottom half of the league.

"He wants all the guards as in the 2s and the 3s to run to the corners so that we have better spacing," Bradley said. "It's not different from last year. It's always been an emphasis for us. But we don't always do it. For Doc (Rivers), it was, 'You better be in the corner.' For us, we're getting there, we're still learning because we're a young team. That definitely helps the team out whenever you sprint to the corners."

With Stevens in charge, we know the Celtics plan to keep firing away. He stressed pace and space all last season and now hopes to build on that foundation.

"The number one thing last year that I wanted to see us make strides with was sharing the ball, playing with pace as we've talked about are the main things, and not turning it over," Stevens said. "And we did all three of those pretty well. Now I think we can make strides in these other areas if we can maintain the same."



bob



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Bob

This is a very interesting article that really confirms some comments that gyso made under another thread.

It will be interesting to see if the 3 Pt. field goal percentage increases.  I do not put a lot of stock in the notion that a guy like Crowder (.282%) will become a reliable 3 point shooter or that Sully just needs to keep on hosting them up.

However Jonas, Bradley and KO should be in the mix to make a lot of 3 point shots.  Thomas and Smart and Amir Johnson should also be significant contributors.  

And down the road a guy like Hunter and Young/Jones could become significant perimeter 3 point shooters.

This should be an interesting system.

dboss

The Celtics need to a plan to establish inside scoring surrounded by perimeter shooting.  The Celtics still need to play with more pace.

dboss wrote:Bob

This is a very interesting article that really confirms some comments that gyso made under another thread.

It will be interesting to see if the 3 Pt. field goal percentage increases.  I do not put a lot of stock in the notion that a guy like Crowder (.282%) will become a reliable 3 point shooter or that Sully just needs to keep on hosting them up.

However Jonas, Bradley and KO should be in the mix to make a lot of 3 point shots.  Thomas and Smart and Amir Johnson should also be significant contributors.  

And down the road a guy like Hunter and Young/Jones could become significant perimeter 3 point shooters.

This should be an interesting system.

dboss

The Celtics need to a plan to establish inside scoring surrounded by perimeter shooting.  The Celtics still need to play with more pace.

dboss,

You, me, gyso and Clyde all seem to be on the same page on this.  There are shooters and there are non-shooters.  Non-shooters can become shooters (e.g. Jason Kidd is a good example of a non-shooter who, by the end of his career, was quite lethal from 3.  In his last 6 years in the league he shot over 40% from 3 for three of them and around 35% for 3 of them) but it takes time and tons of practice precisely because they are not naturals.

Kelly is a natural shooter.  Hunter, based upon summer league alone, looks unreal.  Bradley, whom we thought couldn't shoot a lick the first few years he was in the league, has turned out to be a pretty good shooter and extending his range another foot or two shouldn't be too big a deal.  Sullinger and Crowder may be good 3pt shooters now, after a summer of practice, but they weren't last year.  I'm really excited to see what skills all these players have developed over the summer.  Many of the well-reasoned conclusions we ended up with at the end of last year might have to be tossed in light of the new evidence we will see this year.  That's the real fun of a new season, isn't it?  Seeing where we've gained?

The key to the "new NBA", as I am seeing it, is that you have to have shooters at almost every position to open up the floor.  SVG tried the "dump it down low to Howard and he can kick it out to shooters if/when he gets doubled" and it didn't work all that well (and he had some serious shooters in JJ Redick and Ryan Anderson) because the players are too fast and the defenses flex so well now that the player who must be down low and nowhere else can't get the space to do his dirty work before the defense collapses on him but can still get back out to close out the shooter.  Everything must be opened up to create space for cutters.  Also, now we have the "spread pick-and-roll" which is another way of saying you set a pick 30' away from the basket and then roll to the 3 point line.  That only works if the picker can hit 3s and the best pick setters are bigs.  Sullinger shot 28% last year from 3, but that is also the 3rd straight year of improvement from 3 for him.  If he shoots over 30% this year, but doesn't take too many of them, that's an eFG% of over 45%, which isn't bad.  To quote Sam, missed 3s produce long rebounds and opportunities for the other team to run fast breaks, but transition defense is another thing and we have some youth and speed to deal with that. And, if Sully is a threat from 3 (even if it's only a moderate threat) his passing skills, coupled with his improved 3pt shooting, will create layup opportunities for cutters.


bob


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