MEMPHIS – This Boston Celtics team is full of optimistic guys who consistently find a silver lining or two in all circumstances no matter how bleak things may appear at the time.
Which is why despite losing its last two games and four of the last five, this roster remains full of players convinced that the team’s current funk won’t last much longer.
“Keep shooting; keep playing,” says Boston’s Isaiah Thomas. “You can’t control if the ball goes in the hoop or not, but you can control the offensive effort you give. We have to continue at it and keep being us. And they’ll fall. It’s a long season. You go through spells where you can’t make anything.”
But to snap out of their shooting woes will take the Celtics doing what seems to be damn near impossible of late, which is to make shots.
Not just tough, in-traffic, tightly contested shots but the wide open variety which seem to be just as problematic.
In their last five games, the Celtics have shot 39.8 percent from the field, the second-worst mark in the league during that span.
And the shooting woes of the Celtics during this current rough patch is not all that unusual for them this season.
Boston Celtics
You can easily break off any number of their games this season and see that the Celtics have had problems shooting even during stretches in which they were winning.
Not only have they struggled, but they’re on pace to have one of the worst shooting seasons by the franchise in more than a decade.
Currently shooting 43.0 percent from the field, if the season ended today that mark would be the worst by a Celtics team since the 2002-2003 season when they connected on just 41.5 percent of their shots.
And while we have seen them have games in which the shots just seemed to fall from all over the floor, those times have been few and far between.
So while Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge has maintained that adding a go-to scorer would be his preference, he may have to settle for trying to find a sharpshooter to add to a roster that at this point needs one desperately.
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens has kept up a positive outlook on his roster, reiterating his belief that his guys can make shots.
He’s right.
They can make shots.
They just don’t make a lot of them, or at least enough to where anyone not on the Celtics’ payroll feels confident in them taking them – and more important, making them – on a consistent basis.
And it’s not due to a lack of trying.
Despite ranking in the NBA’s bottom-10 in both field goal (.430, 26th) and effective field goal percentage (.480, 22nd), the Celtics have been among the league’s leaders in field goal attempts all season and currently average a league-high 88.7 per game.
Fortunately for them, they face a Memphis Grizzlies team on Sunday that in many ways is just as offensively challenged.
In fact, both teams come into Sunday’s game shooting 43.0 percent from the field with only three teams (Philadelphia, Detroit and the Los Angeles Lakers) having a lower shooting percentage.
But there is a difference.
The Grizzlies have a highly regarded defense that limits shot attempts while forcing lots of turnovers. And offensively, they can slow the game down and be effective because of their 1-2 inside punch led by Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol.
A couple of Celtics players hinted that they may need to play more inside-out basketball instead of relying so heavily on perimeter shots to be successful.
That would be a good start.
But to turn things around, there’s much work to be done by all the players.
“We know who we are as a team,” said Celtics forward/center Amir Johnson. “We know we’re inconsistent right now; we’re up and down. We lose to some teams we probably should beat. I feel this is a time we should really lock in and start getting these games in bunches. The season is closing down. We want to try and get these wins in bunches.”