Are we a real contender next year ?

[SHAQATTACK]

 no Gordy = no title

[Somebody]

We should be a contender if we manage to retain Hayward. The X-factor will be the development of Tatum and Brown: can Tatum crack the top 15 and can Brown break into the 25 or so? Them making that sort of leap should put us near the very top of the league if Kemba maintains his top 20-25 status and Hayward/Smart continue to inch closer to the top 30.

Agree. Hayward is the one that links them all together and allows the other three to be the best versions of themselves.

I think Smart deserves to viewed in the same light as Hayward. His defensive impact is ridiculous for a guard in the modern game while he has blossomed into a really good passer: he's one of our best players at throwing high leverage passes and converting passing opportunities imo. Add these traits to a low usage guard skillset with some floor spacing and ballhandling skills and you've got a top 40 player who can possibly crank out All-Star value in some setups (eg. teams with off ball savants who can maximise his court vision and passing/an offensive engine who can also move off ball). That level is basically what I think of Hayward as a player right now.

[Rikibellevie]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much with still Smart, Kanter and 3 promising young bucks... And I expect a big progession next year with just few adjustments. The problem was offensively but R Will, G Will and even Langford showed promess and all have good defensive abilities and basic qualities very uesefull for role players... And they will progress offensively I am sure. Even Ojeleye and Wannamaker can be correct sub for years to come (even if I think we can find better at their spots).
We have to find 2/3 subs who can really give us more offensively... One explosive 6 men, a most overall center as Kanter, biggest as Theis who can take a little more minutes as Kanter, and maybe a vet catch and shooter... But this mooves are not that hard to make.
What I wanted to say is that we did the longest way to be top 3/4 favorite for years to come... Of course there is still a lot of competition with the Lakers for the next year, the Clipps for more years and maybe Bucks or another team with Giannis if he goes away. After there will be maybe Dallas, New orleans, without forgetting Philli, Denver, Miami... But it's not easy to have a core with 4/5 talents like that and good fighters around, especially with such a young team... We are the only one in this position right now. Just little aditions, adjustments and we are close to it for years  in my opinion.

no Gordy = no title

Of course we have to try to conserve Hayward, it's the key for next year and sign an extension as quick and as low as possible. Maybe I am stupid but I think he may accept an around 20M prolongation (maybe this summer) because in the eyes of many teams there is some orange flags on him. Maybe New York or so could give him 30M, it's their style, but not sure Hayward prefer a dumb organisation to end his career, after what was expected on him when he came here.
 He is the perfect 4th man of this team, if the next years he can stay correctly healthy

[Hoopvortex]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

[cman88]

if tatum continues his growth as a superstar and Brown as an all-star I dont see why not.

We would have 4 all-star calibar players and a guy in smart who is one of the top defenders in the league.

We do need to upgrade our bench though..brad wannimaker is not cutting it

[Hoopvortex]

8 R Williams
Showed a lot of progress that must still be confirmedthis year. But he could be the perfect fit center for our system as he has some Theis defensive qualities with beibg much moore athletic, explosiv. His BBIQ is stil in question but the biggest concern is health… If he can stay healthy we would have at leats a very solid sub at 5 for the next 2 years

I agree with your biggest concern.

I’m a doubter at this point, and entirely due to his body - the best bet is, he won’t last. I say this regretfully, because of his exceptional gifts.

[BitterJim]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

We're 24th in bench minutes played. I'm not sure how they're determining "bench" O/DRTG here, but couldn't the net rating just be influenced by the fact that we play the bench with our best players a lot?

I don't think anyone can look at our bench and say it's top 7 in the league

[Neurotic Guy]

I was pretty overwhelmed by the improvement of JB and JT this season.  JT may have looked like an all-star in the making a year ago, but looked like a superstar in the making this season. JB continued to expand his skills - anyone who is certain of his ceiling has insight I lack.   

While none may come to fruition, these players all could show improvement next year based on youth or current trajectory:
Smart, JB, JT, GW, RW, RL, Theis.   GH could too. And who knows re: Waters, Edwards and Fall. 

This team was arguably #2 in the East and #5 or 6 in the league this season.  Absolutely could contend next year. 

[Somebody]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

We're 24th in bench minutes played. I'm not sure how they're determining "bench" O/DRTG here, but couldn't the net rating just be influenced by the fact that we play the bench with our best players a lot?

I don't think anyone can look at our bench and say it's top 7 in the league

Lineup data does show that we stagger our starters a lot, which buoys our bench numbers. But us having 5 really good offensive players (Kemba, Gordon, Tatum, Brown and Smart) is an anomaly among teams imo.

[LilRip]

If I were to be completely honest, the only 2 players that significantly move the needle on this roster are Tatum and Kemba. Those 2 guys will determine if we are contenders or not. Fortunately for us, Tatum was looking like a perennial all star!

If he keeps the trend, then yes, I believe we will be contenders.

Hayward, Smart, Brown, yeah they’re all really good to have on your team, but I don’t see them as the key to anything. Is Bledsoe the key to Milwaukee being contenders? Well, he’s absolutely important to their team’s success but Milwaukee’s status as contender hinges on the Giannis/Middleton pairing.

[ozgod]

We should be a contender if we manage to retain Hayward. The X-factor will be the development of Tatum and Brown: can Tatum crack the top 15 and can Brown break into the 25 or so? Them making that sort of leap should put us near the very top of the league if Kemba maintains his top 20-25 status and Hayward/Smart continue to inch closer to the top 30.

Agree. Hayward is the one that links them all together and allows the other three to be the best versions of themselves.

I think Smart deserves to viewed in the same light as Hayward. His defensive impact is ridiculous for a guard in the modern game while he has blossomed into a really good passer: he's one of our best players at throwing high leverage passes and converting passing opportunities imo. Add these traits to a low usage guard skillset with some floor spacing and ballhandling skills and you've got a top 40 player who can possibly crank out All-Star value in some setups (eg. teams with off ball savants who can maximise his court vision and passing/an offensive engine who can also move off ball). That level is basically what I think of Hayward as a player right now.

Agree again. Nobody's ever going to give him a max deal but I personally hope Smart retires a Celtic. He embodies everything it means to be a Celtic.

Only fans of European soccer will get this analogy but I remember years ago when Real Madrid president Florentino Perez started to create his Galacticos superteam by recruiting Zidane, Beckham, Ronaldo, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos, all the superstars. But when the players were polled everyone said the most important player was someone totally out of the spotlight - the engine to the Bentley, the holding midfielder Claude Makelele. He was the glue guy that made everyone else into the best version of themselves. It was proven true when Makelele left Real Madrid after Perez refused to increase his contract and was the beginning of the end for Los Galacticos.

Club president Florentino Pérez infamously poured scorn on Makélélé's footballing abilities and proclaimed that Makélélé would not be missed:

He wasn't a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres. Younger players will arrive who will cause Makélélé to be forgotten.[15]

His opinion differed from that of players like Zidane, who remarked the following after Makélélé was sold and Beckham was bought:[16]

Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?

In his autobiography, published in 2006, McManaman described Makélélé as the most important and yet least appreciated midfielder at Real. Retired former Real Madrid player and captain Fernando Hierro also criticised Pérez for both Makélélé's departure and the manner of his departure, saying:

I think Claude has this kind of gift – he's been the best player in the team for years but people just don't notice him, don't notice what he does. But you ask anyone at Real Madrid during the years we were talking about and they will tell you he was the best player at Real. We all knew, the players all knew he was the most important. The loss of Makélélé was the beginning of the end for Los Galacticos… You can see that it was also the beginning of a new dawn for Chelsea. He was the base, the key and I think he is the same to Chelsea now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Mak%C3%A9l%C3%A9l%C3%A9

Draymond Green is probably another example. Sometimes it's those guys who take more of a backseat, the unselfish guys that get the ball to the superstars, that are the most important. The fans may not always see the value, but the players definitely do.

[Rikibellevie]

When he was saying that, he tryed also to place collectiv behind indivudality.
After in Soccer, it is even more important (and more common) to have this kind of glue/grit guys, as many teams are playing with a Midfield sentinel (it's almost a role). And as there is more possibilty of contacts of course...

[Hoopvortex]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

I don't think anyone can look at our bench and say it's top 7 in the league

Well, Danny Ainge did. I don’t have a link.

I’m surprised that you are so definite about this. I think that it’s a danmed difficult question, and it seems to me that it’s on you to say what’s wrong with the official stat. I’m not attached to it being ‘right’, either; it’s a snapshot, like any stat, with a confidence interval.

I myself am not very interested in ranking teams in this way - but very interested in what lineups give you a winning formula.

You can accumulate the raw +/- numbers for each individual in every game who doesn’t start, and in some sense you’ll get a number for the bench’s net. That strips away important contexts, though - like who’s playing together, whom they’re playing against, etc.

Context matters. Take the starters and replace Hayward with Ojeleye, for example. Now Semi is a poor rebounder and super-low with turnovers, and yet a Walker/Brown/Tatum/Ojeleye/Theis lineup rebounds at 52.5% compared to the starters’ 47.5%, while turnovers get worse, at +1% net compared to +4%.

None of the top-20 most used lineups had all subs. One of them had four, though:  Wanamaker/Smart/Tatum/Ojeleye/Kanter.  That lineup performed better than the starters:

Starters  Ortg 1.23/Drtg 1.13
W/S/T/O/K  Ortg 1.27/Drtg 1.08

- i.e., nine points better in a 100-possession game.

So should that group start? Probably not - context matters.

[Somebody]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

I don't think anyone can look at our bench and say it's top 7 in the league

Well, Danny Ainge did. I don’t have a link.

I’m surprised that you are so definite about this. I think that it’s a danmed difficult question, and it seems to me that it’s on you to say what’s wrong with the official stat. I’m not attached to it being ‘right’, either; it’s a snapshot, like any stat, with a confidence interval.

I myself am not very interested in ranking teams in this way - but very interested in what lineups give you a winning formula.

You can accumulate the raw +/- numbers for each individual in every game who doesn’t start, and in some sense you’ll get a number for the bench’s net. That strips away important contexts, though - like who’s playing together, whom they’re playing against, etc.

Context matters. Take the starters and replace Hayward with Ojeleye, for example. Now Semi is a poor rebounder and super-low with turnovers, and yet a Walker/Brown/Tatum/Ojeleye/Theis lineup rebounds at 52.5% compared to the starters’ 47.5%, while turnovers get worse, at +1% net compared to +4%.

None of the top-20 most used lineups had all subs. One of them had four, though:  Wanamaker/Smart/Tatum/Ojeleye/Kanter.  That lineup performed better than the starters:

Starters  Ortg 1.23/Drtg 1.13
W/S/T/O/K  Ortg 1.27/Drtg 1.08

- i.e., nine points better in a 100-possession game.

So should that group start? Probably not - context matters.

Do we have adjusted lineup data in the same way we have APM? If so we can have a decent ballpark of how good a lineup is as such data would take the factors you highlighted into account (or at least attempt to if there are collinearity issues).

[Hoopvortex]

The bench is well below average, horrible actually. They need a front-line center with decent size that can anchor the defense and be of some value on offense, allowing Theis to play on a hopefully much improved second unit.

The bench was bellow average in his production this year, but horrible is maybe a little too much ...

https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StarterBench=Bench&dir=-1&sort=NET_RATING

Boston’s bench has been substantially above average, at seventh in the league.

I don't think anyone can look at our bench and say it's top 7 in the league

Well, Danny Ainge did. I don’t have a link.

I’m surprised that you are so definite about this. I think that it’s a danmed difficult question, and it seems to me that it’s on you to say what’s wrong with the official stat. I’m not attached to it being ‘right’, either; it’s a snapshot, like any stat, with a confidence interval.

I myself am not very interested in ranking teams in this way - but very interested in what lineups give you a winning formula.

You can accumulate the raw +/- numbers for each individual in every game who doesn’t start, and in some sense you’ll get a number for the bench’s net. That strips away important contexts, though - like who’s playing together, whom they’re playing against, etc.

Context matters. Take the starters and replace Hayward with Ojeleye, for example. Now Semi is a poor rebounder and super-low with turnovers, and yet a Walker/Brown/Tatum/Ojeleye/Theis lineup rebounds at 52.5% compared to the starters’ 47.5%, while turnovers get worse, at +1% net compared to +4%.

None of the top-20 most used lineups had all subs. One of them had four, though:  Wanamaker/Smart/Tatum/Ojeleye/Kanter.  That lineup performed better than the starters:

Starters  Ortg 1.23/Drtg 1.13
W/S/T/O/K  Ortg 1.27/Drtg 1.08

- i.e., nine points better in a 100-possession game.

So should that group start? Probably not - context matters.

Do we have adjusted lineup data in the same way we have APM? If so we can have a decent ballpark of how good a lineup is as such data would take the factors you highlighted into account (or at least attempt to if there are collinearity issues).

I’ve never seen it, never even thought about it until you brought it up. I wonder if coaches are looking at anything like that?

Sample sizes would be all over the map, while even the most-used lineups don’t have a lot of possessions to work with.

I’ve got a high opinion of The Celtics bench 6-10. They all have usage %s under 20; maybe that partly explains the low estimation some fans have for them.