Was Bill Kennedy looking to eject Wallace?

[BballTim]

That said, the biggest problem with Wallace is his lack of rebounding - the other stuff was expected and he'll probably regress (i.e. progress) to the mean in his efficiency. The Celtics right now have a big rebounding problem (I doubt a team with such a negative reb. differential had ever won the championship - maybe those Olajuwon Houston teams that would just concede the offensive glass?) and while the blame must be shared Sheed is part of the reason.

  What big rebounding problem? We get outrebounded by about 1/2 a rebound a game and we play reasonably well against good rebounding teams.

We're 30th in the league in rebounds per game, and we're the only team in the top 4 with a negative differential. Of the top 11 teams (see how I cut that off right before San Antonio) there are 3 with a negative rebounding diff. Us, Denver, and Phoenix.

We have a very definite rebounding problem.

  30th in the league is an absolutely meaningless stat. We're last in the league in available rebounds per game. Consider Milwaukee, who's 10th in the league in rebounding (42.9 per game) but gives up 44.4 boards a game. Are they better than us if we get 38.9 and give up 39.4? We get outrebounded by 1/2 a rebound a game. It's not a definite problem. It's something we should improve on, it's something we did better in our championship year, but it's not the crisis people imagine.

There is a problem because we get 49.7% of the available rebounds so far, making us a bellow par rebounding team (19th in the league). We are 17th in defensive rebounding rate and 28th in offensive rebounding rate.

If the goal was merely to make the playoffs, this wouldn't be much of a problem - I mean, for teams like the Warriors or the Nets this would probably be a positive. 

It becomes a problem for a contender because very rarely a bellow average rebounding team wins the title (rebounding becomes more important in the playoffs). In the last 25 years, only the 94/95 Houston Rockets won the title while being bellow average in OR% and DR%.

  I don't think you're seeing the (tiny) magnitude of the situation. Sure, we're below average in defensive rebounds, and it's rare for a team that's below average in offensive and defensive rebounds to win a title. But, in our 26 games, how many more defensive rebounds would we have needed to be "above average"? Four. Not for per game, just four total.

  We get outrebounded by 1/2 a rebound a game. If we got to even (one more defensive rebound every other game) we're then 10th or so in defensive rebounding. If we really go to town and get 1 more rebound a game that puts us top 5-6 or so in defensive rebounding. Again, it's an issue, I'd like to see it improve and I'm sure they're working on it, but it's not as dire as people assume.

1. I can't follow your math. Which numbers are you using? I'm taking mine from here:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/2010.html
http://www.knickerblogger.net/stats/2010/d_de.htm

So far, there have been 1074 rebounding opportunities in the Celtics end. With four more defensive rebounds, as you propose, then we'd have conceded 290 OR and grabbed 784 DR. That would mean our opp.OR% would be 27.1%. Considering that our OR% is 24%, we'd still have a huge rebounding differential to overcome.

  If we get 4 more defensive rebounds our percentage of defensive rebounds goes from .726 to .729. That moves us from 19th to 14th or so, or above average. And, again, we're outrebounded by .5 rebounds a game. I can't see calling that a huge differential.

Even if we were to get one more rebound per game, we'd still have a negative rebounding differential - 25% oppDR, which would put us 7th in the league, but we'd need to grab 1 more offensive rebound for every 100 missed shots to get even.

  No, you're missing that we take fewer shots than our opponents. Look at your rebounding totals. The Celts have 1011 rebound on the year and our opponents have 1025. If we get 1 more rebound a game our total would jump to 1037 and our opponents total would fall to 999. Each rebound we get is, in effect, a 2 rebound swing as our opponent loses a rebond.

2. You make it sound that getting one more rebound per game (something that would still left us with a negative rebounding rate) is a small thing, not very significant, that can easily be achieved, therefore isn't a problem. But it isn't, it's what makes the difference between good rebounding teams and average ones, between average ones and really bad ones. For example, the 76ers are the 3rd worst team in the league in defensive rebounding. If they could get 1 more rebound per game, they'd become a top-10 defensive rebounding team and a better one than the Cs. Yes, 1 rebound per game sounds tiny, but it isn't.

  I don't know that it's so hard, maybe it's not seen as tremendously important. I don't think it's the case that the best rebounding teams have the best records. One steal a game can mean the difference between good and average, but I doubt teams knock themselves out to try and up their steal total.

3. Being average in an important factor of the game is a problem for a contender, in my view. Very rarely teams that are merely average rebounding-wise win the title. At least I can't think of many.

4. Maybe this is just semantics and you don't like to use the word "problem"? I'm not married to it, we can call it weakness. I think we can all agree that rebounding is this team biggest weakness and that it's extremely rare that a team with this weak rebounding-wise wins the title. 

  Again, though, if we grab one more board a game we're suddenly a good rebounding team. I think there's more to winning the title than that. I agree that it would be better if we rebounded better. But we seem to do other things well enough that we're surviving this weakness. We're still at the point where one good or bad game can affect averages, but I'm pretty sure we were a better rebounding team when we were 9-4 than we have been during our 11-1 stretch.

 

 

You can make up for it by being very good in other aspects of the game, but the Cs are already subpar in another of the 4 factors, the turnover rate. If they keep rebounding and turning over the ball this way, they'll have to be extremely good in other aspects of the game, where the margin of progression is already small.

Two things here. One, in each of the last two years we've been among the league leaders in turnovers during the season and gone down by 2+ turnovers a game in the playoffs. Two, we're not subpar in turnovers, we're well above average. We force more turnovers than we make, so our margin is top 5 in the league.

One - comparing per game numbers between the playoffs and the regular season is misleading and pretty much every team get their turnover rate down for the playoffs, i.e., that data de per se doesn't mean that turnovers stopped being a weakness (we'd need to run the numbers for other teams to see if the relative positioning improved).

  No, we go from being 15th or 16th out of the playoff teams in regular season to being 8th or 10th in the playoffs.

two - sure, I've never said we were subpar in turnover margin. But that only means we aren't as good as we could be, because there's no inverse correlation in turnover rate and opp. turnover rate.

  So you're claiming that our turnover rate makes it hard for us to be a good team even though we have one of the best turnover margins in the league?

[liam]

All the stats are skewed because of blowouts and The Celtics high shooting percentage( less offensive rebounds for the Celtics), good defense ( more misses more offensive rebounds for opponents)   among other things. I'm not a big stat guy. I think what ever works.

[nickagneta]

Are these numbers ideal. Hell no. But they aren't as bad as you and scoop have made it out to be.

Do you mind to point out where exactly have I made Wallace's numbers worse than what they are, please?

How about here:

Strange concept of dominance. On average, Sheed gives you less than 1 point per game scoring down low - 64% of them are assisted shots and there are a few putbacks and such as well.

As I already showed Sheed gets almost 4 PPG from within 15ft. Now I don't know about you but I don't consider only baskets made from within 1 foot of the basket as post or inside scoring. 7 footers taking turn around jumpers from within 8-15 feet or jump shots over smaller player from 6-10 feet are pure money in my book. Especially 7 footers with the shooting capacity of Sheed. So, yes, I think you are definitely making out Wallace's inside numbers to be worse than they are because you are using 82games.com's definition of inside and jump shots which I think is seriously flawed, especially when you compare them to the NBA.com's HotShots site. I say using HotSots shows that Wallace gets higher percentage of his points from inside or post moves. 3.68 points rather than 1 point.

When you only take 10% of your shots inside, you aren't playing a lot inside. 12 footer turnarounds don't qualify as inside shots.

Again, if you are judging inside shots like 82games.com as dunks or layups, then you are right. But in NBA.com's HotShots, those second tier of shots are from 3 to 15 feet. Unlike you, I am not going to assume that every shot in those sectors are shot from the outer 2-3 feet. And given that many, many, many post moves result in 4-5 foot hook shots, 4-10 foot turnaround jumpers, and other such moves that require a 7 foot man using his height, length, and jumping ability to shoot over people, are originated from the post, I would say most of those I've discussed from HotShots inner rings are inside moves.

Sure, I've also pointed out his efficiency will regress to the mean. The "pretty good looking" stuff is kind of subjective though - if he ends with numbers similar to the ones of his last seasons, say a .500 eFG% and a .520 TS%, they are bellow-par eff. numbers for a big man. But the poster I replied to wasn't framing the conversation in terms of what is it going to be, but in what it has been. And from that perspective, it's simply a matter of fact. Sheed isn't dominating in the post because he barely plays there, he hasn't been efficient because a big man with a .507 TS% is everything but efficient.

Can't argue with anything here other than the "in the post because barely plays there". He plays there all the time on the defensive side and more than you are crediting him for on the offensive.

[BballTim]

I can't believe the free pass Wallace gets.  Bloggers complain about the character of Nate Robinson, Lebron, Marbury, Iverson, etc.  But we have the biggest jerk in the league on our team- Rasheed.  And what a ballhog.  I just checked the per 48minute stats for shot attempts.  1.Wallace 20.5 attempts per 48min. 2. KG 17.7 attempts. 3. Ray 16.8 attempts 4. Paul 16.2 attempts per 48.  There is something seriously wrong with those numbers.  And it's not like Wallace is hitting them, he's just jacking them up.

  One of the bigger reasons that Rasheed takes more shots than the big three is that they usually play together so they have to split the available shots. Rahseed spends a bigger percentage of his time with one or none of them on the court.

  Without having seen tonight's game it seems that, with the other starters, Sheed is quite a bit less shot-happy than when he plays with the subs.