Celtics fans are all too familiar with Joe Mazzulla talking about the importance of the team’s spacing and how it unlocks the offense. Many people hear that kind of rhetoric and assume that it’s tied to three-point shooting and the threat of the long ball dragging defenders away from the basket to stretch the floor.
And that’s definitely part of it, but thinking that’s the only element of spacing that matters is a huge mistake and undersells the offense and certain players’ roles within it. Take Neemias Queta, for example. Neemy is far from a stretch big man, and there were doubts about whether or not he’d be able to stick as the team’s starting center while offering no threat of shooting from outside.
But anyone who watched the Celtics last season knows that Queta was a great fit on both ends of the floor, and the offense hummed while he was on the court. Since he wasn’t able to space the floor with shooting, he did it with screening.
Queta led the NBA in off-ball screens set per 100 possessions
Neemy was a great pick-and-roll partner for Boston’s ball handlers, but even when he wasn’t directly involved in the action, he made himself useful and forced his defender to pay attention to him, as he set the most off-ball screens per 100 possessions of any player in the NBA, with 31.
That kind of relentless motor and activity is a big part of what made it work for Queta. He wasn’t just standing in the dunker spot, waiting for things to come to him. He wasn’t hiding in the corner when he wasn’t involved in the play.
Players don't need to shoot 3s to succeed in Mazzulla's offense
He recognized his role and value to the team, and even though he’s not a shooter himself, he understands that he’s surrounded by shooters and that screening for them when they don’t have the ball forces the defense to react. Those kinds of actions lead to good, open shots for the Celtics, and it also gets the defense into rotation and forces guys to help out, which would also open rim-running lanes for Queta to finish around the basket, where he excels.
It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s an important part of the game and something that not enough players are doing. The Celtics were able to overachieve last season and smash their expectations because of constant attention to detail. They grabbed every possible piece of low-hanging fruit, and it made the team greater than the sum of its parts.
It’s a common misconception that Mazzulla-Ball needs a stretch-big to succeed, but Queta proved that wrong last year, and the addition of Mitchell Robinson should only hammer that point home. Those guys are going to provide great spacing on offense, just not in the way you’d conventionally think.
Add us as a preferred source on Google