The Celtics are built for the playoffs, just ask our usual tropes (part 1)

Just like in literature, movies, and television, basketball is an ever-changing narrative landscape. Plots that felt novel and unique in the 90’s are now weathered tropes that probably get solved with a cell phone. Seinfeld and company aimlessly walking through a parking garage is solved by a simple glance down at your iPhone’s parked car feature. So too have we seen some of our beloved NBA Playoffs tropes eroded to extinction with the passage of time and evolution of the game.

One of my favorite dead tropes is that “jump shooting teams can’t win the title.” While Steph Curry and the Warriors were the beginning of the end for this one (and maybe the end of the end in 2022), every modern NBA team would qualify as a jump shooting team when compared to the early 2000s.

There are, however, some classic tropes that still hold strong, three of which we will jump into today. First, we have a crowd favorite: “the game slows down.” The second is probably less applicable given the way refs have started calling games, but alas, it’s also true in the playoffs: “the refs swallow their whistles.” The third is an amalgamation of a few tropes, things like not turning it over and protecting the defensive glass. I’ve summed it up into one catch-all trope: “you have to win the possession battle.”

*Part 2 will discuss “the refs swallow their whistles” and “you have to win the possession battle.”*

Trope #1: the game slows down

This one sounds a bit like me trying to convince my friends to watch The Wire (it’s slower, but it’s totally worth it, I promise). When we talk about the game slowing down, that’s basically shorthand for saying defenses get back quicker and crisper. Teams are more careful on offense, which limits transition opportunities. To sum it up, playoff basketball is half-court basketball. Well, good news, everyone!

The Celtics elite offense is, shockingly, elite in the half-court (stats per Cleaning the Glass). Like G.O.B. looking into a paper bag labeled “dead dove,” that might seem ridiculously obvious, but there have been excellent regular season offenses that relied heavily on transition buckets to bolster their efficiency. Some of the Nick Nurse Raptors teams fit that profile. It’s like Seinfeld finding a girlfriend, looks great on paper, but they’ll have trouble putting a ring on their finger (probably due to the size of her hands). Although the Celtics do rank in the middle of the league in difference between total offensive efficiency and halfcourt offensive efficiency.

There are a few reasons for the offensive eliteness, one simply being the ridiculous amount of talent on the roster. The Celtics’ half court offense is the NBA equivalent of the Cheers cast. But talent is meaningless if it isn’t deployed properly, and Joe Mazzulla has these guys drilled to a Dr. Cox level of smart team basketball.

To state the obvious for a second time in this brief section, part of the Celtics’ efficiency is their 3-point attack. Lovingly described as Mazzullaball by some, and mockingly so by others.

All charts from pbpstats.com.

No matter your personal feelings on the Cs’ three-point heavy attack, it has been highly successful. But we saw in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals what it can look like when the 3s aren’t falling.

Mazzulla promised to develop some curveballs in the offseason to get the offense humming when the 3s aren’t blowing teams off the court. Well, Joe must have watched some Sandy Koufax tape (excluding that time Mister Ed hit a homerun off him) because he came up with an elite one: the post up.

There are 83 players that have 30 or more post up possessions this season (per Synergy), four Celtics are in the top-25 of efficiency: Jaylen Brown (25th), Jayson Tatum (17th), Al Horford!! (4th!), and Kristaps Porzingis (1st!). All four are deployed differently, which gives the Celtics a varied attack even within the same playtype. Porzingis is very often used as a high-post hub where he can shoot over the top or work himself closer to the hoop. JB’s post-ups are usually just tools for getting off his elite mid-range jumper, and Tatum often attacks with spins and fall-aways near the blocks. Horford post-ups are the equivalent of a clip show: they aren’t your preference, but sometimes they work just fine. He punishes small defenders and poor alike when teams try to hide them on him.

Add the post-ups with the Celtics long-range attack, and including their other various sets that lead to pick and roll possessions and buckets off cuts, and it’s easy to see why their half court offense is so deadly. Not many teams can boast four elite post up options and 7 of their top 8 shooting 37.5% or better from three (Jaylen being the only guy below that mark). The Celtics have more counters than Avon Barksdale. There is just no good way to defend this team.

Now, let’s flip to the other side of the court. Celtics fans can, at times, tap into their inner Kahn and Mihn from King of the Hill. We become the overbearing parent expecting the team to earn an A+ in every subject, which is objectively impossible in the NBA. In this instance, the C’s half court defense would bring shame to the family as it fails to meet that lofty standard and settles in around the A- range.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the C’s have the 5th best half court defense in the league, and the 3rd best defense overall (they are ridiculously good in transition). Their statistical profile is encouraging. The aim of the Celtics is to protect the rim and limit straight-line drives that force help and lead to easy 2s and wide-open 3s. They have been extremely successful at this; not only do they limit the attempts at the rim, but they force a higher percentage of misses on the shots that do get off.

And while the Cs are middle of the pack in opponent three-point rate, they are elite at defending the line.

They also force the 4th most worst shots in basketball, the Sandy Lyle memorial long mid-range jumper (“rain dance!”). While Sandy was exceptionally terrible, his efficiency was exponentially damaged by his reliance on the long middy, and NBA offenses are no different. You want opponents relying on these shots to generate offense, because the math will win the day over the long run.

Allowing around 42.5% on these shots, which is about average, is equivalent to an offensive rating of 85 points per 100 possessions. Even the Celtics’ middling middy defense equals a defensive win when they force opponents into this look. That efficiency would rank dead last even in some of the NBA’s most offensive starved eras.

Much like Dr. Evil’s Preparation H, the Celtics’ gameplan is working, and all of the stats above are evidence of such. The Celtics are not an aggressive defensive team, and basically don’t force turnovers (which we will discuss in part 2).

Instead, Mazzulla has instituted almost a contain style defense, keeping everything in front on the perimeter and funneling drives towards the Celtics’ Bond villain stand-in, Kristaps Porzingis. Their elite wing and guard defenders can help and recover against any kick-outs from deterred rim attacks, allowing teams to generate threes, but often against a hard contest.

Playing defense this way doesn’t serve to strangle offenses in quite the same way that the Celtics’ aggressive, switch-everything style under Udoka did. The Cs invite teams to shoot long midrange jumpers (although Jrue and White are so good getting around screens, lock and trails, and rear-view contests that it’s not as open as our strategy would normally dictate), so teams with players comfortable in the midrange can generate a decent shot nearly every possession.

And that’s just fine, the Celtics half court offense and defense is playing the math, betting they can outscore you with 3s and rim attacks while forcing you to shoot the lights out on the league’s least efficient shot or make some well contested threes. To quote Ron Burgundy, “it’s science!”