I guess the Celtics are just content to not ever have a talented offensive bigman on the court? I’m looking at their roster right now, and unless you count Jayson Tatum as a power forward (I don’t, but apparently some people do), they have exactly one bigman who can put the ball in the basket consistently, of his own volition: Tacko Fall. Wait! Got my notecards mixed up again. Correction: Enes Kanter. And they hardly play him! Some games he gets semi-decent minutes, other games, he’s extremely limited.
Now, the obvious reason that he wouldn’t play as much as his rebounding and scoring numbers would suggest he should is that he is iffy defensively. He can try as hard as he wants, but he doesn’t seem to be aware enough or able to move his feet fast enough to play defense in the modern NBA. But, in my opinion, that’s a bad reason. Defense is something NBA teams in the past did, but not these days. And the league makes more money when more shots go in, which is where Kanter helps on both sides of the ball. He gets buckets, he gives up just as many buckets. Win-win.
Tonight was Kanter’s first game of the season where he really showed what he can do on offense when unleashed. Joel Embiid is supposedly a good defender, right? Well, he couldn’t stop him while trying to defend him, and he also couldn’t stop him while trying NOT to defend him. Brett Brown probably told him to leave Kanter wide open on those midrange jimbos, which was stupid, because once upon a time Kanter was a major threat to shoot those on the pick-and-roll with Russel Westbrook feeding him. Westbrook probably got 50 extra triple-doubles just from Kanter’s midrange jumpers.