Chances are you’ve heard the narrative plenty of times by now: The Boston Celtics lack a proven superstar, but they have really good depth.
The latter part of that observation has been on full display this season, especially Tuesday night. Boston’s bench stepped up against the Milwaukee Bucks, scoring 48 of the team’s 99 points and helping the team erase an early deficit to earn a 99-83 win.
That strong performance hardly was an aberration, as the Celtics entered Tuesday getting an average of 51.2 points per game from their bench, the most in the NBA. Even more impressive is the fact that Isaiah Thomas, the team’s leading scorer, has started the last three games in place of the injured Marcus Smart.
Yet is having a productive bench always a good thing?
Boston’s reserves were critical in helping the team erase an early 12-point deficit against Milwaukee, and forward David Lee played a big role, tallying a season-high 11 points on 5-of-7 shooting while grabbing five rebounds.
“Our depth is something that’s very big for us,” Lee told Abby Chin in a postgame interview that aired on CSN New England, “I thought the guys that came in at the end of the first quarter really picked the pace up, and we continued that on through the second quarter.”
But the fact remains that head coach Brad Stevens’ starters — which included Lee in the first three games — continue to underachieve. In fact, the Celtics’ starting units ranked last in the NBA as of Tuesday, averaging just 51.8 points per game. By comparison, the Golden State Warriors are getting 82.3 points per game from their starters.
Lee scored a total of 16 points on 5-of-20 shooting as a starter. After Stevens pulled him from the starting lineup, Lee tallied 23 points on 10-of-17 shooting over his next three games, including a season-high 11 on Tuesday night.
Chances are those splits aren’t a coincidence. The Celtics don’t have the firepower to match their starters up with good NBA teams: Huge early deficits to the Toronto Raptors, San Antonio Spurs and even the Bucks have proven that.
Where the C’s make their hay, however, is when substitutions start being made, and Stevens can showcase his team’s depth against the shorter benches of other clubs.
Without a bona fide scorer on the floor, Boston might find itself in a lot of early holes this season. Yet Tuesday night proved that many of those deficits might not last. As Stevens has said many times, it’s not who starts, but who finishes.
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
