Boston Celtics: 3 takeaways from home-opening drubbing against Toronto

Boston Celtics takeaway No. 2) What is Imee Udoka doing with Jayson Tatum?

Boston Celtics new hire Ime Udoka made quite the impression this offseason on us Celtics fans, with his tough mindset, anti-whining agenda, among other things.

A main point of his plan was to stress ball movement, something Boston largely lacked last season.

However, it’s gone a bit too far.

He has effectively turned superstar Jayson Tatum into a spot-up shooter. Tatum, despite the hot hand, hardly touched the ball at all last night. He was constantly being posted in the corner, as Dennis Schroder handled the ball up and down the court.

It was as if the 2x All-Star wasn’t one of the league’s best shot creators the past two years.

I just can’t seem to wrap my head around why this is a good idea. Udoka was adamant about playing to the strengths of the Celtics star players, yet is trying to change the very way they play in general.

Letting Tatum isolate a bit more often, or getting him favorable matchups at the top of the key, is playing to his strengths. Posting Tatum in the corner, and hoping he hits out of rhythm catch-and-shoot triples to make up his point total is not playing to his strengths.

We should all agree that the team in general needed to improve upon its passing and become more team-oriented. However, stripping your star players of scoring opportunities in the hopes of getting others going isn’t the way to do that.

The majority of the playmaking we see from a player like Jayson Tatum is due to the gravity he creates from his innate shot creation ability.

Take away shot creation opportunities and the rest of his game will get worse as well.

Ball movement can still be stressed while letting our main guys do their thing — in fact, it will actually make ball movement easier.

Hopefully, these issues get ironed out…and soon.