At what point does a series of anomalies become a pattern?
You could (partially) blame the Boston Celtics' 114-112 loss to the Houston Rockets on Dillon Brooks, who hit 10 of 15 3-pointers en route to a game-high 36 points. And you could certainly call Brooks' 3-point barrage an anomaly.
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Brooks had never made more than six 3-pointers in a game entering Monday and averages just over two made 3s per contest. On Monday night, however, he became just the fifth player in NBA history to make at least 10 3-pointers against Boston, joining the likes of Stephen Curry, Buddy Hield, Danilo Gallinari and Evan Fournier.
"Nobody would’ve expected Dillon Brooks to hit 10 threes," Celtics star Jaylen Brown told reporters after the game. "It happened tonight, so I think you live with it."
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The one problem with Brown's admission? The Celtics have been getting "nobody would've expected that" performances from opponents on an almost nightly basis.
According to the Boston Herald's Zack Cox, at least 12 players have set or tied their season highs for made 3-pointers in games against the Celtics since Christmas -- a span of 18 days.
That's not exactly an All-Star list of 3-point marksmen. In fact, Brooks is the only player on the list above who ranks among the NBA's top 100 outside shooters by 3-point percentage. (Brooks is 63rd, at 38.4 percent.)
As Jack Simone of Hardwood Houdini points out, this trend of opponents shooting out of their minds against Boston didn't just start on Christmas. At least six other players set season highs in 3-point makes versus the Celtics over the first two months of the season:
Piggy-backing off Zack here, this has been a season-long issue, too. Tack on (at least) six more examples pre-Christmas:
— Jack Simone (@JackSimoneNBA) January 28, 2025
Pascal Siakam 6/8
Nikola Vucevic 6/9
Larry Nance Jr. 5/6
Keon Johnson 4/8
Craig Porter Jr. 3/3
Trevelin Queen 3/4 (has since broken it) https://t.co/UfCFwPSA59
There's a logical explanation for this trend, which Brown and other Celtics players hinted at Monday night: Boston is directing its defensive focus on other teams' more "capable" scorers and assuming that, more often than not, a role player with a below-average 3-point shot won't go nuclear against them.
That's a perfectly rational defensive game plan in a vacuum. Boston shouldn't send an extra defender at Gabe Vincent to leave LeBron James open. But the reality is that teams get up to play the Celtics, and at this point, we should expect every Boston opponent to play their best basketball when they're facing the reigning champs.
That means the Celtics may need to be more flexible in their game plans and devote more in-game focus to a player like Brooks if he gets off to a hot start. If not, this list of "anomalies" might grow even more.