Where did the good Avery Bradley go?
After having one of the best scoring streaks of his career, Avery Bradley has cooled down considerably over his past two games. The young guard put up just a combined 9 points against Atlanta and Detroit and the Celtics have lost their last three games and four of the last five.
And a combined 9 points from Avery Bradley the past two games. Your starting SG can't score 9 points over 2 games. #Celtics
— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) December 19, 2015
While it is easy to point out that the Celtics as a team have been struggling, a lot of that can be a result of Avery Bradley's lack of offensive output. When the Cs were winning games, Bradley was the leading catalyst in the scoring department and his ability to hit the open shots served as a huge boost to the team. Bradley is still getting open but his shots are not going down.
Bradley was also going to the free throw line much more frequently than ever before in his terrific stretch of games. However, in the past four games, he's only been to the charity stripe a total of 6 times. AB was being very aggressive in driving to the basket and that opened up shots for others as he could kick it out from inside the paint. Now that he has been on a little bit of a cold streak, the whole team has suffered.
While the entire team has been playing poor basketball as of late, Avery Bradley's ineffectiveness on the offensive side of the ball has been one of the biggest reasons for the team's struggles. As the second leading scorer for the Celtics, they rely a lot on his scoring especially coming off screen and getting inside the paint. Once he gets his touch back, I think things should be fine. Marcus Smart's presence on the court also helps Bradley as he doesn't have to focus all of his energy on defense. Once Smart comes back, Bradley can get to being in an even more offensive mindset to help his scoring.
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