It has been a very long time since the Celtics didn’t have a great defense, but they haven’t exactly excelled when it comes to takeaways. They guard their yard and rebound with the best of them, always an extremely disciplined unit, but they have never been a team that forces a lot of steals.
But Joe Mazzulla’s philosophy has changed the makeup of the team, and with their commitment to winning the possession battle, they’ve built a team that wants to create chaos and force turnovers. That played a role in the Mitchell Robinson signing, as well as the Jaylen Brown-Paul George swap, and it’s a reason why guys like Baylor Scheierman, Hugo Gonzalez, and Jordan Walsh are going to play more this season.
And sure enough, the commitment is already paying dividends as the Celtics forced 10 steals in their first preseason game, in a win over the Cavaliers on Thursday night, and then forced 16 on Saturday in a bludgeoning of the 76ers in Boston.
That’s not all. In the win over Philly, both Baylor Scheierman and Paul George recorded 5 steals individually. That’s obviously impressive enough, but it’s even more noteworthy as George played just 24 minutes, and Scheierman was limited to 19.
Adding steals would vault Celtics' defense to another stratosphere
For context, according to Sean Grande, in the entire history of the Celtics, the team has never had a player record 5 or more steals while playing fewer than 25 minutes. Sure, this is just a preseason game, but the Celtics just had two players do it in the same game.
The stat itself, while cool, is fairly meaningless, but the way that the Celtics are playing and their focus on creating turnovers is not. And this may be the last piece in building a truly elite defense. They have a team full of players who can match up and guard on the perimeter, they have two centers who can protect the rim and own the boards, and they don’t play anyone who’s a true liability and can be picked on.
If they can add turnover creation to that and start generating fast breaks and easy baskets on the other end, this defense is going to be absolutely lethal and unquestionably one of the best in the entire NBA.
They’re already not far off. Even without this element, the Celtics had the fourth-ranked defense in the NBA last season despite being 28th in steals. If they take a huge leap in that department, the rest of the league better watch out.
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