Brad Stevens targets Celtics' shooting for an offseason upgrade

During the first two years of Brad Stevens's tenure as Celtics head coach, the once defensive-minded team has reinvented itself as a fast-paced, high-scoring squad, averaging 101.4 points per game in 2014-15. Boston was especially fond of the three-point shot, with virtually every backcourt player and a few frontcourt guys being willing to launch from beyond the arc.

However, the team's accuracy was not always as good as Stevens would have hoped. He acknowledged as much in an interview with Marc D'Amico of Celtics.com, where the coach said that shooting should be a focal point as Boston looks to make upgrades this offseason.

The Celtics took 24.6 three-point attempts in the regular season, 13th-most in the NBA, but ranked 27th in accuracy at just 32.7 percent, worst among playoff teams. Among qualified players who spent any part of the season in Boston, Isaiah Thomas had the best three-point percentage at 37.3, which ranked 52nd in the league. After coming to the Celtics, Thomas's accuracy from downtown fell to 34.5 percent. Avery Bradley's 35.2 was tops among players who were with the Celtics all season.

Overall shooting numbers tell a similar story. Boston led the league in field goal attempts with 87.9 per game, which would have been unthinkable during the Doc Rivers years, but the Celtics' field goal percentage of 44.3 ranked just 21st. Over the course of the season, the Celtics often got better long-range shooting from stretch bigs like impending free agent Jonas Jerebko (40.6 percent from deep after being traded from Detroit) and Kelly Olynyk (34.9 percent for the season) than they did from most of their backcourt players, all of whom had a handful of horrific performances to their name.

It's anybody's guess as to what Danny Ainge will do once the offseason officially kicks off. The C's have two first-round picks, the free agency rumor mill is just starting to turn and Ainge is always a candidate to explore all sorts of trades. What is not in question is that 13 of the NBA's 14 best three-point shooting teams in 2014-15 reached the postseason, led by the Warriors' ridiculous 39.8 percent accuracy. If Boston wants to make the leap from playoff also-ran to Eastern Conference contender next season, the perimeter would be a good place to start.

Follow Nick García on Twitter @N_A_Garcia

Image credit: AP Photo/Matt York