Carsen Edwards could be an interesting starter.
G: Edwards
G: Smart
F: Jaylen
F: Tatum
C: Theis
Keep Jeff Teague and Tristan Thompson to bench roles to provide experience and stability to an inexperienced bench. You have Grant Williams there as well.
Let Smart start at PG and run the team. Let Edwards come in and play a low pressure role next to the stars. He doesn't need to do anything fancy. Just take outside shots inside the flow of the offense. A minor role to let him / help him get comfortable. Let Smart defend SGs. Carsen defend PGs. Edwards gives you some extra ball handling security.
A bit similar to letting Scalabrine start when KG was injured. Move him into a 18mpg starting role. Let the main bench players keep their primary roles and keep the main rotation in tact. Put a lesser talent bench player in as starter. Someone who can spread the floor and just keep things ticking along.
I have no doubt that Carsen Edwards could be an interesting starter, in fact I'm sure Carsen Edwards would be an interesting starter. Talk about thinking outside the box. TP for the idea.
i think you misspelled the word "inadequate." 
i root for edwards a lot. but given his play last year, he would have to have one heck of a pre-season to earn a starting position.
He'd definitely be an interesting starter in China.
A TP for that wit. Well played, sir.
But I think that you’re underestimating him. Boston gave him a contract with a low risk to the team - and a recognition that it might take a while.
I think that a couple of things are clear going forward: he can get an open shot for himself; and he’s a competitor.
That first is more important than it might appear to the casual fan, who likely replies, “So what, he’s got to make them!” - which is a good point, as far as it goes. Does that mean his upside is Terry Rozier with less length? Maybe.
Terry’s role expanded in Charlotte, with a modest uptick in assist% - and also in turnover %. Those numbers look about like Marcus Smart’s. Mostly the shots he creates are for himself. He shot over .400 from 3, which is golden, especially for a guy who can get a shot off the dribble and isn’t afraid of the moment. As we saw when he was in Boston, he got into the paint off the dribble, too, though his finishing was uninspiring.
Carsen did one thing last year that Terry has never come close to and that is in fact rare in the NBA - he was effective on the dreaded long 2’s - .529 on a small but not useless sample size (17 shots). He’s got a couple of different ways of getting those shots off the dribble with a shot fake at the arc and one or two dribbles going either right or left into that big open area that NBA defenses are mostly conceding nowadays. A guy who can reliably get you more than a point on a possession is an asset on offense.
Will Edwards eventually shoot at least an average % from 3? I’d bet on it. The form is excellent, the drive to improve is there, and he’s already got sidestep moves to either side to get a good look at the rim. The safety valve move to the wide-open long 2 is golden if last year’s % is real.
The rosiest scenario is something like: Isaiah Thomas with better defense. But he’s got two high bars to get over first: he’s got to get to the rim and finish; and he’s got to get shots for his teammates. The first of those looks more likely, but he’s got a long way to go with the second. For my money, those are the two things to watch.
He’s an NBA player. I wouldn’t predict that he’ll retire in Boston, but I would predict that he’ll have a long career.
I wish I could buy into and get attached to these young players the way some other posters do.
Somehow I don’t think that you’re being entirely sincere... 😜
Who knows? Maybe Carsen will find a role, but it doesn't bode well that a guy billed as a shooter has yet to show that he can shoot at the NBA level. It's like James Young all over again.
It doesn’t bode ill, either. That was his rookie year, aged 21. And while I have no stake in your ‘insulting’ James Young, they aren’t very much alike, either in the kind of game they play or in their work ethics or in their repertoire of useful NBA skills.
His 3-pt shooting was 24/76. That’s a small enough sample size that a make or a miss one way or the other makes a big difference for percentages. If he’d made 28 of those he’d be above league-average. That is clearly attainable.
Notice also the degree of difficulty of his shots - mostly above the break, usually off the dribble. Those are more difficult.
I pointed out above that he was also effective on long 2’s (.529) - that is a rare NBA skill, if he can sustain it, and he can get those shots anytime.
To be continued, for sure, but the year 1 results for his long-range shooting are very encouraging.
Just because you mentioned him in comparison to Isaiah (an insult to IT)
What I said was the rosiest scenario was IT with better defense. I don’t flatter myself that other posters are parsing every nuance of my posts. Still, that’s pretty straightforward.
As for ‘insulting’ IT - really? On the contrary, I was using him as the paragon of the scoring point with speed, handles, range, and short stature. My prediction for Carsen was in fact specifically not IT, as I thought should have been obvious.
I detailed what I think are the two main areas where Edwards is lacking (and where Thomas was not), and predicted that he’d improve getting to the rim and finishing but I was doubtful that he’d become good at creating shots for teammates.
It did occur to me that Thomas is a good ideal for Edwards in another way – namely, that he was grossly underestimated and had to earn everything he got.
Did you really just say that a 76-shot sample size for threes is "a small enough sample size that a make or a miss one way or the other makes a big difference for percentages" while quoting your previous post that used a 17-shot sample to justify your claim that "Carsen did one thing last year that Terry has never come close to and that is in fact rare in the NBA - he was effective on the dreaded long 2’s?"
First of all, that’s a good question.
You did not quote either of my caveats about that 9/17 result: I said, “if last year’s % is real” and “if he can sustain it”. I figured those would be enough to make it clear that these are in the realm of promising rather than reliable. Perhaps I was wrong.
It’s an intriguing number, but it’s more than the % that suggests a skill worth developing. First of all, those are mostly (maybe all?) off the dribble, meaning that they are more difficult. More importantly, he’s getting them as part of his 3-pt repertoire, meaning that he’s working on a series of fakes and shots as a group, as a system, so that he can get a good look. If the first look is challenged he’s got sidesteps to either side, and if that look is challenged he’s got a dribble move into the open space. In other words this isn’t random, he’s working on the components as a unit.
If 9/17 is "a small but not useless sample size," what is 24/76?
Again, good question.
It’s a less small and less useless sample size. In fact what I did was say in a simple way what that number means and just how useful it is: if he’d shot 28/76, which is not far off from his actual performance, he’d have been above league average. My point was that that benchmark looks attainable for him in the future, not that he secretly shot league average or whatever it sounded like.
And what is the addition 33/118 he shot in the G League?
An even better question.
First of all that’s a hell of a lot of shots!
Since he’s under a Celtics contract, we can assume that one of his tasks in going down to Maine was to get and take a lot of shots, since his Boston coaches would have requested him to do work that would develop him for the Celtics.
A comp I mentioned for him earlier is Terry Rozier - high-tempo lead guard skilled at creating shots for himself. They both started in the league at age 21, spent a lot of their rookie seasons in the G-league, and played similar minutes in the Big Show. Terry, by the way, shot .222 from 3 his first season, and turned it over almost 50% more (tov%) than Carsen. Both of them struggled in their rookie seasons both to get to the rim and finish, and to make plays for their teammates.
Carsen isn’t Terry, but it’s worth keeping things in perspective.
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