BOSTON -- On Monday night, in the midst of what should have been another double-digit loss to a superior Western Conference foe, Celtics coach Brad Stevens unleashed a lineup featuring Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart. It was the the most exciting development of the Stevens era.
The Celtics are your favorite Cinderella team
While the Celtics continue to suffer growing pains and frustrating losses, we’re finally seeing what they may look like under Brad Stevens.
Mike Lawrie
Taken individually, the three guards are all roughly point-guard sized, quick as hell and a pain in the neck to play against. Taken together, they caused all sorts of havoc for the Dallas Mavericks, who had to be wondering what they did to deserve this. During the C's relentless, but ultimately doomed comeback against the Mavs, my friend Justin Verrier summed it up perfectly.
The Celtics are the NBA's March Madness 12-seed.
— Justin Verrier (@JustinVerrier) November 4, 2014 Of course, there’s a reason why pro teams don’t play like college squads: there are too many games, too many minutes and too many competent ballhandlers and coaches to counter even the most inventive strategies. What Stevens did was risky in a sense, but playing conventionally is often a doomed proposition for this group.
"We'll use it," Stevens said before his team played the Raptors on Wednesday. "Anytime that you're down 26, you're throwing darts and you hope something sticks. It's much easier to play down 26 then up 26. I don't think we'll be able to say there's a definitive answer from that small sample size. Certainly you'll see it, because as you go through the list of where I would rank our players as far as who's the most impactful on our team, all three of those guys are in it. Marcus Smart's physicality gives you a chance to guard bigger guys."
The Celtics are both versatile and undersized at almost every position. Kelly Olynyk is a floor-spacing big man who could use a rim-protecting giant next to him on the backline. Jared Sullinger is really a short center who makes up for his lack of height with girth and a rebounder's nose for the ball. Even the regular Rondo-Bradley backcourt is small when matched up with bigger scoring guards. Only nominal small forward Jeff Green is the appropriate dimension for his position, and the Celtics often need him to be a stretch 4.
Yet we are starting to see the beginning stages of an identity under Stevens. The three-guard look is only a small piece of a larger strategy.
Green allows the Celtics to play conventionally-small at times with a point guard, three wings and either Sullinger or Olynyk. Yet it’s the rookie Smart who allows them to try the three-guard look. He’s strong enough to deal with most wings and quick enough to go full-court against opposing guards. Their play against the Mavs did not go unnoticed.
"Their small lineup is dangerous," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said before the game. "It's their style of play and Brad has them playing really, really hard. They're taking it to another level because of their speed and quickness."
That look made only a cameo appearance on Wednesday. Down six with just under nine minutes to play, they held serve for a while, but Stevens got them out of it once the Raps started breaking down the exposed interior of their defense. Without a true defensive presence in the paint, the limits to the approach are obvious.
Yet we are starting to see the beginning stages of an identity under Stevens. The three-guard look is only a small piece of a larger strategy. They’re spreading the floor with a mixture of motion and dribble-handoffs, looking for speed and quickness mismatches in their halfcourt offense. They play with pace, but they’re not a fast-break team. Rather, it’s controlled chaos, which happens to be one of Rondo’s specialties. Green is thriving at about 22 points per game and Rondo has already dished out 50 assists in four games. Sullinger, Bradley and Olynyk have all had their moments as well.
The Raptors game offered an opportunity for the Celtics to continue their progress. Without Amir Johnson and Jonas Valanciunas and playing its fourth game in five nights, Toronto was ripe to be picked.
Rondo conducted a clinic in the first quarter as the Celtics made 15 of 19 shots. When they did miss, Sullinger was there to collect the offensive rebound. In another marked departure from the Celtics of old, this team attacks the glass relentlessly. The early stages of the season are small-sample size theater, but the Cs rank first in offensive rebounding percentage, something that was anathema to Doc Rivers' teams.
And then it all unraveled in a haze of turnovers, 27 of them to be exact. The Raptors, who are growing up before our eyes, decided they weren't going to get blown out, so Kyle Lowry took the game over. That's the difference between a team that knows how to win and another that's still finding its way.
Afterward, neither team was happy with their performance. Casey was seething about the first quarter defense, while Stevens was uninterested in moral victories or brief shining moments.
There figures to be a lot more nights like that from the Celtics this season. They play hard enough and have enough skill to compete against most of their opponents, but they also lack the necessary personnel to balance out the wild swings. But at the very least, they are interesting again and Stevens is putting his players in a position to get the most out of their abilities. Those are small, but necessary steps in their evolution.
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