NEW YORK – Honey, they shrunk the Knicks!
The Boston Celtics took down New York Friday night to record their eighth win in nine games, and they did so by executing on their top offensive priority: attacking the basket. They lived in the painted area at an unusually high level for their team, all the while shrinking New York’s defense to create quality looks from short distances.
The Celtics scored 54 points in the paint Friday night, which marked their fifth-highest total of the season. More than half of their shots – 51 out of 100 – were released from inside the paint, and Boston shot 52.9 percent on those attempts.
Anyone who knows Boston’s offensive philosophy knows that those numbers are music to Brad Stevens’ ears. That’s exactly what he wants to see out of a postgame box score.
“It’s the No. 1 thing in our offense is being able to get a threat at the rim,” Stevens said after the win. “Whether it’s the drive, the roll, the cut, the post, whatever the case may be. Whatever will shrink the defense.”
No wonder why New York’s defense went missing throughout this matchup.
The Celtics didn’t just drive the ball, or just post the ball. They achieved consistent paint threats via all of the avenues Stevens mentioned above. If Kyrie Irving wasn’t breaking the defense down off of the dribble, Al Horford was playing with power in the post. If one player was drawing a lot of attention with the ball in his hands, another was taking advantage via an off-ball cut. The list goes on and on.
That’s how Boston wants to attack defenses, and it knows just how dangerous it can be when it does.
“It should be all of [those avenues]f every night for us, because we have that many guys that can do that many different things,” said Gordon Hayward, who scored 14 points off the bench, including six in the paint. “So we shouldn’t focus on just one thing. When we [focus on everything], it’s hard to guard. It’s hard to defend. It’s hard to take things away if you can just move on to something else and still be effective in it.”
Doing so makes life easy on an offense, and makes life a nightmare for opponents. The Celtics saw that first-hand Friday night.
But they also saw what can happen when they don’t attack the paint in a variety of ways.
The third quarter against New York, for instance, was an ugly one for Boston’s offense. The team shot only 37.0 percent from the field during that period while tallying its low point total for a quarter, with 24.
It’s no surprise that the third period was also Boston’s least impressive when it came to paint threats. The C’s attempted only 11 shots from inside the paint and scored only eight points through those attempts. Conversely, the C’s averaged 15.3 points on 13.3 attempts from inside the paint during the other three quarters of the game.
“I thought when we weren’t successful tonight, we didn’t (attack the paint,” said Stevens. “I thought we settled in those stretches of the game. And when we were our best selves, we really got paint-threats on most of the shot attempts that we at least either had great looks or were successful on.”
This trend has been building over the course of the last month. As Boston has begun to attack the paint from all angles, its paint scoring has dramatically increased. Including Friday’s performance, eight of the team’s top 11 scoring efforts from inside the paint have been logged since the calendar turned over to 2019. The offense has been built significant momentum by generating multiple threats to the basket through consistent ball movement.
“Everybody’s touching the ball,” said Marcus Smart. “We’re taking great shots. We’re turning down good shots to take great shots.”
That’s exactly why Boston just won its eighth game in nine tries, all while shrinking New York’s defense into a disappearing act at Madison Square Garden.
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