Boston Celtics: 3 things we need to see today against Houston

What we need to see No. 3) Continued 3-point efficiency

As we mentioned in our first slide, coming into the Disney bubble it was a well-accepted hypothesis that offensive play was going to be a tad bit off in the early stages of the season’s resumption. Being that many players were left without any sort of real basketball activities — some of which didn’t even have so much as a hoop — for months on end, it was to be expected that timing would be off, fatigue would be at a high, and shots would be wonky.

As we saw in the first batch of scrimmages played last week, for the most part, this was true, especially for the Boston Celtics. In their first scrimmage game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, along with their porous defense one of the biggest reasons for their 98-84 defeat was due to their lackluster shooting efficiency, specifically from long range (shot just 21 percent from downtown).

In a league so predicated on the 3-point shot, in order to even so much as have a chance at contention, they’ll need to improve in this area, which leads me to one of the main storylines of their second scrimmage against the Phoenix Suns: their significantly improved long-range shooting.

Led by Gordon Hayward (60 percent), Jaylen Brown (50 percent), and Jayson Tatum (40 percent) Boston shot a solid 39 percent from deep during the contest and an overall 49 percent from the field.

While these numbers were certainly a welcoming sight to see for Cs fans, before we get ahead of ourselves and believe Boston’s offensive excellence is back we’ll need to see this production take place in more than just one contest.

Should this high level of efficiency roll into today’s game against Houston, we can all head into the seeding games confident that the team’s offensive rust looks to have mostly washed away.