I think everyone can see from the final scores of their bouts that the Boston Celtics have been a solid team on offense this season despite getting off to a relatively slow start in that department. While that may be evident, let's take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the team's defense--which appears to be excelling thus far this season.
No matter how you splice it up, the Celtics defense is going to look good. It's good to look at it from a few different angles because of this as well. We want you to know that the points allowed per game isn't some fluke. Basically, they're not just succeeding because they are playing a team of Carlton Banks' from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
On the site TeamRankings.com, all 30 NBA team's defenses are broken down and ranked in terms of their "defensive efficiency", and if you are a fan of this stat, then you'll be happy. Why? Because the Celtics have a 1.023 rating. If you have no idea what that means, it means they have the fourth best rating in the NBA.
Maybe you're a fan of points allowed per game. That's a decent metric, although flawed because every team plays a different schedule. Even so, the Celtics 106.0 points allowed per game through 36 games is impressive because it is the fifth-best out of 30 NBA teams. This means that even if they had a tough West Coast schedule, they'd still be above-average in the category.
Oh, and the team has six players in Fox Sports' top-50 defensive rankings--which basically means they're at least a top-10 defense in the NBA, if not better. Such players include Marcus Smart (28th), Al Horford (31st), Jayson Tatum (35th), Kyrie Irving (40th), Gordon Hayward (43rd) and Terry Rozier (45th).
So yeah, pretty good...