Boston Celtics: Opening Night Offensive Explosion a Sign of Things to Come

The Boston Celtics scored 121 points in their season-opening blowout of the Brooklyn Nets. Obviously, it's a bit ridiculous to make any judgments based on one game. But it's also very possible that the 2014-15 Celtics may be a significantly better team on offense than they were a year ago.While 121 points may not seem all that unusual a total, it was a rare feat for Boston. The Celtics never scored that many in a single contest last seasonin fact, it's been over three years since they last put up that many points in a game:Boston scored 32 points in the first quarter against the Nets, 35 more in the second quarter and another 34 in the third quarter. The Boston Herald's Mark Murphy noted that it was the first time since 2002 that the Celtics scored over 30 points in three consecutive quarters of one game.Ten different Celtics logged court time during the win, with a whopping eight of them scoring in double figures. Brandon Bass also notched eight points, and Tyler Zeller added six in just six minutes of action.In 2013-14, Boston finished 26th in the NBA in scoring with an average of 96.2 points per game. What signs are there that the Celtics will improve on that number this season'Boston won't have eight players with 10 or more points every night, but the balanced offensive attack is likely to continue. Among starters Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley, Jeff Green, Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk, there is no obvious No. 1 option. All five are capable of putting the ball in the hoop, but there isn't a consensus go-to guy.The key to making them each effective scorers is ball movement, something the Celtics did extremely well against Brooklyn. Boston registered assists on 28 of 49 field goals, good for 57 percent of its made baskets. ESPN's John Hollinger tracks a stat called assist ratio, which is the percentage of a team's total possessions that end in assists. The Celtics' 20.1 was the highest number any squad in the league posted in its first game (the San Antonio Spurs led the NBA last year with a 19.1 assist ratio).The driving force behind this was Rondo, who was responsible for 12 of Boston's 28 assists.At the time of his ACL injury in January 2013, Rondo was in the midst of his second consecutive season leading the league in assists per game. Even though Rondo returned roughly a year later, he was not yet back to being the same player he was previously.Celtics second-year head coach Brad Stevens stated that Rondo looks like a much better player in practice now than he ever did in the previous season. Via MassLive.com's Jay King, Stevens said:[Rondo] absolutely destroyed our team in practice. I thought it was really great until I watched the film and then thought our team stunk, as far as in that practice. That was a little bit of fools gold, I thought, and then I thought the last couple days: he looks like himself. He kind of looks like what Id seen on film before I got here. I dont think he ever looked like that at any time last year as he was coming back.The 121-point game is going to be a rarity for Boston in 2014-15. But with Rondo back to his old self distributing the ball, the Celtics offense should function at a much higher level than it did last season.Statistics via Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.
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