“The more telling stat here is Boston’s overall on/off splits this season. With Irving on the court, Boston’s offensive rating is a team-best 113.8 and the team owns a net rating of plus-8.9 overall in his 1,526 minutes of floor time. Boston’s offensive rating plummets to 105 — a mark that would rank them 27th behind the Cleveland Cavaliers if maintained for the season — with a team-worst off-court net rating of plus-1.8 during the 1,278 minutes with Irving off the floor.
Those net ratings suggest that, when Irving is on the court, the Celtics play at a level somewhere between conference leaders Milwaukee and Golden State, and, when he’s on the bench, they are a seventh or eighth seed at best.
This is not to suggest that everything is sunshine and puppy dogs when Irving is on the court. Boston’s assist percentage dips when Irving is on the court, confirming the notion that he either can be a ball-dominant guard or that teammates can get caught sitting and watching for him to make plays.
Boston is almost forced to move the ball more without Irving and that can lead to nights like Tuesday where six players land in double figures, including the entire starting 5.
But you need only look at last week’s eyesore loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, the one in which the Celtics fumbled away a 28-point lead in a game Irving suffered a knee injury in the first half. In crunch time, with Los Angeles playing with confidence, the Celtics didn’t have a player they could lean on to score much-needed crunch-time hoops.
For all of Boston’s talents, Irving is still one of the most clutch players in the NBA. He’s the sort of individual talent that a team needs in the postseason when defenses clamp down and those late-game buckets are harder to generate. Boston’s younger players like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have certainly proven themselves capable of elevating on a big stage but Game 7 against the Cavaliers last year showed the value of having proven winners on the court in big-game moments.”
The team needs to learn to play together correctly. Without the superior offense with Kyrie on the floor, we can’t beat the warrior 4/7.