Crushing The Numbers - Dec. 19, 2022

Want to know exactly how the Maine Celtics are getting it done on the court? Each week, Crushing the Numbers will take a deep dive into the G League stats to see what the numbers say about which areas the team has excelled in and what they’re looking to improve on in practice. 

The 2022-23 NBA G League Showcase Cup schedule is complete, and the Maine Celtics are going dancing. 

“The big dance” in this case is not the men’s NCAA Tournament, but the 2022 AT&T Winter Showcase, held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Eight teams will compete in a single-elimination, winner-take-all tournament lasting from Dec. 19 to Dec. 22 where the winning team receives a $100,000 grand prize. 

The Celtics qualified as the eighth seed following a 10-6 run through the Showcase Cup schedule and await a matchup with the 1-seed South Bay Lakers at 5:00 PM EST tonight on ESPNU. If Maine wins, they’ll play the winner of 4-seed Ontario/5-seed Iowa live on NBATV at 8:30 PM EST on Tuesday, and if they win that game, they’ll compete for the grand prize in the championship at 3:30 PM EST on Thursday, live on ESPN2. If the Celtics lose tonight, they’ll be eliminated from the tournament and a consolation game on Wednesday afternoon will round out their trip to Vegas. If they win tonight and lose on Tuesday, that’s a wrap on the Showcase for the Celtics. 

Maine  wouldn’t have reached this point without a strong start to the season from both the players and the new-look coaching staff. Way back in the first edition of Crushing the Numbers, we mentioned head coach Alex Barlow’s desire for a team that plays with pace, crashes the glass and clamps down defensively. So far, his wishes have been granted; the Celtics rank fifth in the G League in defense (105.7 DRTG), sixth in pace (104.56) and first in offensive (37.4) and total rebounding percentage (57.8), taking advantage the imposing size of Two-Way player Mfiondu Kabengele and reigning Player of the Month Luka Šamanić in the frontcourt to crush opponents on the glass. 

Maine’s shot profile is a thing of beauty for a modern basketball fan. The Celtics take 42.8 three-pointers per game, the most in the league, and hit them at an above-average mark of 35.2 percent. On top of that, they take the seventh-most shots at the rim and take mid-range shots at the second-lowest rate in the league. It’s no wonder the Celtics were able to support a strong defense with a potent offense when the shooters got going, as they’ve all but eliminated some of the most inefficient types of shots from their offense. 

Not often does a team set the franchise record for margin of victory once, much less twice in a season. After Scottie Lindsey’s career-high 32 points led the Celtics to a 49-point win over Delaware on Nov. 20, Maine finished off the Showcase schedule with another 49-point shellacking, this time over the Swarm. A rough patch following an 8-2 start put Maine’s Showcase bid in doubt at times, but they responded to adversity in a big way with a blowout win over Greensboro when they needed it most.