The 2024 Boston Celtics Were The Best TEAM Offense Ever

It’s official, the Boston Celtics are the 2024 NBA Champions. The algorithm concocted by Boston’s brain trust, headed by Brad Stevens and Joe Mazzulla, worked more unprecedentedly than meets the eye. Boston was an analytical machine modeled via a synthesis of past principles, simple and intuitive logic, and a linear understanding of how their roster needed to function for them to realize the ultimate success of hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Simply put, Boston understood what they needed to be the best at to win and built a nearly perfect roster to accomplish this. A solid place to begin understanding how completely dominant the 2024 Boston Celtics were can be found in key regular season team statistics provided by Cleaning The Glass.

Much of the ‘noise’ heard about what could be perceived as an eventual Achilles Heel for the Celtics was the sheer volume of three-point attempts (3-PA’s) per night that they took. However, not only did this irrational fear of the most valuable shot in basketball not come back to haunt Boston, it propelled them into the best team offense of any NBA Champion since the turn of the Century.

Data pulled and analyzed of the last twenty NBA Champions shows that the following regular season team statistics have the strongest correlation with winning the NBA Finals —

Offensive Effective Field Goal Percentage (Raw & Rank) (eFG%)

Seven of the past thirteen NBA Champions ranked 1st in their respective regular seasons’ eFG%, ten of thirteen ranked 3rd or better, and no Champion ranked lower than 6th. Five of the past eight NBA Champions ranked within the top Standard Deviation of eFG% over the last twenty seasons.

The 2024 Boston Celtics ranked 1st in regular season eFG% and at 58.2% boast the best eFG% of any Champion over the previous 20 seasons.

Offensive Points Per Possession (Raw) (oPPP)

Five of the previous nine NBA Champions ranked within the top Standard Deviation of regular season oPPP, and six of the last sixteen NBA Champions ranked at least 2nd in regular season oPPP.

At 123.2 points per 100 possessions, the 2024 Boston Celtics ranked 1st in the 2024 regular season and had the highest oPPP of any NBA Champion over the previous 20 seasons.

For a team that was constantly ridiculed by both local and national media, as well as many NBA fans for their shot selection, the 2024 Boston Celtics made them at a historic rate. Obviously, the truth is far more nuanced, and while many kept their takes short and to the point when voicing their discontent, it’s not difficult to understand why critics held onto their reluctance to buy into what Boston was selling. There were layers to the concerns of the non-believers which largely revolved around the collective belief that both —

A. To win the NBA Finals, a team must roster an unstoppable, bonafide top-tier offensive individual player, and that —

B. Jayson Tatum, nor any other Boston Celtic was that.

This is a relatively fair belief, as history agrees with this logic — the ’23 Nuggets had Jokic, the ’22 Warriors had Curry, the ’21 Bucks had Giannis, the ’20 Lakers had LeBron, the ’19 Raptors had Kawhi, the ’18 Warriors had Durant and Curry… It’s difficult to find a year where the team that won the Finals didn’t have the most unstoppable offensive player in that series. (LeBron in 2017, LeBron in 2014, Kobe in 2008, and Kobe in 2004 are the only instances found dating back to the merger). {Editor’s note: Kobe’s 2004 Fakers lost to the Pistons in five games, which should have been four}

However, Boston did not share the belief in this perceived necessity. Their offensive philosophy would indicate that they agreed with the public’s evaluation of their lack of a singularly dominant offensive player, and rather than trying to produce one out of thin air, or force a player to be something they weren’t, they opted to build towards a level of offensive fluidity that had never been seen in league history…

An Unprecedented Level Of Offensive Balance

The 2024 Boston Celtics were the first team in NBA history to have eight players make 100 three-pointers (3-PM) in an NBA season. The 2023 Golden State Warriors hold the record for most 3-PM in an NBA season (1,363), with the 2024 Celtics right behind them in second place (1,351). However, Golden State’s attack was far more concentrated, with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Jordan Poole, and Donte DiVincenzo being the only players to eclipse the 100 3-PM.

The 2024 Celtics had twice as many players eclipse the 100 3-PM mark — an unprecedented level of balance that derived from a likewise unprecedented plethora of means of creating and finding these shots. In short, Boston could create high-quality looks out of any type of set you will find on an NBA court, whether it be isolation, motion, transition, high-post, handoff, or pick & roll.

Additionally, the 2024 Celtics had the most games with at least 15 3-PM in NBA history (63!?!) by NINE GAMES! In those games, Boston was a daunting 54–9, an 86% win rate. Boston had at least 15 3-PM in 77% of their regular season games — a feat that’s not reached without the aforementioned level of balance in attack. Moreover, this led to an NBA record three wins by at least 50 points, four wins by 40 points (tied with ’24 OKC), and ten wins by at least 30 points (tied with ’72 Bucks).

Boston’s balance came from having six players, in Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick White, and Al Horford, who could effectively operate and excel at any position in any of these sets.

Each of these players was a three-level threat that couldn’t be helped off when another defender was beaten, meaning that to have a real chance at stopping Boston’s offense, a team would need to have five defenders that could all individually win their match-ups. Otherwise, Boston would only lose when they had an outlier-level poor shooting performance.

Al Horford was the only player of these six to have under a 15% USG%, and he would go on to shoot an NBA Finals (qualifying) record 57% from three, so the player responsible for creating the least amount of Boston’s offense in the NBA Finals was hitting nearly six out of every ten three-pointers he took. Derrick White, the player with the second lowest USG% in Boston’s starting five during the NBA Finals became the third player in NBA Finals history to shoot at least 40% from three on at least eight attempts per game. The other two players to accomplish this?

Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

None Of These Numbers Fazed the Non-Believers

Despite having all of the non-finals related information stated above readily available, Boston’s blatantly uncompetitive run to the finals served as a greater weighted aid to the belief that Boston wasn’t as good as the numbers indicated, as fans and media pundits alike irrationally correlated a perceived low level of competition faced during the playoffs with an inability to beat superior competition. To say that Boston had a relatively easy path to the finals is objectively true. To say that this Celtics roster wasn’t battle-tested is objectively false.

Multiple podcasts and shows, including ESPN’s First Take and The Ringer’s NBA Podcast, referred to Kyrie Irving as being the only NBA Champion in this series as a reason for believing in Dallas as the team they trusted more in clutch-time (5-point game or less with under 5 minutes remaining). Not only was this not true, as Jrue Holiday won an NBA Finals as his team's second-best player only three years prior, but to imply that Dallas ought to be the more trusted group in critical minutes is a laughable and embarrassing misjudgment in valuing previous NBA seasons, as well as poor regular season analysis.

The reason for these harsh words is because of how little research was required to yield a proper understanding of each team’s players’ post-season experience level. Let’s do a quick randomized test — which of these two teams would you predict to win in a matchup against each other in an NBA Finals based solely on the below table?

For those who chose Team A (Dallas), respectfully, debate a wall. The Celtics had more pedigree, experience, and maturity, than any opponent that could’ve come out of the Western Conference (yes, even Denver). They just so happened to be FAR more experienced and mature than the team that did.

Alas, Boston’s doubters persisted. Much of the anecdotal beef that critics’ logic relied on ironically was a symptom of how great this Boston team was — here’s an explanation.

Opponents Never Forced Boston To Change

Many media pundits were disgusted by the way the Celtics looked when they lost, and they were right — when the Celtics lost it was not pretty.

Losing ugly was the only way this team ever lost throughout the year. It was a rare sight to see a 2024 Boston Celtics game where they both lost and shot well because it rarely happened. The Boston Celtics won many games pretty, a few games ugly, and lost a few games ugly, but they seldom lost pretty.

Analysts held onto the idea that eventually Boston would run into a team that wouldn’t allow them to play the way they wanted to on offense, but this never happened. Their reluctance to over-adjust to poor performances was backed by the idea that they (along with the law of averages) were more responsible for their rare off-nights than anything their opponents were doing.

They were right.

There was never a point in the regular season or playoffs where a major philosophical adjustment was needed. Minor tweaks? Absolutely. But the system set in place by Boston was amorphous and pliable to the point where no team came close to finding consistent success stopping them.

This Wasn’t Possible Without Pure Trust

Even Boston’s fanbase failed to understand this at times. In game five of the Cleveland series, Al Horford shot 6–13 from three. It was a party on social media for the fans. The team had dominantly eliminated Cleveland and were onto the Eastern Conference Finals. However, in game one of the Indiana series, Al Horford shot 3–12 from three, and fans rushed to X citing these numbers as a reason “Al Horford should NEVER attempt 12 3-PA’s in a game…” Two games later Al Horford shot 7–12 from three, bringing him to 10–25 (40%) in the series.

This short story serves as the perfect microcosm of Boston’s offensive philosophy. They didn’t care about shot distribution. They cared about shot quality. As evidence of this, all eight players in Boston’s rotation had at least one playoff game where they attempted at least eight three-pointers. The Celtics did not believe in the hot-shooters fallacy. Whether a player had made or missed their last five attempts bared zero weight on whether or not they would get the ball on any given possession.

This level of trust was equally as rare as it was warranted. Boston’s eight-man rotation of Tatum, Brown, Holiday, Porzingis, White, Horford, Pritchard, and Hauser all averaged at least 9 points per game on no lower than 45% FG%, 35% 3P%, and 55% eFG%, while everyone outside of Jaylen Brown (Finals MVP) shot at least 80% from the free-throw line.

This Was Done In An Era Of Peak Competitive Parity

Boston became the first 60+ win team to win the NBA Finals since 2017, with each of the last three NBA Champions failing to reach the 55-win mark.

This isn’t an accident — the decline of the LeBron vs. Steph era combined with an incredible influx of young talent has seen a half-decade where two 5-seeds and an 8-seed reached the NBA Finals. Before the 2020 bubble season, no team seeded worse than 4th had ever reached an NBA Finals.

The 2024 Boston Celtics offensive dominance in an era where competitive parity is at an all-time peak combined with the lack of reliance on any singular offensive player to make their system work makes Boston the best team offense in league history. The Celtics bought into the numbers behind their success and never wavered when poor performances happened. Fans and media, alike, can argue into eternity whether Boston would’ve had as dominant of a run had Jimmy Butler, Jarrett Allen, Donovan Mitchell, and Tyrese Halliburton been healthy, and maybe there’s truth in that. Here’s what we can say confidently though — none of these players were stopping the Boston Celtics offensive machine.

Only the 2024 NBA Champion Boston Celtics were capable of doing that.