Regular season record: 56-26
OffRtg: 120.0 (2) DefRtg: 111.7 (4) NetRtg: +8.3 (4) Pace: 95.6 (30)
First round series: Up 1-0 vs. Philadelphia
There was no let-up for the Celtics, who never trailed in Game 1 and beat the Sixers by 32 points. They’re in the playoffs for the 12th straight year and they now have 20 playoff wins by at least 20 points over that stretch.
The case for the Celtics: They were the only Eastern Conference team in the top five on both ends of the floor, and they were close (just a hair out of the top five on defense) before adding Jayson Tatum with 20 games to go. For the season as a whole, they had the point differential of a team that was 62-20.
The Celtics have playoff-tested formulas for winning possessions on both ends of the floor, and with Tatum back, they’re better equipped to execute them. They can have him or Jaylen Brown on the floor for all 48 minutes, and their bench ranked in the top two in the league for the fourth straight year. Even before Tatum made his season debut, they had outscored their opponents by 13.2 points per 100 possessions in Brown’s 1,102 minutes off the floor.
Defensively, the Celtics protect the rim nearly as well as the Thunder, having ranked third in opponent field goal percentage in the restricted area (64.0%) and first in the (lowest) percentage of their opponents’ shots (24.1%) that have come there.
The case against the Celtics: We only have to go back to Games 1 and 2 of their last playoff series, when they blew two 20-point, second-half leads, to remember that this team can lose the plot. The Celtics were consistently purposeful with their possessions when they won the championship two years ago, but less so in other postseasons.
The Celtics had the worst record (9-14) in games played between the top 10 teams in the league, having scored just 114.1 points per 100 possessions over those 23 games. They ranked last both in free-throw rate (20.7 attempts per 100 shots from the field) and the percentage of their shots (41%) that have come in the paint, so no other team is as dependent on jump shots.
Something to watch in Game 2: 3-point defense. Among playoff teams, the Celtics had the highest opponent 3-point rate, with 45.1% of their opponents’ shots having come from beyond the arc. The Sixers had only 23 3-point attempts in Game 1, they connected on only four of the 23, and we can expect them to shoot more and more accurately on Tuesday.
Next game: Tue. vs. PHI, 7 p.m. ET, Peacock
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