Boston Celtics Offense Won’t Be Established Overnight

The Boston Celtics will need time to figure things out on offense

The amount of offensive talent on the Boston Celtics is truly remarkable. The have all the pieces to be one of the best offense in the NBA, and that is still the case without Gordon Hayward. Obviously, losing a player as remarkable as Hayward will put a lot more strain on the rest of the team, but this offense will still come together.

What this does mean, however, is that the Celtics will need to take more time to figure things out. The offense will never be quite as good, and it will also be a lot harder to sustain their offense as they are figuring things out.

Without Hayward, they do not have the raw talent to make up for a transitioning system, and that means this offense could look out of sorts for a little while. Stevens is a master at making things work no matter who is in the lineup, but people will need to be patient before they can expect the Celtics to be that powerhouse offense.

The Celtics would have had a tough task of getting things together even with Hayward, and losing him puts more pressure on anyone else that has a significant role. Fortunately, the Celtics have had some good surprises on the scoring front early on.

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Jaylen Brown is showing signs of being a legitimate weapon, and Jayson Tatum looks ready to take on a top offensive role with the starting unit. These are positives, but they are also something the team may not have been anticipating.

The roster turnover alone puts tremendous strain on the chemistry of the team, losing Hayward forced them to make all kinds of adjustments, and now these youngsters are playing well enough that Brad Stevens may want to adjust in order to get more out of them.

The Celtics still have the offensive talent, but we have absolutely no idea how all of it should work together at this point, in order to get the best overall product from the lineup. Stevens will have to try different things and different combinations, and not all of them are going to work.

Kyrie Irving still needs to adjust to a different role. It is not only a matter of becoming more of a distributor, because bad passing is the easiest way to derail any Stevens offense. A lot of that will have to do with his teammates too.

It is not only about Irving finding a way to get all the players around him to get involved, because the Celtics always function as a unit. Al Horford could take on more responsibility given his experience with Stevens, but even that could require some sort of adjustment.

What we know so far is that the Celtics are going to do everything they can to get the ball movement they need. The problem is that Horford is the only player in the lineup that is comfortable instigating ball movement in this kind of system.

The Celtics are not going to rush things, and are not going to descent into what it easier. Stevens will take his time to figure out how to use all this talent, and things may not be that smooth until then.

Obviously, the Celtics need to be much better than they have been so far, and that is taking into account the transition. There are a lot of mental lapses while over passing and some missed open shots.

The Celtics need to focus on making sure they are doing those simpler things at a high level, and that will allow Stevens to better evaluate how these players will work together.

It may be a long time before we see the real potential of this offense, but they need to make sure it is not an absolute disaster during that period.

Next: How to Replace Hayward's Scoring

Things should get better as each games go on, but until Stevens knows what he can consistently expect from all these new players, the offense might underwhelming.