Joe Mazzulla’s offense has never been as simple as “shoot more threes and everything opens up.” Celtics fans hear the word spacing and usually jump straight to the long ball, but Neemias Queta showed last season that there’s another way to pull a defense apart.
Queta is not a stretch big, and there were real questions about whether he could hold down the starting center spot while bringing no outside shooting to the table. Instead, he carved out his value by doing the dirty work that keeps an offense moving. The Celtics’ attack stayed humming with him on the floor, and a big reason was his screening.
He wasn’t just useful as a pick-and-roll partner for Boston’s ball handlers. Even when he wasn’t the center of the action, he kept defenders occupied by setting off-ball screens at a massive rate. Queta led the NBA in off-ball screens set per 100 possessions with 31, a number that says plenty about how active he was and how much he forced defenses to stay alert.
That activity mattered because Queta never played like a big man waiting around for the game to come to him. He wasn’t planted in the dunker spot.
He wasn’t drifting into the corner and disappearing when the ball went elsewhere. He understood that the Celtics were built around shooters, and that his job was to create movement for them.
Those screens forced defenses to react, opened up cleaner looks for Boston, and pulled help defenders out of place. That same movement also created chances for Queta to do what he does best: roll hard and finish around the basket. In other words, he added spacing without ever taking a three.
That’s the part of Mazzulla’s system that gets missed too often. Players do not need to be shooters to matter in it.
The Celtics squeezed value out of every detail last season, and that attention to the small stuff helped them exceed expectations. Queta fit right into that approach.
So when people talk about Mazzulla-Ball needing a stretch five, Queta’s season is a pretty clean rebuttal. The Celtics found spacing through screening, activity, and constant pressure on the defense.
And with the addition of Mitchell Robinson, that point should be even harder to ignore. Those guys can create offensive spacing - just not in the traditional way.
In Other News...
Jaylen Brown Trade Debate Just Took On New Meaning For Celtics Fans
The Pistons standoff with Jalen Duren is the kind of offseason mess Celtics fans know all too well, because it brings back the logic behind Bostons decision to move on from Jaylen Brown before he ever reached extension eligibility. Boston was not just thinking about talent in a vacuum. The front office was looking at the larger picture, where a young players next contract can change the direction of a roster and force hard choices about the rest of the payroll.
For Celtics followers, the comparison lands because it goes beyond a simple talent-for-talent debate. Brown was good enough to raise the stakes, but the teams move was also about avoiding the kind of internal conflict and cap squeeze that can linger for years. With Duren now in the middle of his own negotiation fight, the old Brown debate suddenly feels less like hindsight and more like a reminder of how quickly a promising core can turn into a financial decision. [Read more 🡒]
Celtics Could Face A Fast Paul George Reckoning In Boston
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Now the conversation has moved a step further, with one speculative idea floating around that would send George to Brooklyn for Julius Randle and Terance Mann if things go south quickly. It is the kind of contingency talk that underscores how fragile this setup can be for the Celtics: if George does not hold up or produce, Boston could be forced into an early rethink of a trade that was supposed to reshape the roster, not reopen it. [Read more 🡒]
Jordan Walsh Is Forcing A Tough Celtics Rotation Question
Jordan Walsh spent much of last season in a limited role, but he still found ways to stand out on the defensive end. BBall Index ranked him among the NBAs top-5 point-of-attack defenders, a notable mark for a player who played fewer than 18 minutes per game and was often asked to handle the toughest perimeter assignments. Even in the playoffs, he drew difficult matchups and showed why Boston kept leaning on his energy and length when the game demanded it.
The real question now is whether Walsh can turn that defensive trust into a larger place in the Celtics rotation. Boston already knows what it has when hes locked in on that end, and the next step is making sure his offense gives the staff enough reason to keep him on the floor more often. If that development comes, Walsh could move from a matchup piece to a much more regular part of the picture. [Read more 🡒]