The best teams in the NBA follow a simple offensive principle: shoot it, drive it, or move it.
The Utah Jazz are the best at executing on that principle. The Boston Celtics are mediocre at doing so. And that’s just one key difference between the top team in the league and the 20-19 Celtics.
Utah on Tuesday marched into TD Garden and won their league-leading 29th game of the season thanks to another strong shooting performance that was buoyed by efficient shot creation. The Jazz connected on 47.5 percent of their shots and 44.2 percent of their 3-pointers in large part because the shots they attempted were of very high quality.
To Boston’s credit, it did shoot 49 percent from the field against Utah, but there was one clear difference between these two offenses: the Jazz found easy baskets thanks to their quick reads, while the Celtics oftentimes needed to work their tails off to score.
Offense comes easy to the Jazz. Utah is loaded with intelligent players who have been coached up to make split-second decisions when the ball touches their fingers. Mike Conley has been one of the best at it for a decade. Donovan Mitchell is elite. Joe Ingles is elite. The list goes on and on.
With this much basketball intelligence on one roster, Utah’s ball movement has become a thing of pure beauty, the likes of which is rarely seen in the game of basketball, as Brad Stevens indicated Tuesday night.
“They’re one of the best that I’ve seen at making the right decision every time,” he said after Boston’s 117-109 defeat. “As good as I’ve seen in the NBA in my time as far as a team goes at making that right decision.”
That’s where the Celtics want to get to get to by the end of this season, because great offense is all about putting defenses in a bind. The easiest way to do that is by making quick reads, because the ball will always move faster than defenders, and the faster the ball moves, the higher the likelihood of a defensive mishap.
Stevens commented on this mindset with relation to how his team executes in comparison to the Jazz.
“We don’t read it as quickly right now, and that’s where you hope to get to, right?” Stevens said. “You hope to get to the point where you catch it, you’re open, you shoot it. You come off a screen, you’re open, you shoot it. You come off a screen and they’re up, you get rid of it quick and make the right read, whether it’s ahead, whether it’s to the roll, whether it’s to the guy behind, whether it’s across the court on a skip.”
He continued, “Those are the things that the best pick-and-roll players, the best catch-and-shoot players, can do as they continue to progress.”
The good news for Stevens and his team is that his players acknowledge the need for improvement in this area after watching the best of the best execute Tuesday night.
“Brad probably said we have to get it out of our hands quicker, because just half a second can make the biggest difference,” said Jaylen Brown, who, after dishing out a game-high seven assists, said he has been working to improve this area of his game this season. “So making the right play right on time is important for us.”
And it’s absolutely doable.
Boston’s roster is littered with intelligent players, many of whom have been shoot it-drive it-move it players throughout their careers. At this point, it’s just a matter of the team jelling offensively to the point where there is no thinking. These reads need to be instinctual as opposed to being reactionary.
“Just some stuff we’ve got to work on in practice,” said Jayson Tatum. “If we watch film, translate that to practice and stuff, it’ll translate to the game.”
Stevens would certainly like to see that happen. He and his team just got a first-hand look at how difficult it is to defend a talented and skilled team that makes the right read in an instant, over, and over, and over.
The top of Boston’s roster is as talented and as skilled as any team in the league. All it needs to do is find that missing piece – the quick and accurate reads – to unlock a deadly offense.
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March 17, 2021 at 11:06AM
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Jazz-Like Decision Making is the Key That Could Unlock C's Offense - Celtics.com
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