How Celtics and Kings Built Two of the Best Offenses in NBA History

BOSTON — There’s no secret play call behind two of the greatest offenses in NBA history. Celtics interim head coach Joe Mazzulla rarely calls plays or timeouts, instead establishing emphasizes for his group of talented playmakers, ball-handlers and shooters.

Mike Brown, in his first season coaching the Sacramento Kings, led LeBron James and the Steph Curry Warriors. He will have a chance to win coach of the year, as will Mazzulla, if the two teams that collided on Friday night keep scoring and winning at this rate. That offense crept up on Brown even as he led the wave since 1997.

“It’s crazy,” Brown told CLNS on Friday. “I still can’t really grasp my mind around it. You can see it just in the development, though, of young people coming up. Before, it’s like ok, you’re in 10th grade and you’re 6-9, so you go down on that right block and work on your right-hand jump hook and your left-hand jump hook, and because of what guys have been able to do and guys that have been able to change the game like Steph and LeBron and Kevin Durant, these guys do things on the floor for their size that you can’t even imagine happening.”

The Celtics beat the Kings, 122-104, in a battle of the No. 1 (119.6 points per 100 possessions) and No. 12 (116.5) offenses of all-time. All 12 of those teams played within the past three seasons and none of them are the Curry-Durant Warriors predicted to break basketball (17th, 20th), the 1987 Lakers (19th), or 1992 Bulls (22nd).

As much as stars like Jayson Tatum, De’Aaron Fox and Jaylen Brown continue to drive the advancement of offense, schematic choices and roster building have made teams impossible to guard when all five players can shoot, dribble and pass, Malcolm Brogdon said.

“They’re very similar (to us),” he said of the Kings. “They got a guy in (Domantas) Sabonis who I played with for a while, and his strength is his versatility and his skillset on offense. His ability to attack you in multiple ways. When you have a five man that can do that like an Al Horford or a Sabonis, it makes the team that much better.”

Horford and Sabonis combined for nine assists in Friday’s game, averaging 8.8 combined each night this season. The Kings attempt 43.5% of their shots from three and the Celtics take nearly half (47.6%). Both teams make their field goals, threes and free throws at a methodical rate, one of three teams with true shooting percentages over 60%, while both teams assist on more than 80% of their threes.

Some stylistic differences exist in an increasingly homogenous NBA game, the Kings run often and spray dribble handoffs while Boston screens off-ball, but the keys remain the same.

Shooting. Pace. Finishing at the rim. Drawing free throws. Multiple layers of passing.

For young players, that versatility came built-in, like Karl-Anthony Towns’ self-proclaimed best shooting ever for a big man. Others, like Horford and Sabonis evolved from low-post menaces in their college and early days in the league to the perimeter players they are now. Horford almost exclusively shoots threes now, a key to the Celtics’ desire to fire away at their first sight of an open three. Mazzulla believes it’s aided their top-five TOV%.

“Defenses are still pretty good, but they’re best when they’re set, so if you can get a look as the defense is retreating and trying to find bodies to match up with, it makes it a little easier,” Brown said, agreeing with Mazzulla. “Guys may not want to rotate, because they’re still pointing and trying to locate the most dangerous guy. So you can get a decent look, and then on top of that, you may have a chance to offensive rebound, because guys aren’t matched up with their man and you may have a size advantage in this particular matchup.”

“It’s extremely important to try to get a look as early as possible, and something that we stressed a lot during our Finals run is the Celtics had great defense, especially with Williams back there, so we wanted as best as we can to push the pace, and as soon as somebody gets a look, let it fly. We didn’t care if it was from three, from mid-range, or at the rim. Let it fly and we’ll worry about missing or making later.”

Mazzulla isn’t opposed to the mid-range either, as other teams like the Jazz and Rockets were in the late 2010s. Coaches saw the fates of those teams and grew to understand the need for a change of pace, especially when scorers like Brown and Fox can get to that spot and convert. It’s not a shot the Kings and Celtics look for though, ranking 24th and 25th respectively in mid-rangers per game with 7-8 each night.

Brown coached the Warriors alongside Steve Kerr at their peak from 2016-2022, creating influences like Draymond Green setting up offense out following rebounds, read-and-react in the half court and odd screeners like guards. The Celtics and Kings do all those things, fitting given Brad Stevens’ stature atop the organization after fawning over how the Warriors and Jazz played for years.

“I’m not saying (Sabonis is) Draymond Green at all, but, even before I had a chance to coach him, you see him get the ball off the glass and push the ball in transition,” Brown said. “Before, when guys pushed the ball in transition that were bigs, they were taught to maybe take one, two dribbles at best, cross half court and come to a jump stop, and then find a guard. But these guys are so talented and Sabonis is one of the guys, like Draymond, where he can get the ball off the glass, they’re dribbling it to make a play like a point guard, and if you’re guarding somebody on the wing and you get overplayed, he’s gonna hit that guy back door for a layup.”

Heliocentric offenses like Luka Doncic’s Mavericks still exist and play how the Cavaliers did through James when Brown coached them, but they’re dying as teams become stacked with multiple stars. Boston had to resist that isolation style last year under Ime Udoka, but eventually got to a place where Brown and Tatum would get off the ball and even screen.

“They’re unstoppable,” Marcus Smart said of the Brown and Tatum. “They’re gonna draw so much attention, so by them cutting, Al’s gonna get wide open shots, Derrick White, me, Malcolm, Sam (Hauser), we’re all gonna get open shots because of those guys cutting and everybody’s gonna sink to the paint on them.”

Now, the offense practically operates itself. Tatum and a guard will screen one player high and low, creating a misdirection. Tatum might cut without intending to get the ball just to pull a defender away from Sam Hauser above the break.

Shooters know how to run ahead in transition and find spaces like the corners to space the floor, which was Mazzulla’s priority in training camp, and their cohesion from playing together for years creates magic. The Celtics pick their spots in transition, but are tied for sixth in efficiency in transition with Utah (1.16 points per possession).

While the Kings have the potential to become one of the great offenses, these Celtics could become the greatest ever. When Smart found Tatum on a no-look pass against Dallas, he trusted him to cut and said he would’ve been pissed if he didn’t.

“Honestly, it’s a lot of randomness, not a lot of play-calling, but trust,” Tatum said Wednesday. “I say that a lot, just trusting that each guy’s gonna make the right play, make the right read and if you give the ball up, in the right position, you’re gonna get it back and we struggled with that at the beginning of last season. Honestly, we’re just kind of building off the way that we were playing at the end of last season when we made that turnaround, and we’ve just kind of picked up from where we left off from that standpoint. It’s all about making the right read, something that we watch film on, we practice all the time, not necessarily just calling plays, but making the right read, everybody being on the same page.”