Brian Scalabrine has mentioned on multiple occasions that he saw the jump that the 2013-2014 Golden State Warriors were about to make. I did not. But he claims in his time with the team, he knew it was going to happen because of the potential that he witnessed and the talent that they had. I was inspired by this because I really didn’t see the Golden State Warriors coming. But looking back, they were hiding in plain sight. The talent and foundations were there the year before they won the championship. But they had to put it all together. The changes they made, sparked by a coaching change and commitment to their current roster (hiring Steve Kerr, not trading Thompson for Kevin Love), produced results that are reflected in their statistical rankings over those two years.
I was struck by how the 2019 Boston Celtics are similarly ranked in many of these categories (see similarities in many of these league category rankings in the images below), and inspired that they might make the same improvements (set aside coaching or roster changes) within a year.
What they did:Golden State took slightly more 3pa and greatly improved their 2p% from 2013-2014 to 2014-2015.. Their assists and steals significantly improved which could indicate better ball movement leading to better shots and improved defense (also supported by improved DRtg) leading to more shot attempts. *Note that not much change in 2pa. Points greatly increased due to more 3 point shooting and improved accuracy of 2 point shooting. Total rebounds barely changed, indicating that increased shot attempts were due to increased pace either in conjunction with or caused by increase in opponents turnovers (defense eFG% not much changed), and those “extra” shots tended to be 3 point attempts. Of course, that doesn’t mean they were shooting threes all the time after turnovers, but the additional shot attempts were used wisely as the “surplus” of shots resulted in more 3 point attempts.
The Boston Celtics are built in similar way to 2013-2014 Warriors and even already on target for many of the improvements the 2014 Warriors made to become the 2015 Warriors. However, there are some main areas of improvement to take the next step.
Pace: Even though the 2019 Boston Celtics already outpace even the 2015 Warriors, the league is different now. Their 99.2 Pace is good for only 19th in the league, while the Warriors improved from 6th to 1st during their leap.
Defensive Rebounding: Middle of the pack rankings won’t cut it for a team modeled so similarly to the Golden State Warriors. Need to greatly improve defense rebounding relative to the rest of the league, moving from middle-ranked to top 10 at least. This would also improve pace. This, however, is probably one improvement that needs to be aided by roster construction.
Defense: This is an area of strength for the 2018-2019 Boston Celtics. However, it was an area of strength for the 51-31, out-in-the-first-round-of-the-playoffs Warriors too. They improved their DRtg ranking from 4th to 1st. The Celtics are ranked 5th in this area and are fully capable of improving similarly within a year.
Ball movement: This is the most significant area to me because it exactly mirrors the transition from the 2014 Warriors to their championship 2015 version. They improved from 7th in the league in assists to 1st in that one year, moving from 23.3 to 27.4 assists per game). The Boston Celtics already average 26.1 assists per game (also ranked 7th), but I believe are quite capable of leading the league (or something close to it) at over 29 per game with the right strategy and execution.
Recommendation:One advantage the Celtics have over the Warriors is an already better TOV% at 11.6 (ranked 4th) compared with the Warriors of both 2014 and 2015 who ranked middle of the pack, with higher turnover percentage and much lower ranking in the league for average turnovers per game. One might wonder if the Celtics could afford to offset some value in protecting the ball by speeding up the offense, freeing passing options and increasing assist numbers (and by extension, like the Warriors, shooting percentages), while accepting a slight drop in TOV%.
The Celtics already do a lot of things well and have the talent to improve in most areas of need. However, some slight roster changes and strategy approach on offense might help the team execute at closer to championship level within a year's time.
Topic: 4 Improvements away from Championship Next Year: A Case Study (Read 887 times)