NEW YORK – Avery Bradley is out tonight for the Boston Celtics. Missing with him will be his high-level scoring ability.
It would not be a stretch to call Bradley Boston’s second-best offensive player behind Isaiah Thomas. Bradley is second on the team with an average of 14.7 points per game and has been the team’s top 3-point threat all season long, connecting on 38.2 percent of his attempts thus far. Bradley has also been known to regularly provide early offense for the C’s this season.
Without him tonight, Boston will be forced to find alternate courses of action to produce offense. They believe teamwork will be a key to doing so.
“We’re going to have to come out offensively and really move it and play with the same type of energy he does,” said Evan Turner, who could replace Bradley in the starting lineup. “We have some capable guys who can put the ball in the rim.”
Nearly all of them reach their highest level of productivity when shooting from around the basket, which Boston did consistently during the second half of Saturday’s loss to Brooklyn. They scored 14 points in the paint during the final quarter while erasing what was once a 13-point deficit.
Brad Stevens watched the film of that game and was impressed with the way his team attacked the basket, saying, “When we drove it the other day, when we cut the other day, we were pretty good.” However, he also admitted that his team hasn’t been as proactive in that area as it should be.
“We had a tendency, and we’ve had a tendency, to not be as aggressive toward the paint early on as we need to be,” Stevens said. “We need to continue to be better at that.”
According to Turner, the C’s can continue what they did during the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game as long as they operate their offense in a similar manner.
“I think the ball movement, when people are moving around and getting the defense moving, opens up driving lanes,” he said. “I think also we took advantage of our size and tried to bulldoze through a little bit.”
Boston’s top two bulldozers are Turner and Marcus Smart. Stevens said this morning that he will wait until this afternoon to decide who will start in place of Bradley, but one of those two players will presumably get the call.
Neither Turner nor Smart can shoot it like Bradley can; they’re very different players than No. 0. However, they can provide offensive boosts in other ways, and those skills are exactly what the Celtics hope to utilize tonight.
Boston will need to alter its offense and play to the strengths of those available in order to overcome the absence of their second-leading scorer.
