Green With Envy: wide open 3s are great shots

Rewatching the Boston Celtics 3-point shooting barrage against the Atlanta Hawks left one last impression in my mind: the Celtics were wide open all night. Here are screenshots of all of their 20 makes.

As frustrating as it has been at times due to the inherent variance of the three pointer, Mazzulla ball works when everyone buys in to making the extra pass and the right players are taking open shots.

Aside from a Jaylen Brown stepback and a couple of Jayson Tatum “contested” 3 pointers over Clint Capela (who had no shot of making JT think twice about launching from distance), most of these shots were completely uncontested. All of Sam Hauser’s shots don’t have a defender in sight, and Malcolm Brogdon and Al Horford have all day to line them up and knock them down as they continue to battle for best three point percentage in the league. When the Celtics create open looks like they did the other night, there’s not many teams that can match Mazzulla ball madness.

Tune into this episode to hear more analysis from the Atlanta Hawks matchup and a brief thought exercise on what it would look like if Marcus Smart’s presence in end of game lineups wasn’t written in stone.