Why the did Celtics win the Kyrie Irving trade?
Because in Brad's system (similar to GSW), he is going to make the Curry leap!
How does 28 ppg and 8 apg sound?
That sounds great!
Question: Will Kyrie be increasing his scoring through increased shots per game? Or improved efficiency?
Both. He'll take and make more threes.
Kyrie was 6th in the NBA in FGA per game last year. Are you saying that will go up? Or just that the percentage of them that are threes will go up? Or that he will both take more shots AND more of them as threes? He lead CLE with a 30.8% USG rating. That's lower than Isaiah's 34% last year, but Isaiah really didn't have any other high USG player on the team with him.
Is Gordon Hayward going to take as many shots as he took last year for UTAH? More? Less? He was a 28.7% USG player. Do you think that will go down in order for Kyrie to take more shots?
In order to get 8 assists per game, he'll also need to increase his touch & pass volume by about 25% or his teammates will need to convert their shots off his passes a lot more efficiently.
The former. He'll get an extra assist per game just by not having to share passing duties with LeBron. The extra ball movement prescribed by Stevens will account for another assist per game.
Well, even though he was sharing passing duties with Lebron, Kyrie still passed the ball 52.2 times per game, just barely behind Thomas' 55.7 times per game. The Celtics weren't all THAT different from CLE because Al Horford actually shared a huge chunk of the passing duties (51.0 passes per game). Lebron did lead all those guys at 59.5 passes per game but it's not like he was Ricky Rubio with the ball. And as noted, we've also added Gordon Hayward to the mix and he's a pretty adept passer as well (40.1 passes per game in the really slow UTAH offense).
Are you envisioning that Horford and Hayward will play a reduced role in the passing duties from who they have been?
As someone that interviewed at McKinsey and Bain many years ago, I genuinely appreciate how you are using a marriage of the Socratic method and Ace Your Case follow up questions to peel back Dino Pitino's post, but I think the analysis of this trade has been really, really over-reliant on stats. 'IT had better stats than Kyrie last year' or 'If Kyrie was in IT's role last year he would have done x...' or 'Kyrie needs to put up x,y,z stats for the Celtics to not lose the trade', etc.
I'm guilty of this as well. I think last year Kyrie would've put up stats as good as IT if he was on the Celtics in every area except efficiency. But I also think it's incredibly biased to cherry pick a guy's best year (by far) at the age of 28 on a team with no other scorers before he suffered a major injury, and then say a guy who's 3 years away from being 28 and who's made twice as many all star teams needs to put up the same numbers on a totally different team... or else.
I'm confident that 1) Kyrie has a bigger advantage over IT than those who are bearish on the trade think. If you put a 25 year old IT or a 25 year old Kyrie on a team like Denver or Utah last year, I think Kyrie makes the team better and is clearly the individual player. I also believe that 2) Kyrie hasn't reached his full potential, nor has he played for a coach or a team who gets as much out of their players as CBS and the Celtics. It's still on Kyrie to work to improve, especially defensively, and this is speculation, but it's no less nutty than comparing IT's best season on last year's Celtics team to Kyrie last year on the Cavs, or 21 year old Kyrie.
I think for now the Celtics won the trade because Kyrie is the best player, and because before the trade IT was the bridge between the gap of Horford as a 30 year old and Hayward as a 27 year old, which overlaps with the ages of Golden State's stars. Now, Kyrie bridges the age gap between Hayward at 28 and Brown/Tatum at age 20 or so. The team can improve in the next 2-3 years, after which time Golden State should be broken up or bankrupt due to repeater tax violations, and still have its best 2 players and 2-3 grade A prospects in or entering their prime.
If the Nets pick lands at #1 or #2 that could affect my decision. Maybe even if it lands #3-4. But for now, I'm very pleased with the trade other than feeling bad for a great Celtic in IT.