I posted this in another thread and think it's meaningful.
For the 2017-2018 season, Boston's most used lineup was excellent:
Brown-Tatum-Horford-Baynes-KYRIE (354 minutes played).
The Celtics had only two better lineups all season, actually; at least with sample sizes reasonable enough to interpret:
Brown-Tatum-Horford-Baynes-ROZIER (115 mins)
Brown-Tatum-Horford-Baynes-SMART (43 mins)
That means the Celtics' best lineups consisted of their starting 5 after swapping out Kyrie for Rozier or Smart. Pretty powerful data.
Were the Celtics very good with Kyrie? Yes. He's a net negative defender, but very good scorer that offsets his defense. But that the Celtics are better with two younger, borderline-starting PGs speaks volumes about his value as a teammate.
Add the fact that Kyrie (injury-prone, very reliant on quickness) will be due somewhere ~$40 million in his mid 30s, and there is plenty of cause for concern.
https://hardwoodhoudini.com/2018/11/12/boston-celtics-holiday-gift-guide/
It doesn't really contribute much since it's 2017-18 stats. For instance, this year, when 5 man combos have played at least 20 minutes together, Kyrie is in 12 of the top 16 best net rated 5 man combos this year.
That data is non-contributory to the conversation because it is from the 2017-2018 season? I am not clear what you are citing, but it is necessarily half the sample size; moreover, assuming your correct, any interpretation of this year's data still needs to take into account last year's.
You're doing exactly what you're criticizing moranis of, yet rather than a stretch of games, you'd like to omit an entire season?
Moranis, please, please, for the sake of mathematics, please stop with the " unsustainable 15-2 start needs to be disregarded". These discussions don't work that way and I am sure you know that. If it was unsustainable it wouldn't have happened. It did happen so you have to count it.
You can't discount the Lakers record 33 game winning streak and argue that it wasn't sustainable so we should look at that Lakers juggernaut as a 36 win team. You can't discount the Philly 16 game win streak to end last season and say they were really a barely above .500 team in reality.
You just can't do that. If the games were played then they count and have to be taken into consideration.
So please, for the love of God, stop with the "you have to ignore this very large swarth of games" stuff simply to try to prove a point. It doesn't work that way.
Last year's stats have nothing to do with this year's stats and so are not contributory when discussing this year. And when trying to discuss this year, you absolutely do not need to look at last year's stats.
And my telling Moranis you just can not ignore 18 games from lahst year in evaluating last year's numbers isn't even close to the same as me saying you can't bring in last year's numbers when reviewing this year's numbers. If I am reviewing last year, I take into consideration all last year's numbers. If I am reviewing this year, I review all this year's numbers. I don't conflate the numbers of both years to discuss the combined numbers as one year.
This year is this year.
Last year was last year.
Different players. Different teams. Different variables.
I mean if I want to discuss Hayward's impact on the Celtics last year, I can only bring up last year. It makes no sense to bring up this year's stats or his last year in Utah's stats to discuss his impact on the 2017-18 Celtics. He got hurt and missed last year so his impact is he hurt the C's last year because he didn't contribute.