Some Patterns Are Emerging

OK, let's update the minutes played chart, because some interesting things happened in the past seven games:

Big picture, it looks like the C's have settled on a 10-man rotation, with Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, Jaylen Brown, Josh Minott, and Neemia Queta as the starters, Anfernee Simons as the sixth man, and Sam Hauser, Luka Garza, Jordan Walsh, and Hugo González coming off the bench, in roughly that order. González sometimes doesn't play until the beginning of the second quarter. It's a solid 10-man rotation. I'm sure Baylor Scheierman, Chris Boucher, and Xavier Tillman Sr. will get opportunities to play in the future, but for now, it seems they're on the outside. Tillman, in particular, was awful in the Utah game, but none of the three have played since what was by far the most embarrassing loss of the season.

The reason this rotation has coalesced is that because all of a sudden Jordan Walsh seems ready for his close up. He has played really well the past three games, and in particular tonight in Orlando, when he not only played really great defense against Paolo Banchero – who had a season-high six turnovers – but also buried two clutch threes late in the game. Walsh was also one of two Celtics (along with D White) to play the entire fourth quarter tonight. That is a new level of trust from coach Joe Mazzulla for sure, and something that I really didn't see coming even a week ago. Walsh and González have been supercharging the bench units with energy and hustle plays, and Mazzulla seems to have found the way to harness them. Tonight, they played so well that they gave Mazzulla the luxury of giving JB the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter to rest, and then he was nice and fresh down the stretch.

Unfortunately, playing time doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the person who is most feeling the bite in his minutes played is Sam Hauser. Hauser's shot has been off during this recent stretch, and he hasn't made more than two shots in a game since the Cleveland game. He hasn't performed poorly in all of these games – he was a +6 tonight and pulled down four rebounds – but that is one thing that may need a little more balance. Hauser generally shoots better when he gets more minutes and more touches, and the C's do need his offense. They won tonight, but 111 points isn't going to get you a W on a consistent basis anymore.

The next clear trend is that White, Brown, and Pritchard are just going to play more often than everyone else. There's a big drop off in both total minutes played and minutes per game after that grouping. Simons, Queta, and Hauser form their own group, and Minott is kind of in his own group just below.

Minott has had the most variance in his minutes. If you look at that top seven grouping, and remove the two blowouts (Houston and Washington), Minott has had a 20-minute difference between his minimum minutes output and his maximum, and none of the rest of the top six has a gap greater than 14. Some games have been Minott Games and some haven't been, but to be fair, he has a lot on his plate defensively. Not only is he often guarding the other team's best player, but he has emerged as the best option to play small-ball five when neither Queta nor Garza is on the floor. It's not necessarily paying dividends in Minott's output, but that one tweak has helped tighten the rotation to just 10 players, and I think that is helping the team's rhythm.

These 10 guys still have some gelling to do. For instance, Simons was a flamethrower in the first half tonight, as he scored all 25 of his points in the first half, but the C's couldn't find a way to get him loose at all in the second half. There's also still a lot of fits and starts with getting lob passes to Queta on the pick and roll – White in particular has not been effective in the pick and roll, which is tough, since he's the team's primary ballhandler. I'm monitoring those stats, but I don't think there's a large enough sample for it to be definitive. Hiccups aside, I think the team is playing more cohesively. They're far from invincible, but they're competing, and if they can avoid situations where an opposing offense gets uncharacteristically hot (like Friday when Orlando hit 47% of their threes), they may be able to stack some wins together. The schedule between now and Thanksgiving is much more forgiving than it has been thus far.