How the Celtics Are Winning
But that would never have been the plan if Coach could help it. Mazzulla, after all, is one of the most competitive men in sports, which is saying something. He accepts the suffering. He begins each day with an ice bath and ends it in his chapel. He walked barefoot through the Costa Rican jungle. After winning the championship last year, he told reporters: “People are going to say the target is on our backs, but I hope it’s right on our front, between our eyes.” During training camp last fall, during the annual media pickup game, he asked the media to play against the coaching staff, then had those coaches, which included former NBA and NCAA Division I players, perform a full-court press on defense. The Coaches won 57-4. (The game lasted only twelve minutes.) Mazzulla raised his fist after the final basket. This man? Reservoir? We all should have known that.
The Celtics started the season 0–3, then worked their way to 5–7, which was more or less where many people thought they would be. They won some quality games, lost some games they could have won, shot a lot of threes and couldn’t rebound to save their lives. Brown was great, but White and Pritchard, the other main holdovers from the championship team, struggled mightily and at times pressed and panicked as time expired and shots didn’t fall.
The turnaround was sudden: after a heavy defeat by two against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Celtics eliminated the Memphis Grizzlies the following night, 131-95. And for two weeks after that, they had the No. 1 offense in the league. What happened?
The simplest answer focuses on Brown. Most of the attacks also focus on him, and he has been spectacular. Great players can compensate for many team-wide weaknesses. Brown constantly attacks and makes an accurate reading of the situation; he now handles pick-and-rolls with ease. His main job is to score, and he does it from everywhere, including making more deep two-point shots than anyone else, shots that have recently fallen out of favor due to their analytical profile (almost as difficult to hit as a three, but worth fifty percent fewer points). They work for him and the team, opening up driving lanes, making defenders hesitate. He averages nearly thirty points a night and is not only more involved in possessions, but he also scores more efficiently, a rare combination.
Another answer is that White and Pritchard are good players, and that even good players have cold tendencies; Eventually, the cold streaks end. The Celtics’ fortunes have changed as these two have returned to form. Another answer emphasizes the team’s ability to adapt: many players get minutes, and all consider those minutes valuable. Talent wins in the NBA, but solid execution on basic fundamentals can go a long way in shaking up the established order. (Then there’s the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have just one loss so far this season and are an order of their own.) Brown has perfect footwork. Queta is a wall. Everyone sets up screens and cuts hard. The team watched a lot of film to fix its rebounding problem, and stepped up its efforts: when you’re smaller, the coaches point out, it helps to hit first and hit hard.
This could describe the team’s overall approach. Last season, and for a while before that, the Celtics used a sort of algorithmic process all the way to the top, involving shooting a lot of threes, so many threes that the strategy became known as Mazzulla Ball. And the players making those shots, particularly Tatum and the seven-foot-two Porzingis, were so fluid that the style could seem a little bloodless. This is no longer true. The shooting now seems less actuarial than psychologically motivated. The Celtics still lead the league in three-point attempts, but they don’t play the kind of free-flowing, positionless basketball that modern teams favor. Every player seems to have something to prove and everyone knows their job. The basic instructions are pretty clear: never return the ball; rush to recover missed shots; let go of their balls; look openly. Do absolutely everything you can to help the team score.
Can the team’s success last? Maybe not. Thursday, against the Milwaukee Bucks – who were in free fall and deprived of their star, Giannis Antetokounmpo – the Celtics quickly took the advantage. Walsh made all seven of his shots in the first half, for eighteen points, along with three rebounds and three steals. Then, in the second half, the Celtics were down. There was an almost slapstick quality as ball after ball was lifted, over and over again, slamming against the rim or missing it altogether. Collectively, the team missed sixteen straight three-point attempts.
