“We did a good job creating advantages, we’ve just gotta make some shots we didn’t make today,” Jaylen Brown told reporters in the locker room after the Boston Celtics’ 111-89 loss to the New York Knicks.
As annoying as it is to lose a game to a rival, one that Brown’s said “feels like death” to lose to, sometimes it really does just boil down to “did the open shots go in?”
Sunday’s answer was a resounding no.
Boston made just four of their 27 catch-and-shoot threes against the Knicks (14.8%), and sank just seven of their 41 attempts from range on the afternoon (17.1%).
Of those 41 total attempts, 25 were wide-open, which the league describes as when the closest defender is over six feet away. Their season average for wide-open attempts from three is 20.5 per game. So, the Celtics actually generated more open looks in their 89-point performance (the lowest ever for a Joe-Mazzulla-coached team at TD Garden) than they have on average this season.
Ironically, the Celtics need to 'Trust the Process' on days like Sunday
“When you play against a great team like them, and you continue to have empty possessions on the offensive end, but the good process of execution, it just puts a ton of pressure on the other stuff,” Mazzulla explained postgame.
Mazzulla’s stance on consistent process has remained, well, consistent throughout his tenure as head coach in Boston. Oftentimes, he’ll look past the game’s result and focus more on how the team got to the finish line.
“Did they control the margins?” is his main focus most days.
By that, he means creating more leeway for error. If the Celtics win the turnover, rebounding, and foul battles, they’ll most likely have more chances to put the ball in the basket, so the actual percentage at which they shoot will matter less.
In the early days of the season, he gave insight as to why, despite being towards the bottom of the league in key categories like points, three-point percentage, and defensive rebounding percentage, the Celtics were still in the top half of the NBA in net rating.
“It’s because we don’t turn the ball over on the offensive end and we force turnovers on the other end,” he pointed out back in November. “We’re winning the shot margin on an expected basis.”
Beyond creating more opportunities to score, Boston also aims to give themselves the cleanest opportunities to score. The higher quality of shots they create, the more likely the ball is to find the bottom of the net. As pointed out above, they did that on Sunday. Things just didn’t fall their way.
This isn’t all to discredit the Knicks, either. They came out in a hostile environment and played well. They made things uncomfortable on the Celtics for the majority of the afternoon, applying a high-pressure on defense with early pick-up points.
The message is more that, as frustrating as it was to watch open shots repeatedly bounce off the rim, the Celtics still played with good process.