3 reasons the Boston Celtics have been struggling

After losing a second straight game to the Orlando Magic on Sunday, the Boston Celtics officially lost the top spot in the NBA. The Milwaukee Bucks now sit atop the Eastern Conference with a higher win percentage than the Cs. Boston has lost four of their last five games and it hasn’t been pretty. Fans are beginning to panic, as fans do, but the team seems steady. Interim head coach Joe Mazzulla even had praise for his team following Sunday’s loss, saying that they played a “great game.”

Ever since the Celtics stepped foot in the Chase Center and saw ghosts from the NBA Finals, they just haven’t been the same. They’ve now lost games to the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, and of course Orlando twice. Not to mention that they were pretty lucky to avoid a catastrophic loss to the hated Los Angeles Lakers. Thankfully, Boston was able to squeak by with a 122-118 overtime victory, despite blowing a 20-point lead in the second half. Quite simply, it has not been the greatest time to be a Boston Celtics fan over the last nine days. The team looks like a completely different squad than the group that was out there for the first month and a half of the season.

But why? Why after being the league’s best team and absolutely dominating just about everyone lined up against them, have the Boston Celtics taken a tumble?

Let’s take a long look.

A brick house for the Boston Celtics

Throughout the young 2022-23 NBA season, the Boston Celtics had been having a ton of success because they were able to hang a ton of points on whoever was on the other end of the floor. Boston has the league’s best offensive rating at 116.8, despite their recent struggles. During their 1-4 stretch, they’ve been the league’s worst offense with a rating of 101. Not necessarily what you want to see if you’re Boston. It’s hard to win games when the driving force behind your success completely collapses.

The wheels have fallen off the offense for the Celtics because they quite simply aren’t making shots. Boston has shot a league-worst 41.6% from the field and has been second-worst from deep at 28.6% over the last five games. Reliable shooters like Derrick White, Sam Hauser, and Grant Williams have all taken a serious step back (along with literally everyone on the team) when it comes to knocking down threes. White is shooting just 17.6% from beyond the arc during this stretch. Hauser and Williams haven’t been much better, shooting 21.1% and 30% respectively.

Boston has been a team that has relied on the three-point shot for a significant amount of its offense this year. They take the second-most 3-pointers per game at about 42, only behind the Warriors. Over the recent skid, that number has jumped up by two attempts per game, while the efficiency has plummeted. On average, 38 of their 44 attempts from downtown have been open (closest defender between four and six feet away) or wide open (closest defender over six feet away). Despite all of the misses, the Celtics are still generating good looks on the offensive end, which should give fans a light at the end of the tunnel to look towards.