How teams defend Luka Garza will be key to his impact for Celtics

Luka Garza had an amazing first season in Boston, shooting 43.3% from three, which was the best percentage of any center in the league with at least 100 attempts. That’s obviously extremely useful, especially since the Celtics’ other two centers, Neemias Queta and Mitchell Robinson, aren’t threats to shoot from outside the paint.

But despite the results, defenses weren’t buying the threat from Garza, as the closest defender on his three-point attempts was almost 8 feet away on average. In other words, teams were daring him to shoot, just about as much as any big man who was willing to let it fly.

The good news is that Garza mostly made defenses pay. But for him to really start bending the defense and become the stretch-big that the Celtics need and can rely on, opponents are going to have to start reacting to the threat of Luka launching.

It will be fascinating to see if teams change their approach to guarding Garza. If we see his defenders jumping out to contest his shots, putting a hand in his face, and running him off the three-point line, that will be a game-changer for him, but more importantly, for the entire Celtics offense.

Garza giving Celtics a true stretch-big option would be game-changer

Joe Mazzulla’s scheme is built on spacing as much as anything, and while it’s great that Garza was hitting shots, he wasn’t truly stretching the floor. Defenses were perfectly content to sit back and have their centers clog the paint, willing to live with the results of a Garza three-ball.

Last season, Garza’s shooting came out of nowhere, and he was able to catch people off guard. This season, that likely won’t be the case. The book is out on Luka, and teams will adjust to his pick-and-pop game and the fact that he has become a very willing shooter. Whether Garza can continue the hot shooting and force teams to treat him as a real stretch-big will be one of the big X-factors to watch for this season.

If he can hold up and prove that last season was no fluke, that’s a massive game-changer for the Celtics and will give them an elite three-headed monster at the center position with serious versatility. Mazzulla doesn’t necessarily need a center who can hit threes, but it’s a great option to have in the toolbelt and adds another dynamic to an offense that should already be very hard to stop.

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