They say it’s a copycat league, but what if the team setting the pace is so lame no self-respecting franchise would dare replicate them?
This is the conundrum facing the teams trying to close the gap with the Boston Celtics. Everyone knows the cost of winning a championship is incredibly high, from the sweat equity to team-first buy-in to the stuff you need to trade to build high-end winner. But what if the price of Larry O.B. is the very soul with which the game is played?
Boston seems fine having traded in any shred of watchability in order to optimize the math equation that makes them hum.
Before you stop reading and run to socials to label me a three-hating troglodyte, let me clear: this isn’t a crusade against bombin’ triples. Yes, I probably skew toward a deeper appreciation for dunks, post play, delicate floaters and other forms of two-point scoring, but I’ve got a lot of time for threes. I don’t actually think the NBA’s product is in dire straights due to a preponderance of them; I just think it is when the Celtics are on my TV.
Whereas most three-heavy teams create their looks in a dignified fashion — through intricate action, movement, low-post gravity — and maintain healthy enough balance between inside and out, the Celtics formula is simplistic, creatively bankrupt, and single-minded. It defies aesthetic considerations because the math they worship doesn’t care about style points.
Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown drive, then kick. Three. If they get walled off? Three. Offensive rebound? Why put it right back up and in when you can kick it out for a three? Payton Pritchard catches it 40 feet from the hoop? You guessed it. Threes are Boston’s hammer, and everything is a nail. No flow, no craft, no working the defense and taking what’s there. Just a direct line from point A to point three.
Such was the case on Saturday night, a game that contrasted the Celtics joyless style with Toronto’s noble pursuit of shots at the rim — still unequivocally the most valuable looks in basketball, mathematically speaking. It took Boston hitting 21 threes (two fewer than the Raptors attempted) on 61 tries to just barely overcome the Raptors’ barrage of rim and short mid-range scoring.
Jakob Poeltl, the push-shot God, coupled with RJ Barrett’s careful, probing pick-and-roll craft, left Boston without answers inside 10 feet. Their one hope of taking down the mighty, 2-11, catastrophically injured Raptors playing the second night of a back to back was to go bombs away. If nothing else, you hope this game provides a blueprint to others of how to make the Celtics squirm. In an ideal world, Saturday was Day One of the two-point counter revolution.
Toronto’s obviously got a ways to go until they can credibly go toe-to-toe with inner circle contenders on the daily, but their play style is what made Saturday a fight. Toronto ranks 3rd in rim frequency this season per Cleaning the Glass. It’s how they’ve kept games as close as they have despite ranking 30th in the percentage of their looks that come from long range. Boston is their decidedly dorkier diametric counterpart — 3rd-last in rim frequency (despite having exemplary guard play and two bruising wings who can get there whenever they want), and number one by a mile in spamming threes — 52.5% of their looks come from downtown, nearly seven percentage points higher than second-place Charlotte. Hideous.
The Raptors aren’t talented enough on the whole, and probably a bit too three-averse at the moment to be the team that strikes down the Celtics’ dreary reign. But perhaps their formula, not Boston’s, is the one some enterprising contender should be trying to copy. No one is gonna beat Boston at their own ruthless game. They’re the best and most cravenly committed to hurling indiscriminate long balls. But some team that can tilt the math in their favour by pouring in a critical mass of short range twos just might stand a chance. And if that team fails trying, they can at least rest easy knowing their souls are firmly in tact.
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Today on the podcast I go solo to talk about a pair of narrow losses to the Pistons and Celtics, Jakob Poeltl’s big weekend and more. Enjoy the show!
