Teams Need More Than Four Good Players To Reach The Finals

[RodyTur10]

Last year we had:

guards: Irving, Smart, Rozier
wings: Tatum, Brown, Hayward, Morris
bigs: Horford, Baynes, Theis

Where Wanamaker, Ojeleye and Robert Williams were the 11th, 12th and 13th guy on the roster.

A massively talented roster and surely good enough to win a title.

That didn't work out, so I think Ainge was really trying to not get an overloaded roster again, where proven players had to fight each other for minutes. Also he doesn't want to burn assets needlessly.

I was in favour of making a trade during the winter with Sacramento (Holmes and Bjelica).
This off-season I want the Celtics to trade up in the draft and/or trade picks for vets.
And I only view Brown/Tatum/Smart as untradeable (personally I'd add Robert Williams to that short list).
 

[PhoSita]

I agree, the lack of depth forced the top 6 players in the rotation to play way too many minutes, and it caught up with them.

The Heat made moves mid-season to add Crowder and Iguodala.  Good chance they don't make it to the Finals if they didn't make that trade.



The Celtics in this playoff run had:


Tatum - All-NBA two way wing

(25.7 pts, 10.0 reb, 5.7 ast, 7.2 FTA, 56.3% TS)

Brown - All-Star caliber two way wing

(21.8 pts, 7.5 reb, 2.3 ast, 3.7 FTA, 58.6% TS)

Kemba - Average / above-average starting guard

(19.6 pts, 5.1 ast, 4.1 reb, 4.8 FTA, 57.3% TS)

Smart - Elite defensive role player

(14.5 pts, 5.2 reb, 4.6 ast, 3.3 FTA, 55.2% TS)



Apart from that you have

Theis - Backup center who is out of his depth as a starter

(8.9 pts, 7.1 reb, 52.1% FG in 28 mpg)

Wanamaker - limited game manager backup point

(4.9 pts, 2.0 reb, 1.8 ast on 48 / 44 / 88 shooting in 16 mpg)


Then you have

Rob / Grant / Semi - Limited young role players averaging ~10 mpg

Kanter - Matchup specific third string center (9 mpg in 11 games)


Hayward played in 5 games and overall was pretty awful (10.8 pts 4.0 reb 2.8 ast on 40 / 29 / 88 shooting in 31 mpg)




Like Roy said ... you just need more guys you can rely on to play the role they're being asked to play in order to have a shot at a title. 

It is really amazing they got this close.




The 2018 team got a bit closer to the Finals and was sort of comparable in terms of lacking depth.  But that team at least had 7 guys playing 20+ minutes a night in roles that made sense. 

Biggest difference I see with that team is that Horford was the unquestioned leader of the group on both ends of the floor.  He had years and years of playoff experience even though he'd never made it beyond the ECF.

[Hoopvortex]

I don’t know where the claim that Boston’s bench was 29th comes from.

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

According to the NBA they were 6th in net rating, which is after all the bottom line - basketball is a game of outscoring your opponent.

[Roy H.]

I don’t know where the claim that Boston’s bench was 29th comes from.

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

According to the NBA they were 6th in net rating, which is after all the bottom line - basketball is a game of outscoring your opponent.

They were 29th in scoring.

I’m not sure how net rating even works here, since the bench doesn’t play as a unit.  Bench players no doubt benefit from mixing in with the starters.

[ozgod]

There's a lot of anger around here, based upon the premise that we should have beaten Miami.  Blame Brad, blame Kemba, blame Theis, blame our system.

Frankly, I think the team overachieved.  We made it through the regular season as a third seed, and took out Toronto and Philly in the playoffs, despite playing with essentially four above-average players:  Tatum, Brown, Kemba and Smart.  During the regular season, Hayward was well-above average, as well -- playing at a near all-star level -- but that wasn't the guy we saw in the Conference Finals.

During the regular season, we ranked 29th out of 30 teams in bench production.  Our bench ranked 28th in 3PT%.  In the playoffs, it was the same story:  our bench was 14th out of 16 playoff teams in terms of bench scoring.

That isn't a coaching or scheme problem.  It's a pure talent deficit.  Why are people acting like we should be in the Finals?  I think we should be praising this team for over-achieving based upon an extraordinarily flawed roster.

If a finger needs to be pointed, it's at Danny Ainge.  If we could have had Bertrans for two #1s, we should have taken the deal.  If we could have signed competent veterans instead of carrying seven rookies, we should have done so.  If we could have traded up to get Tyler Herro, we should have done so.  I know that having a very tight salary cap influenced some decisions, but was any part of that due to us carrying more than a $1 million cap hit for Yabusele?  If so, shouldn't we have packaged Yabu with cash to pay his salary and sent him to another team?  Was Poirier really the best we could do with his salary slot?  Where did Danny expect the bench scoring to come from?

This may be the only time I agree with Kyrie Irving, but we was absolutely right about the need for veterans.  Not only do experienced players have a calming presence, but presumably they've stuck around the league because they know how to play basketball.

I know it's a hard pill to swallow, but we lost because we're not good enough.  We were running an extremely handicapped team out there, and that can't happen again in 2021.  It's time for Danny to give us a complete roster.

I also agree that we overachieved based on expectations at the start of the season. If anyone had told me we would have been in the ECF, with a chance to go to the Finals by winning Games 6 and 7, right after having lost Kyrie and Al, and having nobody to replace Al effectively, I would have thought it a great achievement. In the cold light of day, after a few days to dwell on the result, I think people will see that overall it was a good year. Brad has basically taken 3 different teams to the ECF:

Code: [Select]

2017 2018 2020

IT Rozier Kemba
Bradley Jaylen Smart
Crowder Tatum Tatum
Horford Mook Jaylen
Johnson Horford Theis
---
Smart Smart Hayward
Rozier Baynes Wanamaker
Olynyk Ojeleye GWill
Green Monroe Timelord
Jaylen Yabu Kanter
Zeller Nader Ojeleye
Jerebko Larkin Langford inj
Hayward inj
Kyrie inj
But it's a reality of fandom that expectations change through the year, and the season. When we saw Miami eliminate Giannis and the Bucks, and then we ourselves eliminated Embiid and the Sixers 4-0 and then the Raptors in 7, people probably thought the easiest series of the lot was coming up. And even worse, we shot ourselves in the foot in Games 1 and 2, and were in the game in Game 4 despite starting horribly. It's easy to feel like you were the better team and was robbed of a golden chance to make it to the finals. That's why there's all the proposals to throw everything but the kitchen sink out the door.

When it all comes down to it, we lost moments - the key moments that decided the game and the series. When we were at our best we won many more minutes of the series than they did...but they won the important minutes, the ones where the series swung. Just like the last 6 minutes of Games 1 and 2, which decided those games, and the last 6 minutes of Game 6. It's those moments where it was clear that Miami were the better team.