Author Topic: The case for Starting Smart  (Read 4212 times)

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Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #15 on: September 11, 2017, 10:33:30 AM »

Offline ThePaintedArea

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Smart may or may not be the answer in the starting lineup...

I agree.

The whole thing seems confused. The reason Smart should start at SG is because he's so good at playing PG?

Smart played almost all his minutes last season with either Thomas or Rozier, allowing those two to play off the ball. Creating offense is hard work! They keep bumping you! In addition, Rozier is no great shakes as a playmaker; his future may be 3-and-D point guard, so he's best with someone else creating the offense. Now that Boston has more shot-creators, Terry can fill some slots off the ball.

So Brother Marcus was playing "two guard", nominally, even though he had the ball a lot and was creating shots for the team. The old rigid 1-5 hierarchy was never a comfortable fit for the pro game, but nowadays it's more uncomfortable than ever.

But if Kyrie has the ball, Smart's poor outside shooting is an issue. I'm leaning Brown as the starter.

Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #16 on: September 11, 2017, 10:35:17 AM »

Offline ThePaintedArea

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One thing is for sure: Stevens will experiment with at least 5 or 6 different starting lineups.

Baynes, Tatum, Brown, Rozier will probably all see starting minutes this year

You didn't include Smart in your list...

Just sayin.

Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #17 on: September 11, 2017, 11:43:04 AM »

Offline Big333223

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Smart may or may not be the answer in the starting lineup...

I agree.

The whole thing seems confused. The reason Smart should start at SG is because he's so good at playing PG?

Smart played almost all his minutes last season with either Thomas or Rozier, allowing those two to play off the ball. Creating offense is hard work! They keep bumping you! In addition, Rozier is no great shakes as a playmaker; his future may be 3-and-D point guard, so he's best with someone else creating the offense. Now that Boston has more shot-creators, Terry can fill some slots off the ball.

So Brother Marcus was playing "two guard", nominally, even though he had the ball a lot and was creating shots for the team. The old rigid 1-5 hierarchy was never a comfortable fit for the pro game, but nowadays it's more uncomfortable than ever.

But if Kyrie has the ball, Smart's poor outside shooting is an issue. I'm leaning Brown as the starter.
I agree with all of that.

The article posted above seems to make the same case, that Smart is better with the ball in his hands, but then concludes that Smart should start alongside Kyrie which will force Smart to play off the ball more. I don't get it.
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Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #18 on: September 11, 2017, 12:12:57 PM »

Offline Mike Pemulis

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I'd start Smart to replace Bradley's rebounding. Also he'd replace Bradley's minutes defending PGs.
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Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #19 on: September 11, 2017, 02:08:04 PM »

Offline ThePaintedArea

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Smart may or may not be the answer in the starting lineup...

I agree.

The whole thing seems confused. The reason Smart should start at SG is because he's so good at playing PG?

Smart played almost all his minutes last season with either Thomas or Rozier, allowing those two to play off the ball. Creating offense is hard work! They keep bumping you! In addition, Rozier is no great shakes as a playmaker; his future may be 3-and-D point guard, so he's best with someone else creating the offense. Now that Boston has more shot-creators, Terry can fill some slots off the ball.

So Brother Marcus was playing "two guard", nominally, even though he had the ball a lot and was creating shots for the team. The old rigid 1-5 hierarchy was never a comfortable fit for the pro game, but nowadays it's more uncomfortable than ever.

But if Kyrie has the ball, Smart's poor outside shooting is an issue. I'm leaning Brown as the starter.
I agree with all of that.

The article posted above seems to make the same case, that Smart is better with the ball in his hands, but then concludes that Smart should start alongside Kyrie which will force Smart to play off the ball more. I don't get it.

Yes. If the choice is to give the ball to Kyrie or Marcus, you take Kyrie.  Marcus has a role to play - maybe exactly what he did last year - not as a starter.


Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #20 on: September 11, 2017, 03:50:53 PM »

Offline Vermont Green

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I believe that Smart will start and will play starter's minutes.  I would be thrilled if Brown was able to beat him out and earn the starting role.  It would mean that Brown had progressed significantly.

Re: The case for Starting Smart
« Reply #21 on: September 13, 2017, 02:02:21 AM »

Offline Beat LA

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To be honest, I'm still cutting Terry Rozier quite a lot of slack right now (in terms of his comfort running the offense as well as his shooting percentages) based on the fact that he has played very few minutes over his career, and that his role and playing time have been quite honestly all over the place. 

To put into perspective just how little Rozier has played as a Celtic, if you take ALL of his regular season minutes and all of his playoff minutes for the last two seasons, and add ALL of those minutes together, you get 1,950 minutes of total NBA experience. 

Divide that by 82 and you a 23.78 - meaning if you took all of the minutes Rozier has played in two full regular seasons + two full playoffs and compress them all into a single regular season, he'd still only have averaged 23.8 MPG. 

Do he same with Smart's and you get 81.64 - so Smart has literally about 4x the NBA experience Rozier has in addition to having the benefit of having very steady minutes (he's ever averaged < 27 MPG for a season) and a very steady role he's started or been a 6th man his entire career).

Also despite limited opportunity, Rozier has actually shot pretty well in the playoffs  has tended to up his game in the Playoffs 12.5 Points Per 36 on 40% FG / 37% 3PT / 82% FT) which I think is pretty solid given his general lack of experience. 

Perhaps even more impressive is his career playoff Assist:Turnover rate of 3.27 which is actually a VERY high number for an NBA PG.  To put it in to perspective, Chris Paul has pretty much dominated that stat through his career, and has a career average of 1.4 AST:TO.  Marcus Smart's career AST:TO rates are 2.3 in the regular season and 1.88 in the playoffs - which is closer to what is expected for a shoot-first PG or a combo guard.   Rozier's playoff AST:TO rate of 3.27 is approaching elite for an NBA PG.  Obviously it's a tiny sample size so we can't draw too much from it, but it's an encouraging figure none the less given he actually did play quite a bit in the playoffs last season. 

He played some seriously nice defence against Wall and Beal in the Washington series too - when Wall was blowing by everybody else pretty much at will, Rozier took it on himself to accept that challenge - and wall was struggling immensely for much of that time. 

He also has a career +1 Net Rating, +0.1 VORP and -0.6 Box Plus Minus in playoff games - all indications that he's actually been at least holding his own out there in the big moments, which I think is also a nice sign for a kid with such limited experience.

So watching how Rozier has stepped up in the playoffs gives me some genuine hope that he can really flourish into a special all round player given a consistent role and consistent minutes, which he will get this year as the full time backup at either the PG or SG spot.  Hopefully he can show more of the same and prove that those playoff figures are more than just a fluke.

But anyhoot, the flashes I've seen from Rozier (even if they are only very brief flashes) give me more hope about his future as a PG then I get from Smart's 3 seasons so far. 

Hopefully Smart can up his playmaking / ball handling ability and up his shooting ability and prove me wrong!

Okay, first of all, you and I write way too much on here, lol :laugh:.

Anyway, despite his relative inexperience, yes, his postseason play has, honestly, been pretty impressive - getting involved with Brandon Jennings notwithstanding - but he still looks like the same player to me - a pretty athletic shooting guard in a point guard's body who leaves too much to be desired in terms of decision making - a "the lights are on but nobody's home" type, I guess :-\ - who also has poor shooting percentages, but then again that was his mo at Louisville, too, so it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, I suppose :-\.

Meh, I'm just not getting my hopes up.  He certainly has all of the tools but has yet to figure out how to put it all together, and, I know that no one will agree with me on this, but one of the reasons why I think he has performed so much better in the postseason is because, from my standpoint, there's so much emotion in the playoffs that most guys either can't think or stop thinking altogether, which is pathetic, imo, but also perfectly suited for Rozier, lol.  Everyone's all charged up and in fight-or-flight mode, and here he comes like it's second nature to him, imo, but yeah, when he has to think, he reminds me of, well, this :laugh:



I guess what I'm trying to say, here, is that the game has yet to "slow down" for him, which doesn't exactly inspire much confidence if he's going to be running the show out there, but hopefully I'm wrong. 

As for Smart, yeah...:laugh:. He's like a smaller, worse offensive version of the artist formerly known as Ron Artest.  I can't stand his incessant flopping, putrid shot selection, horrible decision making, and almost incomprehensibly poor offensive let's say "ability" ::). How was he ever a 6th pick in any NBA Draft?  I mean, if we wanted a great athletic, defensive, and outstanding, imo, rebounding point guard who can't shoot but can really pass, we should have gotten Gary Payton II.  We'd even be better off with Wayne Selden.  Smart is like the watered-down version of that guy, lol :laugh:. Ugh.