Boston Celtics: 3 Keys to Beat the Oklahoma City Thunder and Get Back on Track
By Thomas King
Can Celtics Start Making Open Shots?
Much has been made about Boston’s 29th-rated offense through its first four games. Some of the shooting struggles were to be expected, perhaps, for Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving, who are returning after long layoffs, but I don’t think anybody expected the numbers to look this bad early on.
Through four games, Boston has a 50.1 true shooting percentage, good for 28th in the league. To put that into perspective, Marquese Chriss, Derrick Rose, and Carmelo Anthony all had better true shooting percentage than that last season.
After finishing last season second in the NBA in three-point shooting (37.7 %), the Celtics are shooting 31.2 percent on more than 34 three-pointers per game. Meanwhile, Irving is shooting less than 40 percent from the field and has only made 4-of-22 threes. Jayson Tatum (5-for-19) and Al Horford (6-for-18) aren’t shooting much better from deep, a season removed from finishing in the top 10 in three-point percentage league-wide.
As Sam Sheehan of Celtics Blog notes, the Celtics have missed more ‘wide open’ shots (as classified by NBA.com) than any other team this season, a trend that is bound to change on a such a talent-laden team.
However, the Basketball Gods tend to reward teams that play the game the right way–and the Celtics certainly are not doing that right now. They are relying far too heavily on the mid-range shot and isolation basketball, and only the Memphis Grizzlies are currently scoring fewer points in the paint per game than Boston.
If the Celtics want to start shooting better from the outside, they’ve got to start getting the ball into the paint more, and show patience on offense, searching out the best shot, not the first shot.