How the Celtics’ New Starting Five Is Picking Teams Apart

Spacing is like a vital organ for NBA offenses. They can’t function properly without it. The Boston Celtics’ new starting lineup might have more at their disposal than any regular unit in recent memory, if not ever.

Boston is 9-1 when Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Kristaps Porzingis have shared the floor this season. All are scorers on the perpetual verge of catching fire. None are shy about hunting a heat check. All are able passers with undeniable gravity who, not even a dozen games into their new alliance, have blended pure dominance with clear room for improvement. What they are now is an incredible collection of size, skill, speed, and strength. In a few months, with more reps and a better understanding of one another’s tendencies and preferences, they could be unstoppable.

After a dramatic summer makeover, the Celtics can now go five out, with everyone in or around their prime, and with four having made an All-Star team. The talent is obvious, but just from the perspective of generating space, they might have no precedent. Swapping Marcus Smart for Porzingis (a 7-foot-2 sniper who can’t be pooh-poohed 30 feet from the rim) is the most meaningful reason: Even when the Splash Brothers had Kevin Durant, Draymond Green (or Andre Iguodala) still squeezed the floor; James Harden’s best Rockets teams had either Clint Capela or Nene at the 5 or Russell Westbrook in the backcourt; the Nuggets are pretty much unguardable, though Aaron Gordon is just a career 32.4 percent 3-point shooter who was ignored in the corner for stretches during last year’s championship run.

Several great teams have had terrific spacing, but the larger point is that even the modern era’s most potent lineups have a hard time deploying five players who can all make plays, drill 3s, and defend at a high level. The Celtics can.

When statistical measurements enter the conversation, this group is terrifying. In 176 minutes they’re a league-leading plus-104 (the second-best plus-minus is plus-62), generating 124.1 points per 100 possessions on a 66.6 true shooting percentage. That’s off the charts and ostensibly unsustainable, but nothing about how this group plays suggests a meaningful return to earth. As individuals, they’re all tough-shot makers who can pretty much get whatever they want. Together, they collectively benefit from those reputations, merging to assemble a complementary, high-voltage attack.

“[They’re] one of the best starting fives in the league, if not the best starting five in the league,” Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said before Brooklyn’s first loss against the Celtics. “Their ability to play positionless basketball is pretty impressive when there’s small-small screens, Porzingis screening for Tatum—those things just don’t happen in our league.”

Boston can destroy defenses in different ways, fast or slow, with a diversified cluster of pick-and-roll alignments (their empty corner work, in particular, is devastating), double drags, intentional post-ups, or mismatches in isolation. All of it’s conducted without clutter. For the opposition, double-teams are a death wish. So are basic help rotations. When the Celtics abandon a coordinated set and position all five guys behind the arc, some teams have resorted to pretending the paint is a lava pit.

Holiday is a convenient addition, as someone who’s helped organize a championship-winning offense with the Bucks in 2021, with shooting splits ever since that improve on what Smart could do.

“I just feel like we have so much firepower in every sector of the game,” Holiday told The Ringer. “If it’s in the paint, we can get into the paint; if it’s midrange, one-on-one. If it’s 3-point line, you have to protect the 3-point line because that’s the biggest thing to do right now. But we’ll see. I feel like it’s kind of hard to be able to sit in the paint and leave people open for 3s.”

It’s a supremely difficult pick-your-poison conundrum. Allowing layups, dunks, cuts, and one-on-one chances from elite one-on-one players is not a recipe for success, but when early help is shown and Boston moves the ball, it’s so hard to contain them. Take this play from early on in last Friday’s win over the Raptors:

Tatum rejects a screen from Porzingis, and with Jakob Poeltl caught out of position, Pascal Siakam is one step farther away from Brown than he’d probably like to be. Tatum sees it and kicks the ball out before Siakam is even engaged, forcing a hard closeout to the perimeter that leads to a drive, kick, and corner 3 for Holiday.

“I think to be able to play alongside the guys that I’m playing [with], it makes the game a lot easier,” Holiday says. “It’s not really so much about scoring, but it’s about making the game easier for other people. I mean, we know we have scorers on this team and people that can score at a high level. So I think it’s about being able to be in space where guys can be as successful as possible.”

All that room is particularly lethal in the open floor. Transition is chaos thanks to Boston’s love for the 3-point line (33.4 percent of all this group’s shots are above the break). Defenders who see a streaking Celtic with one arm raised as he calls for the ball are moths to a flame. The result is usually a bunny at the basket.

Sometimes they disguise actions in early offense that slyly manufacture great looks in front of opponents who don’t process what’s happening until it’s too late. Porzingis is a luxury here. When he sets a screen high on the floor, whoever’s guarding him has to quickly process what’s happening and decide whether they want to execute the game plan or communicate an audible, knowing in the back of their mind that whatever they do, Boston has a counter in its back pocket. It’s like a boxer building up their right hook with a string of left jabs.

In the play below, Myles Turner moves off Porzingis because he’s anticipating a pass to Tatum off Porzingis’s wide pindown. Instead, Tatum sets the screen for Porzingis and Boston gets a clean 3:

Same thing here, except it’s Brown screening Siakam and Scottie Barnes not realizing he has to switch until Porzingis is already rising up to shoot:

According to Second Spectrum, Boston’s starting five generates 1.46 points per direct play when they use an off-ball screen. That’s first among all units that have at least 50 possessions. They like to run a pick-the-picker action for Porzingis that, when contact is actually made on the first screen, keeps his man off-balance and usually leads to some kind of advantage:

What did Poeltl do in a past life to deserve this:

There aren’t any glaring flaws with this starting five, but it’s fair to nitpick how all that space creates stagnancy against defenses that limit help and induce one-on-one basketball. Boston’s ball movement has improved since opening night, and their assist rate isn’t terrible. But they still settle at a higher frequency than head coach Joe Mazzulla probably wishes they would. The melody ends a note too soon.

In a vacuum, Tatum isolating at the elbow, Brown skating end-to-end, or Holiday’s bully ball isn’t bad. But too much freestyling diminishes some of the opportunities and advantages this quintet can enjoy whenever it combines patience, determination, and all that spacing.

The question I occasionally ask myself when I watch this group play is “Was that a bad shot?” But a more accurate one might be “What was the better option?” According to Second Spectrum, their quantified shooter impact is 10.3 percent above their quantified shot quality, which is higher than any other unit that’s attempted at least 100 shots this season. It’s on all five of them to grasp when it’s the right time to shoot versus pass. Contested midrange pull-ups aren’t totally off the table because they’re part of what makes each of them special. But sometimes these shots are a gift for the other team:

“There definitely are times where I like the walk-up 3, and [how] it feels in transition where I got the defense on their heels,” Holiday says. “And there’s also times where, depending on the clock and the score, that’s probably not the best shot, and you have to set up something to get JT or JB a good shot somewhere in the paint or honestly just run a play. But I feel like that just comes with playing, and the more we play with each other, I think the execution will be a lot better.”

So much of what makes this group excellent is its potential to produce hyper-efficient offense that can solve just about any defensive strategy. Spacing allows possibility, and can fix some of the more worrying issues that have held Boston back in its past couple of playoff runs. But don’t overlook its defense, either. Entering Sunday, this lineup’s defensive rating was 92.7 in non-garbage-time minutes, which was lowest in the league among all five-man units that have logged at least 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Holiday and White are two clamps who made the All-Defensive team last season. Tatum is sturdy enough to make the team this year—a burly, quick, long, and physical defender who doubles as one of the best rebounders at his position.

The entire unit has enjoyed some early luck with opponent 3-point shooting and at the foul line, where teams are only making 65.8 percent of their free throws. Jaylen Brown can get spotty off the ball, too. But overall, they’ve done a good job forcing long 2s and taking shots away at the rim. Porzingis doesn’t switch very often and has held up well in drop coverage; when playing the same role Rob Williams III did last year—roaming off a non-shooter to protect the paint while someone else checks the opposing center—Boston’s defense is so hard to navigate. They’ve done it against the Sixers, Timberwolves, and, most recently, versus the Raptors, opening the second half with Porzingis on Barnes:

When he does switch, Porzingis swivels his hips, rarely bites on pump fakes, and uses his length to force drives. He isn’t left out to dry, either. Watch Holiday load up behind this play when Porzingis prevents Spencer Dinwiddie from getting to his stepback. White smothers Mikal Bridges on the kickout, and Boston walks away with a 24-second violation:

That type of awareness lets this group react in some complicated ways. In the play below, Holiday is helping off Julius Randle at the nail when he cuts off RJ Barrett’s middle drive and points at Brown to peel switch onto Randle. When Brown doesn’t do that, White reads the play and sprints out to contest Randle’s shot:

And in this play, Holiday and Tatum do a better job reading a similar situation:

“There’s some times where you come off a screen-and-roll and the defender is trailing. I think at that point, especially for a guard coming off the screen-and-roll, it’s like, ‘It’s either I’m scoring or maybe the big’s scoring,’” Holiday says. “And so sometimes, especially how we play defense, it’s time for me to maybe try to take that guy, prevent him from getting into the paint too deep, and then my guy can rotate over. But that’s more of a read, communication. It’s something that I feel like we’ll get better at as [the season] goes on.”

It’s easy to forget how little time this group has spent together. Still in the baby-steps stages of what could be the backbone of an NBA champion, it’s a lineup that’s already roared on both ends against every team it’s played. The spacing, shooting, and defensive versatility are all A-plus. So far, their closest thing to a nemesis has been themselves, in the face of some natural, self-inflicted growing pains. But over the next several months (good health permitting), once chemistry bakes into all that talent, the Celtics will boast a starting five that can always find an edge and make their opponent take risks they wouldn’t otherwise resort to. It’s hard to stop a group that has the potential to dominate in so many different ways.

To date, Tatum, Brown, White, Holiday, and Porzingis are a bad dream every team in the league wishes they could wake up from.