CHARLOTTE — Jordan Walsh isn’t thrilled with his start to the season. The 22-year-old has played double-digit minutes in every game and has been tasked with guarding the opposing team’s best players, as is customary.
But at Celtics shootaround Friday morning, Walsh said he was underwhelmed with his impact on the team so far.
“I think it’s been okay,” Walsh said. “I don’t think it’s been good or great or nothing like that. I think it’s been just okay. Haven’t been, like, the best version of myself,
but the team’s winning, everybody’s happy, so it’s all good.”
Walsh started the first five games of the season but has come off the bench for the last three. He hasn’t shot particularly well — he’s shooting 38.2% from the field and 30% from three — but it’s all in a very small sample. So far, he’s averaging 4.3 points and 3.8 rebounds in 15.4 minutes per night, both numbers slightly lower than last season.
“I haven’t been playing great — but the starting, not starting thing, it’s not about that,” Walsh said. “That’s just kind of like Joe’s thing, like he wants to try new things. Like, that’s fine. But I’m still playing the same amount of minutes. So, I still gotta produce in those minutes. Like, I gotta do that better.”
Walsh isn’t on the court to stuff the stat sheet; his defensive success sometimes shows up as steals or blocks, but more often, it’s more nuanced.
“For me, it’s more about the defensive impact, and a lot of the time that stuff doesn’t really show up in the box score,” Walsh said. “Like, it doesn’t show up how many times I negate a screen, or how many times the star player doesn’t get the ball that possession, just gives up. Like, it doesn’t track that kind of stuff. So it’s never really based off of that, anyway — that’s not where my value lies.”
Walsh’s minutes have been trending downwards as Hugo Gonzalez has slotted into the starting lineup. After playing 18 or more minutes in three of the Celtics’ first four games, he hasn’t played more than 12 minutes since October 27th.
While he knows his counting stats aren’t the priority, he said he wants to see a marked improvement in his defensive impact. It’s an imperfect stat, especially this early on, but he currently has the second-worst plus-minus on the team; the Celtics have been outscored by 10 points in his minutes so far this season (Mitchell Robinson has the worst total plus-minus on the team at -37).
“I still have a standard that I’ve set, and the organization has for me that I need to meet, even if it’s not scoring.”
