The Single-Big Celtics

One thing that seemed likely when the Celtics traded for Kristaps Porzingis, and really started to come into focus when they let Grant Williams go without getting a player in return is that the Celtics seem likely to focus on playing just a single big man at a time this coming season.

Brad Stevens hinted as much in a recent interview with The Boston Globe about Porzingis' new contract (bolding mine):

“I just think we’re fortunate to do that, a guy that can play with either of our bigs and play as the lone big,” Stevens said.

Right now, the C's have four bigs – Porzingis, Al Horford, Robert Williams III, and Luke Kornet, and in a playoff or playoff-level game, Kornet is only seeing the floor in cases of foul trouble, some other kind of emergency, or in a blow out. He's a capable player in lower-intensity games, and won't embarrass you in a pinch, but he only averaged 11.7 minutes per game last season, and has never averaged more than 17.0 per game in any of his six NBA seasons.

On top of that, Horford and Williams need to have their minutes managed, either due to age, injury, or both. Porzingis kind of does too. He has topped out at 32.8 minutes per game in his NBA career, and was at 32.6 last season. You'd probably like to have him at ~28 minutes.

From there, the math essentially becomes "exactly how often is Horford playing?" If you think of Porzingis playing 28 minutes and Williams playing 20, that's the 48 minutes of the big man. From there, the math on how often you play two bigs comes down to how much does Horford play. My feeling is that he needs to be at 10-15 minutes. He simply could not handle the 30.9 minutes per game he played in the playoffs last season, and his fade was one of the three main reasons the Celtics didn't get back to the NBA Finals:

If you look at that chart, the drop off from Malcolm Brogdon was a) due to injury and b) balanced by the increases from Derrick White. But Horford's drop off in eFG% was so pronounced that it wiped out the gains of the next three players, and in a short series, to concentrate that big of a drop off in one player was crippling.

We don't need to beat a dead horse, but suffice to say, my firm opinion is that he needs to be trending a lot closer to the 13.9 minutes per game Blake Griffin played if there's any chance of keeping Horford healthy and effective. If that's the plan, then for essentially 75% of each important game, the C's would be playing only a single big.

How will that change the team's play? For starters, I think the team is going to play more zone defense, something they already did in Summer League, as confirmed in this article about their game the other day against the Knicks. In that game, they started a single big – 7-foot-1 guy in Olek Balcerowksi.

Second, I think there's a pretty decent chance that neither Horford nor Williams starts, and that the starting lineup is Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown-White-Brogdon-Porzingis.

A third thing that a single-big lineup with reduced minutes for Horford means is that the C's will need to move to a nine-man rotation when the chips are down:

• Guards: Derrick White, Malcolm Brogdon, Payton Pritchard
• Wings: Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Sam Hauser
• Bigs: Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Robert Williams III

In this scenario, Dalano Banton, Oshae Brissett, Jordan Walsh, and Kornet are the first players available to soak up the other minutes. One takeaway? This is a deep team. This deeper group has three guys who have played legit NBA minutes, and one rookie who was a McDonald's All-American, and who showed out during Summer League.

The other thing this single-big set-up with a nine-man rotation with reduced minutes for Horford accomplishes is a legit uptick in minutes for Sam Hauser. Combine that with the natural uptick in minutes for Pritchard with Marcus Smart gone, and eight of the nine players in the main rotation are capable of being legitimately great outside shooters, with the ninth being a legitimately great inside shooter. It could make for a very fun team, and the more I think about the depth and the options the team has, the more excited I get.

Will there be options for playing two bigs? Absolutely. Jordan Walsh may get an opportunity to step into the Grant Williams role, and the C's are certainly capable of gaming Horford's minutes to concentrate them in games against teams where double bigs are most needed – teams with multiple bigs like Cleveland, Milwaukee, and New York, or teams with a single dominant big like Philadelphia and the Lakers. But in general, I think this could very well be the year of the single-big Celtics.

Last year, the Celtics were forced to play a single-big lineup a lot during the regular season, due to injuries to Horford and Williams. The most frequently played five-man lineup last season was single-big Brown-Horford-Smart-Tatum-White. But that wasn't really the plan at the outset, as the team rode the double-big lineup to the NBA Finals in 2021-22. Last season, Time Lord was kept out of the starting lineup only to keep him healthy, and when the chips were down, the double-big starting lineup re-emerged for Game 6 of the Conference Semifinals in Philly.

This season, I think the single-big lineup will be the plan from the outset, and I think that change of mindset will really help. It'll allow the team to better rest their injury-prone/old players, and for the team to fall into better playing time patterns. It might lead to slightly worse performance on the defensive end, but the offense could be much, much better, and I think that has been the goal of the moves made this offseason. I'm optimistic about it.