Jordan Walsh’s season has already had two distinct phases.
Back in mid-November, he stepped into the starting lineup and stayed there for the next 20 games. The Celtics went 15–5 during that stretch, and his role made sense within what Boston needed at the time. He defended across positions, ran the floor, and kept the offense moving without forcing anything.
The production followed. In November, Walsh averaged 6.5 points and 5.6 rebounds in 24 minutes per game. In December, that jumped to 9.5 points on nearly
70%(!) shooting, with his three-point percentage climbing above 50%. For a young wing on one of the best teams in the league, that’s no joke, especially for someone who, two months prior, most of us were still trying to figure out.
Since then, the shape of his season has changed. His minutes have dropped each month, from 20.6 in December to 15.8 in January, then 14.0 in February, and under 12 per game in March. The production has come down with it.
So what changed?
A role that fit what Boston needed
When Walsh entered the starting lineup on Nov. 12, it made a lot of sense.
Boston needed length on the wing. Someone who could defend multiple positions, stay active, and keep possessions moving when the ball found him. Walsh did that, and then some. He was often the one getting the offense to pick up the pace, and took on defensive assignments that allowed others to conserve energy.
Walsh fits the type of wing Brad Stevens has prioritized for years. Defend, connect plays, don’t hijack possessions. It’s the same connective archetype Boston has leaned into across the roster — the idea of building, as Nate Moskowitz recently put it, an army of Derrick Whites. For a stretch, Walsh executed his role well enough to stay on the floor, and the statistics backed up the eye test. On top of that, most of those minutes came in lineups that were already winning, so there wasn’t much reason to change anything.
Where the rotation started to change
The change didn’t come all at once.
It showed up in smaller moments. A shorter stint against Sacramento, then a lineup change against the Clippers, when Sam Hauser moved back into the starting group. After his minutes began to dip, Walsh didn’t point to matchups or rotation decisions. He went straight to impact.
“I think just leaving a print on the game,” he said in January. “The other team has to feel me… Every time I’m on the court, I’ve got to constantly make it hard for everybody else to kind of survive on the other team.”
That quote gets to the heart of why it’s hard to keep minutes on this Celtics roster. On a team this deep, checking the boxes is the bare minimum. To be a real contributor, you have to impact the game in a way that forces the coaching staff to keep you out there.
Mazzulla framed it from the team side.
“It’s just that we can go do so many different things,” he said. “You saw what Sam was able to do…our offense was obviously different with him out there.”
Nothing broke. The Celtics just have a lot of toys to play with, and they want to see how they all work together before the playoffs arrive.
The “young wolves” are fighting for the same minutes
Jaylen Brown recently called the Celtics’ youthful wings the “young wolves.” That group has been competing for the same rotation spots all season.
Walsh is competing directly with Baylor Scheierman, Hugo González, and the newest wolf cub, Ron Harper Jr., for minutes that don’t have much margin to begin with.
From a statistical standpoint, Walsh’s profile stands out in one specific area. He uses very little of the offense.
Among the group of wolves, Walsh’s usage rate sits near the bottom, around 11%. Scheierman is slightly higher. Harper Jr. and González operate in a similar range, but with more on-ball responsibility in short stretches.
That low-usage role can work (it did earlier in the season), but it comes with a tradeoff. When you’re not creating offense, your value has to show up quickly in other areas.
Walsh does that defensively. Last season, Xavier Tillman dubbed Walsh “The King of the Lockdown.” Bit of a clunky nickname for my liking, but the point stands. His activity, length, and ability to disrupt possessions still give him a clear edge on that end compared to most of the other young players.
Offensively, the gap is slightly visible when it comes to decision-making and versatility.
Scheierman has earned trust as a secondary playmaker as the season has gone on. His assist-to-usage numbers reflect that, showing a real comfort making reads with the ball in his hands. González, even in more limited minutes, has shown flashes of that same ability.
Walsh’s assist rate, by comparison, sits near the bottom of the group. That doesn’t make him ineffective. It just narrows the ways he can put his fingerprints on a possession offensively. When the ball finds him, the play usually needs to move quickly — catch, swing, or finish.
On a roster like this, the players who stay in the rotation tend to give Mazzulla multiple options within the same possession. Shooting, passing, or attacking off the catch. The more paths a player offers, the easier it is to keep him on the floor.
Walsh’s path is more defined. Defend, run, finish plays. Earlier in the season, that path was enough to hold steady minutes. As the rotation tightened and more talent rose to the surface, that path became harder to rely on consistently.
The margin for Walsh right now
There was a sequence against Oklahoma City last week that keeps replaying in my head as I write this article. Sam Hauser jumps a passing lane, pushes it ahead, and Walsh steps into a transition three and knocks it down. Clean, immediate, decisive. No hesitation, no extra dribble, no pause. That version of Walsh fits anywhere in this rotation. You don’t have to think about it and, more importantly, neither does anyone else.
The challenge is not knowing how often that version is going to show up possession to possession. In a tighter rotation, the ball finds different players in similar spots, and the ones who stay on the floor tend to keep the advantage moving in the right direction. Catch, decide, go. When that rhythm stalls, even briefly, the possession shifts somewhere else. On a team with this many options, that’s usually all it takes for Mazzulla to start looking for other answers.
Now, the context around those possessions has changed even more. With Tatum back and his minutes climbing into the low 30s, there are simply fewer opportunities to begin with. The role Walsh filled earlier in the season hasn’t disappeared, but it has shrunk, and it now requires a sharper version of the same impact to justify staying on the floor.
That’s the bar Walsh is trying to clear now. Not whether he can contribute, because he already has, but whether he can do it in a way that keeps him in the flow of what Boston is doing on both ends, game after game after game. The minutes earlier in the season proved he belongs in that mix. The last few weeks have shown how narrow that window can get.
Walsh said it himself. The other team has to feel him. Otherwise, we might not see him.
