BOSTON — The Boston Celtics may not lead the NBA in shooting percentage, but from first impressions in their preseason opener Monday night, they could easily be the best in the league in good looks at the bucket.

In a 94-82 victory against Charlotte, the Celtics were true to the lessons of both Brad Stevens and their kindergarten teachers. They shared. A lot.

The crisp movement of the ball warmed the hearts of basketball purists, including one who was wearing No. 42.

“That was great, man,” said Al Horford, who with Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward played just the first half. “That gets me excited. That’s the way I like to play. I think it was contagious from the very early stages of this game, and the bench guys just kept it going. It’s early. It’s only a week. But we understand that when we move the ball and we play like that, we’re just a better team.”

That the Celts had just a 47-43 lead at the break with their stars getting a good run was because of their failure to hit the ocean from the end of the pier on too many attempts. But the Horford-Irving-Hayward troika probably won’t shoot 34.8 percent on many nights – and that figure was lower than the 37.5 percent the Celtics shot in the first half overall.

“No, no, we had a lot of good looks – a lot of really good looks – and you know, there’s some butterflies,” said Horford. “People are a little nervous in the first game and things like that. But shots will fall. We have scorers.”

“We have a lot of space, a lot of guys that can make plays,” said Hayward. “It felt like we got some really good looks that once we get clicking, we’ll be even better.”

Stevens certainly isn’t sweating the numbers.

“I don’t really care about the shooting,” he said. “I just care about the shots we’re getting, and we got some great looks in the first half especially. I mean, I used to always, even in college … in your first exhibition game you’re ready for there to be some real bricks early because everybody’s so excited to be out there playing against somebody else. So that’s nothing new and, you know, I thought that we got pretty decent looks.”

It was fun basketball to watch. While power dunks still will get the greatest rise out of the audience, Boston is one of the cities where five-pass verses are music to the eyes of the masses.

“That was awesome, man,” said Irving. “It’s beautiful to be a part of. It was beautiful to watch – you know, purposeful cuts, understanding what we’re trying to do offensively and defensively, just executing at a high level.”

At times it seemed the Celtics may have even over-passed, but Stevens denied the existence of that concept, at least relative to the calendar.

“Not on Oct. 2 there’s not,” he said. “I think that you’re trying to build a sharing mindset and a high-motor mindset at both ends of the floor. When you play defense, you play defense hard as a team. You cover for one another. When you play offense, you play hard as a team. Hopefully we’ll continue to build that. So far they’ve really tried. It’s just a matter of, I think, getting a little bit crisper.”

The Celts actually may want Irving to be a bit more selfish as things move on, but he too denied the over-passing issue.

“I don’t know if there’s such a thing as that,” he said. “I think that (Stevens) gives us enough freedom individually and as a group to make plays and be who we are. Even when we came in at halftime he was saying, ‘Just shoot the shots that are open.’

“Sometimes we even got into a span of making the extra, extra pass, and when you’re with a group like that, you know you’re playing with some great guys.”

Said Horford of Irving, “He’s got to be aggressive. (Hayward) has to be aggressive. I have to at times be more aggressive. But one of the things important to me is that we make sure that we keep that mentality that we’re getting the best shot that we can. We did a good job of that.”

Supporting his theory of contagions, Horford noted the carryover effect when the Celts didn’t have the ball.

“What I was most impressed with though was our energy on the defensive end,” he said. “I felt like guys were really covering for each other, trying to help each other. And I was a little concerned about that, so I’m just happy to see that everybody was together on that.

“Defense takes a little more time because you’ve got to really communicate. There’s a lot of things going on. But for being a first game, I mean, there’s a lot of things that we need to work on, but I was encouraged by everybody communicating and being there for one another.”

Among the major concerns for the Celtics with such a heavily reconstructed roster was recreating the chemistry that helped the previous outfit achieve beyond its means. But in the first night in the sandbox against another club, the kids played very well together and seemed to very much enjoy each other’s company.

That doesn’t get you a trophy but it removes one of the ways a team can defeat itself.

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