It was Oct. 22 in Boston — ring night for the defending champion Celtics against the revamped rival New York Knicks — and Jayson Tatum had just drilled a wide-open 3-pointer from the right wing on the game’s first play.
Over the next 11:48 of game time, Boston hit nine more 3s:
Al Horford from the wing. Derrick White from the corner. Jaylen Brown from the wing. Tatum again, and again, and again. Jrue Holiday. Sam Hauser. And finally, Payton Pritchard with less than 30 seconds remaining in the first quarter (because, of course he did).
It was the first 10 of an NBA-record-tying 29 3-pointers the Celtics would hit against the Knicks that night — in the game’s first 39 minutes.
But Boston’s attempt at breaking the record — matched only by the 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks — became a spectacle of its own in the final nine minutes of the eventual 132-109 blowout.
Brown tried his hand at making league history, as did Hauser, Pritchard and seldom used backups Xavier Tillman and Jordan Walsh. In all, the Celtics took, and bricked, 13 3s to close out a 29-for-61 showing from beyond the arc.
The outing was a sign of things to come for Boston, both in how many long balls it would let fly this season and how much trouble the champs can get into when the shots stop falling.
Last week, in their win over the Miami Heat, the Celtics logged their 23rd game of the season with at least 50 3-point attempts. That’s already an NBA record, a feat they managed to accomplish before even hitting the All-Star break. And entering Thursday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers (7 p.m. ET, TNT), the Celtics are on pace to obliterate the league’s single-season attempts record at 48.3 per game.
But with their attempts up 14% from last season — yes, Boston led the league then, too — and a confounding, unimpressive two-month stretch heading into the break, in which the Celtics uncharacteristically struggled from outside, it raises the question of whether their chances of repeating as champions are bolstered or hindered by their historic, unapologetic 3-point strategy.
FOR ANYONE BELIEVING in Boston’s chances for a repeat, there is plenty to feel good about it.
The team’s big-picture metrics look nearly the same as last season. The defense, known for its ability to lock down opponents during the 2024 title run, is still a top-five unit and defends better than any team in transition scenarios.
And for all the criticism and focus on the offense, the Celtics — who, after a solid three-week shooting stretch, now rank 11th in 3-point percentage — still clean up on isolation looks and rarely turn the ball over. They rank fourth in scoring efficiency, even with the dry spells from outside. Tatum, in particular, has gotten wherever he wants on the court, blowing by defenders at an NBA-best 36% rate. Aside from getting his points, he’s assisting at a career-high clip (5.6 assist per game) and 61% of his dimes have been to 3-point shooters, the league’s second-highest rate.
When scaling by opponents and gauging how Boston has done against elite defenses, things look even better. The Celtics have posted the NBA’s second-best efficiency against top-10 defensive units, trailing only the Cavaliers in the category — an eye-popping figure given Boston sputtered badly in the second half of a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder last month, logging a total of 27 points and shooting just 3-for-24 from deep.
“You’ve got to take the good with the bad and understand that, down the road, we could be grateful for this stretch,” Tatum said in January. “[We’re missing] shots we normally shoot at a higher rate that would stop the bleeding in this stretch. We’re still trying to generate the right shot and get guys in the right spots. We’re just not shooting the ball as well as we normally do.”
Now, with the Celtics 5-1 in February and 10-3 since Jan. 20, Tatum’s comments look wise, if not prophetic.
This isn’t to say things are completely figured out even as the team shows improvement and is on pace for 57 wins, according to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index.
Perhaps the most bizarre shift from last season to this one: The starting lineup — so dominant a year ago — isn’t clicking as well statistically. The five-man lineup of Tatum, Brown, Porzingis, White and Holiday blasted opponents by 11 points per 100 possessions in 2023-2024 but is getting outscored by 3.8 points per 100 plays in 277 minutes this season.
The most notable data point: That group has struggled mightily from deep at 33.8% on the season — down from 39.3% last season. By contrast, that group with longtime vet Horford in place of Porzingis has been dominant this season, largely because of its 45% clip from beyond the arc.
It’s yet another game-breaking example of Boston’s historic reliance on the 3.
Yes, they’ve shown they can go cold and lose meaningful games shooting so many of them. But after winning it all a season ago, the Celtics have also seen the ultimate payoff of playing precisely the way they do, with up to 50 3-pointers per night. Stylistic critiques be damned.
