The Celtics are ruining basketball, and I couldn’t be happier

Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people.

John McEnroe

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: people are mad at the Boston Celtics. This is a new type of hate though, one reserved for a select few. It’s a type of hate that gives credence to the horseshoe theory, a takedown and a compliment.

The Celtics are ruining basketball.

The voices outside of Boston and its fandom have been united in this first stretch of the season. Boston’s three-heavy offensive attack has done the impossible: it’s made basketball not fun. This certainly has nothing to do with the fact that Boston is 6-1 and coming off a dominant championship run. It definitely has nothing to do with the emotional frustration that overwhelms when you know one thing: we can’t beat those guys.

Instead, these denizens of the ill-informed focus ostensibly not on the Celtics’ success, but how they achieve it. It’s not that they are good, it’s how they are good. Here’s beacon of objectivity and champion of rationality Nick Wright to explain:

It’s an 8.5-minute video that I had to watch on 2x speed, but here’s the most important quote for my purposes (happens about 5 minutes into the video):

“[Shooting a lot of threes] is the best strategy. That is also terrible television.”

Wright also makes the point that load management and teams not taking the regular season seriously is damaging the product. That’s a different discussion entirely, but one I mostly agree with.

He provides zero analysis or reasoning on his three-point shooting argument. He simply declares it terrible television. Is it? Or is it only terrible television when a certain team that wears green is the new poster child for shooting a lot of threes?

Unrelated, but also very related, in this same video Nick Wright declares Patrick Mahomes the greatest football player of all-time. Maybe, but by my count, he’s got a ways to go to catch the dude that did it 30 or so miles outside of Boston for two decades. It’s almost like I’m sensing a theme here.

The Celtics are not the first team public discourse bulldozed with claims of ruining the league. Two recent examples are the Heatles and the KD Warriors. Here’s a random selection of articles and videos to give you an idea of how people reacted to those teams:

But here’s the part that makes the Celtics’ situation unique. People weren’t mad about how the Heatles and Warriors played basketball, they were mad about how their collection of talent warped parity around the league, which rendered it more predictable and less exciting.

These teams, and especially the Warriors, are not ancient history. The Warriors are the reason this version of the Celtics’ offense exist. Prior to their run of championships, the consensus was that jump shooting teams don’t win titles. Hell, Barkley said it in 2016, after the Warriors won their first title. His reasoning? They got lucky with opponent injuries in 2015. Sound familiar?

Surely, then, fans must have despised the Warriors with their outlier level of three-point shooting, right? Not exactly. In fact, not at all. Three of the four highest rated NBA Finals in the past 20 years involved Steph Curry and the Warriors. One of them even involved the omen of the NBA’s doom, Kevin Durant on the Warriors. People didn’t just like the Warriors, they loved them.

Man, it’s almost starting to seem like there’s a double standard here or something. But we all know that three-point volume has been increasing league-wide since the Warriors’ run. Maybe we’ve finally hit critical mass or maybe the appetite for threes has finally been satiated and all that food is starting to give us a stomachache?

Perhaps. The Celtics took about 10 more threes per game than the 73-win Warriors. That’s a significant number, but it’s important to note where those 3s are coming from. Last year, the Cs took 3 more shots than the 73-win team. So, let’s use percentages which make it very obvious where these shots are coming from. The 23-24 Celtics took about 10% of their shots from mid-range, the 73-win Warriors took about 19%. And there you have it.

The Celtics are ruining the league because they’ve turned 5-6 mid-range shots a game into 3s and play a little faster (which is supposed to be more fun, right, Steve Nash?). Are we really declaring the league dead because we don’t see as many of these a game?

If Jayson Tatum took more of his pull-ups from two feet closer, would the Celtics be beloved like Steph and the Warriors? If JB came off a pin-down and caught from 20 feet instead of 25, everyone would be celebrating the Celtics, right? Should KP catch a pick and pop from 22 feet instead of 26? Would that solve everyone’s problems?

Of course not, because this isn’t actually about how the Celtics play basketball. Because if it was, people might actually start appreciating them. They do not mindlessly fire threes without regard for situation. In fact, they are surgical, smart, and decisive with the way they play offense. They will absolutely take a transition three if it’s there, but when it’s not, they execute half-court sets at an elite level. They are the perfect fusion of coaching, on-court IQ, and talent. They should be treasured like Steph Curry and his Warriors.

What this is actually about is the Celtics. The run of dominance from the Celtics historically and Boston sports in general over the last 25 years has poisoned the well. There is no appreciating the Celtics for what they are — one of the very best teams of all-time (potentially). There is only finding new ways to denigrate them.

Part of this almost seems like a defense mechanism for the media and opposing fans. The Celtics and the Jays finally did what everyone said they couldn’t: they won a ring. The Larry is the ultimate trump card. The Celtics can no longer be disparaged about their playoff failures, so people did what they do best when confronted with an existential crisis: they grasped for anything.

They landed on the way the Celtics play because that’s all that’s left to hold against them, no matter how irrational the actual complaint is. At first, I was annoyed, but slowly I’ve started to enjoy it. Opposing fans and the media are so mad the Celtics are great that they are literally debating whether they still even enjoy the sport! That is when you know you’ve won, and the Celtics do that quite a lot.

My advice? Become the bad guy. Embrace it like LeBron did in Miami, destroy everyone in your path to Banner 19. I will continue doing my part by sarcastically tweeting videos of teams running the exact same stuff we do, except about 5 feet closer.

The Celtics may be ruining things for a lot of teams, but we are having a whole lot of fun over here.