Boston Celtics will not need a primary ball handler
The Boston Celtics will be able to function without a clear primary ball handler next season
The Boston Celtics will be going into next season a completely transformed team. Their young players are going to be growing into new roles as they develop, and Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving will finally be able to show the damage they can do on what should be the most talented roster of their careers.
The most exciting part is seeing what Brad Stevens will be able to do with this talent. Even when the Celtics had lottery level players, they always had a solid system. Stevens is a master at identifying how his team is able to attack, then making sure every player is in the right position to have an impact.
In the past, it has been a struggle to find places to have these players, while ensuring the overall unit will be able to function together. Doing that with all the new talent is a different kind of challenge, but it should create one of the most unique attacks in the NBA, that should be a threat to be the best offense in the NBA.
When you look at this roster, there are so many different ways they will be able to attack, and much of the season will be about finding the best ways to bring together all of their talent. All these guys will be ale to fill a lot of different roles, and i would expect Stevens to use as many different ones as he can find.
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With Irving, Jaylen Brown, Hayward, Jayson Tatum and Al Horford, there is next to no definition for their roles, especially on offense. All of them are going to be moving around and making things an absolute nightmare for defenses. They all will do damage with the ball in or off their hands, and teams will be lost trying to stop them.
One thing the Celtics will have to figure out if the ball handling. The good news is that the Celtics do not have to treat ball handling like any other team. Irving is the first player you look to, but keeping him strictly as a ball handler will limit him, and the Celtics do not have to do that.
Right now, it would not surprise me to see someone else lead the team in assists. Irving is one of the most special play makers on the team, but he is also going to be benefiting from all kinds of space from players around him.
The Celtics want Irving to be their primary finisher, and should be their leading scorer. Obviously, that will entail him being a ball handler for a decent portion of the game.
The Celtics, however, will want more than that, and they will be able to do it. The biggest advantage is with Horford. The Celtics will have a center that they trust to handle the ball. The damage he can do passing out of the post to cutting players could be unstoppable to defend.
Horford will not be a ball dominant ball handler, but the Celtics have discovered how good of a distributor he is, and there is no doubt it will be a major part of their offense.
With Irving and Horford the Celtics will get the majority of their distribution for the starting unit, but that still have more ways to use their ball handlers. Tatum, Brown and Hayward are going to be in phenomenal positions to take advantage of matchups.
Who it will be we do not know, but teams do not have the versatility to effectively defend all three of them. All three of them will also be able to create off the dribble. They will be getting the ball in good situations because of Irving and Horford, and then they will have great advantages to attack.
They will not need to think about distribution that much. They will always need to help maintain ball movement. That being said, when these guys are ball handlers, they will be focused entirely on scoring the ball.
The situation will dedicate a lot of things. The Celtics have the comfort of knowing that all five of these players can have an impact as a ball handler, and they want to leave teams guessing every step of the way.
No defense in the league will have no holes, and there is not a better coach in the NBA to find out how to exploit those holes with five capable ball handlers and stellar all around ball movement.
On top of that, you have a bench with Terry Rozier and, hopefully, Marcus Smart. The Celtics will have seven different players that Stevens will trust with the ball in his hands, and it is impossible to know how many ways they will be able to attack at this point.
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It may take some time to figure out how all of these pieces are going to work well together, but they will be attacking in a way that teams simply will not have the personnel to slow down. Then, when they get to the top talent in the NBA, they will have ways of accounting for what at one point may have appeared to be an insurmountable offense.