Last Year to This Year -- What Changed?

[GreenCoffeeBean]

Despite the fact that Theis and Fournier both play in the NBA, Theis is not in the same league as Fournier. People around here drastically overrate Theis. We had no better options at Center and he worked ok in Brad’s system. He isn’t and should not be a starter.

[PhoSita]

Despite the fact that Theis and Fournier both play in the NBA, Theis is not in the same league as Fournier. People around here drastically overrate Theis. We had no better options at Center and he worked ok in Brad’s system. He isn’t and should not be a starter.

I mean, there are hundreds of minutes at the NBA level in which Theis performed very well and the team around him also performed very well with him as a starter.

If that doesn't equate to "NBA starter" I'm not sure what does.

[gouki88]

I think people have unrealistic views of the talent level of this team.
Theis who was somewhere in the 3-5 best player on our team range returned laughable haul at the trade deadline and he was on very team friendly contract.

It was a last second trade made to avoid the luxury tax, and the other team knew. Never gonna get a fair value return in that situation.

Theis was also a FA after the season. You never get near full value for a player who may well end up being a rental.

We got Fournier for two second-rounders. Didn't have much to do with his production.

So that means we overpaid for Fournier - he is also a FA and makes $12M more than Theis while being an average to below average starter like Theis (though at a more in demand position)

Anyway my point was that our talent level is not as good as most think. 3-5th best player on ORL brings in 2 second rounders while being overpaid // 3-5th best player on BOS (while being underpaid) brings in 2 tall guys with cool names.
Orlando is pretty bad this year and has been average for a while prior to this season ... while we are supposed to be a talented team.

I wish more below average starters averaged 19/4/3 on good efficiency

[PhoSita]

https://twitter.com/statmuse/status/1377288261933002753?s=19

Seems relevant.

Lotta teams have opted not to try as hard on defense this year.

[Moranis]

I think some of it was Boston has been playing above its station for awhile, so there is some regression to the mean.  Boston doesn't really have the talent to be a 3 ECF in 4 year type team.  That said, I do think a bigger reason is quite simply the Eastern Conference is a lot deeper and better than it has been in years past.  There are 3 teams that can legitimately win the title (last year there really was only Milwaukee).  After those 3 teams there are 3 teams, that if everything broke well with match-ups and what not could make the ECF (Bos, Ind, Mia - yes even indiana despite their worse start than boston).  But the real difference is the handful of teams in the middle.  They are just flat out better than their equivalent teams of the last few years (Atl, Cha, NY), plus you still have teams that have talent that haven't quite put it together this year (Tor, Was).  The Cavs and Bulls are very young, but talented, so they can have games where they look awesome even if they can't string it together for very long.  The Magic have (or had) a lot of veteran depth.  Detroit really is the only truly bad team in the conference and even they have Grant who can have a monster game.  When the competition improves, even if you get better, you can sometimes have lesser results.  And Boston isn't actually better so of course when everyone around you gets better you are going to look a lot worse.

"They were never actually that good and everybody else got better while they got a bit worse" doesn't come close to explaining an almost complete reversal in terms of what the team was actually good at.

We have several years of evidence that the Celtics are an elite defensive team.  The roster has changed a lot over the last few years, but the consistent characteristic of this team is that they've been a top 5-10 defense.
 Most people assumed that with Kemba missing time, the Celts would still be very good on defense (maybe a little better), but that they would struggle to score.

Instead, the Celts are a bit worse offensively, as you would expect, but not as bad as many feared.  On defense, they've gone from elite to just plain bad.

"They were pretenders from the start" is an explanation that requires one to assume that multiple seasons of evidence really meant nothing. 

The question then would be "Well how did they play so far above their talent level in the past, if they aren't able to do so now?"

Because Boston's defense was buoyed by a lot of bad teams.  They were still a good defensive team in the playoffs against the better teams, but they were also weren't nearly as good.  Which of course makes sense, but it does on some level show that the team really wasn't a top 5 defensive team.  Couple that with pretty strong health over the course of most regular seasons and they could inflate their defensive metrics a fair amount over other teams.  This year, injuries have hit the team more and the rest of the conference is just flat out better as Boston has gotten worse.  You can't just keep losing players and not replace them at all, or replace them with lesser players, and it not affect the team, especially as the team doesn't have nearly as good of health as it has had in years past.

[liam]

I didn't see it mentioned but another factor I didn't think of is that Nets super team. That's got to fluster a young team that thought that it had a chance at the finals. To see that team just stacked with talent, maybe not consciously but unconsciously on some level that could be discouraging. I still think this team could make some noise in the playoffs if healthy but the players have to believe it as well.

[PhoSita]

Because Boston's defense was buoyed by a lot of bad teams.  They were still a good defensive team in the playoffs against the better teams, but they were also weren't nearly as good. 

The Celtics had the best DRTG in the playoffs last year.

Actually, the Celts DRTG was better by about 1 point per 100 possessions in the playoffs than it was in the regular season.

Also, a sampling of their defensive performance against some good teams last year:

- Denver averaged 95.5 points in 2 games
- Philadelphia averaged 106.5 points in 4 games
- Miami averaged 102 points in 3 games
- Lakers averaged 110 points in 2 games
- Mavericks (#1 ORTG in league history last year) averaged 104.5 points in 2 games


There are other examples of teams that lit the Celtics up (San Antonio, for one).  But it's just not true that they were clearly worse defensively against good teams.


The bottom line is there just isn't any good evidence for your "they were actually this bad all along" argument.  I guess there's no one thing I can point to and say definitively that your assertion has been disproven, but you have to basically choose to disregard several years of evidence that the Celtics have, in fact, been very good.  Especially on defense.

[gouki88]

Because Boston's defense was buoyed by a lot of bad teams.  They were still a good defensive team in the playoffs against the better teams, but they were also weren't nearly as good. 

The Celtics had the best DRTG in the playoffs last year.

Actually, the Celts DRTG was better by about 1 point per 100 possessions in the playoffs than it was in the regular season.

Also, a sampling of their defensive performance against some good teams last year:

- Denver averaged 95.5 points in 2 games
- Philadelphia averaged 106.5 points in 4 games
- Miami averaged 102 points in 3 games
- Lakers averaged 110 points in 2 games
- Mavericks (#1 ORTG in league history last year) averaged 104.5 points in 2 games


There are other examples of teams that lit the Celtics up (San Antonio, for one).  But it's just not true that they were clearly worse defensively against good teams.


The bottom line is there just isn't any good evidence for your "they were actually this bad all along" argument.  I guess there's no one thing I can point to and say definitively that your assertion has been disproven, but you have to basically choose to disregard several years of evidence that the Celtics have, in fact, been very good.  Especially on defense.

Of course there isn't. It's a ridiculously contrarian talking point

[Moranis]

Because Boston's defense was buoyed by a lot of bad teams.  They were still a good defensive team in the playoffs against the better teams, but they were also weren't nearly as good. 

The Celtics had the best DRTG in the playoffs last year.

Actually, the Celts DRTG was better by about 1 point per 100 possessions in the playoffs than it was in the regular season.

Also, a sampling of their defensive performance against some good teams last year:

- Denver averaged 95.5 points in 2 games
- Philadelphia averaged 106.5 points in 4 games
- Miami averaged 102 points in 3 games
- Lakers averaged 110 points in 2 games
- Mavericks (#1 ORTG in league history last year) averaged 104.5 points in 2 games


There are other examples of teams that lit the Celtics up (San Antonio, for one).  But it's just not true that they were clearly worse defensively against good teams.


The bottom line is there just isn't any good evidence for your "they were actually this bad all along" argument.  I guess there's no one thing I can point to and say definitively that your assertion has been disproven, but you have to basically choose to disregard several years of evidence that the Celtics have, in fact, been very good.  Especially on defense.

Of course there isn't. It's a ridiculously contrarian talking point

I never said they were bad though.  I said they were generally healthy playing in a fairly weak conference, which inflated their statistical position.  Much like their offense.  Health and weak opponents makes things look easier.  I do think they are better defensively then they have shown this year though, but they haven't been healthy and the conference is better so the lack of health is more pronounced.  They have lost some solid defenders through the years, but last year I think they were more reasonably the a top 10 defense and this year when healthy I think they are probably a top 15 defense.  I think a lot of the shift though is a combination of health and the conference getting better, but obviously losing Hayward hurts a great deal as well (and honestly lesser players like Wanamaker are quite simply better defenders than Teague or Pritchard).  Hayward was not only a + defender, but it also meant the team didn't have to play as much of the crappy weak bench that has played this year.  So it is a myriad of factors, but to me the biggest one is the team was mostly healthy playing in a weak conference and neither of those is the case this year.

[PhoSita]

I never said they were bad though.  I said they were generally healthy playing in a fairly weak conference, which inflated their statistical position.

Can you provide evidence of this assertion?  Because I haven't seen any.

[Muzzy66]

Surely anybody watching this team can see that they have been very different this season vs last season. 

People will blame the talent on the roster, but I think it's mostly mental/attitude.  There's no physicality or intensity on the defensive end.  There is no indication of trust or sacrifice on the offensive end.  It feels like a textbook example of a scenario where everybody seems to care more about making themselves look good then they do about actually winning games.

To make matters worse, everybody just seems so...indifferent.  When the team gets blown out by garbage teams (which is happening far too regularly) most the guys just have that look of "oh well, next time".  People don't seem to care anywhere near as much as they should.

It all feels so unnatural.  This is the Boston Celtics.  Admittedly I'm pretty new to this team, I've only been a big fan since the mid/late 2000's.  In the 15 or so years that have passed since then I've seen some fairly bad Celtics teams - but in all that time, no matter how weak the rosters may have been, the one thing that you could always bank on was that they PLAYED HARD. 

Even when they had limited talent the Celtics were always that gritty team that opposing teams hated to play because they just went out and gave it 120% every night, and nothing would come easy. 

I really think this is the first time I've sat here and had to cite "lack of effort / caring" as a reason to be critical of a Celtics team, and that is...sad.

[Moranis]

I never said they were bad though.  I said they were generally healthy playing in a fairly weak conference, which inflated their statistical position.

Can you provide evidence of this assertion?  Because I haven't seen any.

For what assertion, that the East was weak or that Boston was generally healthy.  I mean they played 72 games last year and Hayward was the only regular rotation player that missed a quarter of the games (and he was slightly over that).  That isn't that many missed games on the whole.  Whereas the Raptors only had a couple play at least 75% of the games.  The Pacers had a lot more injury missed games.  The Heat missed more games (frankly but for Butler's injury they were probably the 2 seed and their finals run doesn't seem as odd).  Obviously Embiid and Simmons both missed a ton of games for the Sixers (as did Richardson).  Basically only the Bucks (the top rated defense) was healthier than Boston last year at least among the East playoff teams (well I suppose the Nets were if you don't count Irving).  Health matters.  This year, Boston is far more banged up and even guys that are still playing like Tatum (covid) and Brown (knee) are playing hurt a lot. 

Defense is about grinding and if you are injured, you aren't going to grind as much.  Add to that, the teams you play more often are just better, including some significantly better (BKN, PHI) and it shouldn't be a surprise at all that the team is worse, especially when you lose a very strong defender from your starting 5 and don't replace him at all. 

[Muzzy66]

As for the reason for the lack of energy...I suspect it's a variety of things.

One.  In the past the Celtics always had a number of "intense" players on the roster.  Guys like Bradley, Rondo, Rozier, Perk, KG, Pierce, Big Baby, Isaiah, Marcus Morris, Pietrus, Crowder, Smart.   All of these are all guys who really got in to the moment - they either energised with their passion/emotion or with their pure effort/hustle.  With guys like that on the roster the intensity levels were always high.  As of late Danny and Brad seem obsessed with bringing in nice, polite, clear headed guys who won't cause problems.  That's good in a way, but it also has it's downside because right now Smart is pretty much the only guy on the team seems to play with any type of passion or intensity. 

Two. Up till now Tatum and Brown were young guys, still eager and hungry to perform in order to try and prove their talent.  Now both guys are all-stars and it almost feels like they are settling a bit into that mentality of "I'm a star now and have my rep so I don't need to work as hard".  I could be wrong on that, that's just how it feels.  I don't feel either Tatum or Brown is playing defence with the same type of effort they played with last year, and they both seem to settle to often on what they can get easy rather then fighting hard to get the best shot possible.  That could have something to do with the overall lack of scoring help that they have available, but it's still a bit concerning.

Three.  Sorry, but I really can't help but put some of the blame on coach Stevens.  I know people love him, but from where I stand it seems that guys on the team just aren't being held accountable for the way they are playing.  When Doc was here he didn't care - he would bench his biggest star player if they weren't playing hard and bring in somebody who would.  Guys knew that, and it gave them the motivation to play hard so they can stay on the court.  Now under Stevens it feels like there is no repercussion for guys who play recklessly, selfishly or lazy.  Brad won't bench them, he wont chastise them, he won't do anything.  I think that's gradually building an  "don't really give a poop" culture.

Add to that, the teams you play more often are just better, including some significantly better (BKN, PHI) and it shouldn't be a surprise at all that the team is worse, especially when you lose a very strong defender from your starting 5 and don't replace him at all.

That's not the issue though, because the big frustration (at least to me) is not from Boston losing to good teams.  I'm fine with them losing to good teams if they give it all they have.

The issue is losing to bottom 10 teams by 10/15/20 points over, and over, and over again.  They are getting blown out by teams that are downright garbage.  There's no excuse for that other then simply lack of effort. 

[liam]

As for the reason for the lack of energy...I suspect it's a variety of things.

One.  In the past the Celtics always had a number of "intense" players on the roster.  Guys like Bradley, Rondo, Rozier, Perk, KG, Pierce, Big Baby, Isaiah, Marcus Morris, Pietrus, Crowder, Smart.   All of these are all guys who really got in to the moment - they either energised with their passion/emotion or with their pure effort/hustle.  With guys like that on the roster the intensity levels were always high.  As of late Danny and Brad seem obsessed with bringing in nice, polite, clear headed guys who won't cause problems.  That's good in a way, but it also has it's downside because right now Smart is pretty much the only guy on the team seems to play with any type of passion or intensity. 

Two. Up till now Tatum and Brown were young guys, still eager and hungry to perform in order to try and prove their talent.  Now both guys are all-stars and it almost feels like they are settling a bit into that mentality of "I'm a star now and have my rep so I don't need to work as hard".  I could be wrong on that, that's just how it feels.  I don't feel either Tatum or Brown is playing defence with the same type of effort they played with last year, and they both seem to settle to often on what they can get easy rather then fighting hard to get the best shot possible.  That could have something to do with the overall lack of scoring help that they have available, but it's still a bit concerning.

Three.  Sorry, but I really can't help but put some of the blame on coach Stevens.  I know people love him, but from where I stand it seems that guys on the team just aren't being held accountable for the way they are playing.  When Doc was here he didn't care - he would bench his biggest star player if they weren't playing hard and bring in somebody who would.  Guys knew that, and it gave them the motivation to play hard so they can stay on the court.  Now under Stevens it feels like there is no repercussion for guys who play recklessly, selfishly or lazy.  Brad won't bench them, he wont chastise them, he won't do anything.  I think that's gradually building an  "don't really give a poop" culture.

Add to that, the teams you play more often are just better, including some significantly better (BKN, PHI) and it shouldn't be a surprise at all that the team is worse, especially when you lose a very strong defender from your starting 5 and don't replace him at all.

That's not the issue though, because the big frustration (at least to me) is not from Boston losing to good teams.  I'm fine with them losing to good teams if they give it all they have.

The issue is losing to bottom 10 teams by 10/15/20 points over, and over, and over again.  They are getting blown out by teams that are downright garbage.  There's no excuse for that other then simply lack of effort.

You're right. Coach has to use time as the carrot and the stick but Brad just keeps riding his guys. Shots aren't falling but Nesmith gets one shot. Pritchard goes 2-4. Fournier who you brought in for shooting was 3-6.

[ozgod]

OK, I took a look at lineup data from this season and last to see if it would shed any light.

2021 Regular Season

First off, small sample sizes here because the team has used so many lineups.

Only three lineups have been used for more than 48 minutes.  The top lineup has played 131 minutes, the second lineup has played 95 minutes, the third lineup has played 79.

The top two lineups are double-big groups with Theis and Thompson.  The only difference between them is that the top lineup has Kemba Walker and the second lineup has Marcus Smart.

The Walker lineup has a net rating of +4, while the Smart lineup has a net rating of -4.3. 

Interestingly, the Walker 2-big lineup has a DRTG of 114 (not great), while the Smart 2-big lineup has a DRTG of 117.2 (putrid).  So the top lineup with Smart in place of Walker has actually been a lot worse defensively.  Not sure what to make of that.  Maybe it goes back to the speed issue.  The Smart lineup is also much worse on offense, which is probably down to a severe lack of passing / ball-handling.

Third most used lineup is the primary lineup from the playoffs last year: Walker, Smart, Brown, Tatum, Theis.  That group has played 79 minutes together in just 7 games.  I remember the hope earlier in the season was that this group would be the savior of the team once they had the chance to play together more.  However, that group only has a net rating of +2.7.  That group scored like gangbusters (122.2 ORTG), but gave up 119.5 points per 100, which is, uh, not good.

There are two other lineups with really good ratings, but they have only played about 40 minutes together over 7-8 games.  Super small sample.  One is a lineup with the main guys and Semi instead of Smart -- that group has a 82.2 DRTG in 41 minutes, which is nuts.  The other group is a super small lineup with Pritchard and Teague in the backcourt, Timelord at center, and Tatum / Semi on the wing.  That group has an insane 143.3 ORTG and probably played exclusively against 2nd and 3rd string opponents.

I don't know if you can really read anything into those last two given the small sample and the fact that they probably came mostly against backups.

2020 Regular Season

You've got 4 lineups that played a significant chunk of minutes (approx 150+ minutes in 15+ games).  The three top lineups, notably, all feature Gordon Hayward.  Two of the lineups have a net rating in the positive double digits. 

The top lineup is the guys you'd expect: Hayward, Tatum, Brown, Walker, Theis.  That group had a 115.9 ORTG and a 105.3 DRTG. That was the lineup we hoped to see crush it in the playoffs, but they never had the chance.

The second most used lineup had Smart in place of Hayward, and that lineup was just as good defensively but had a 107.7 ORTG, so the net rating was just barely in the positive.

The third lineup had Hayward, Walker, Smart, Tatum, and Theis -- that group was +13.4 with a crazy good 95.0 DRTG in 173 minutes. 

2020 Playoffs

One lineup and one lineup only with a real sample size: 253 minutes over 17 games of Walker, Smart, Brown, Tatum, and Theis.  That group was +3.5, with a 106.9 ORTG and a 103.4 DRTG.

That doesn't seem so impressive (it's a smaller net rating than the top lineup so far this season), but it's important to remember that sample is exclusively against three straight elite defensive opponents in a playoff setting.

Remember also, that same lineup this season posted a 119.5 DRTG.  There you see the conundrum: even when the same players have shared the court, the defensive result has been very different.


Takeaways:

- In the last couple of seasons, the times when this team has really consistently housed opponents is when they had three wings on the floor who could drive, catch-and-shoot, and pull-up at a high to elite level.  Another characteristic is that the team has been best when they have one player (and only one) who can pressure the rim by rolling / catching lobs etc.  This season, they haven't had the personnel to put out a lineup like that, and they've played a lot with multiple traditional bigs.

- Kemba is consistently part of the best lineups this team puts on the floor. I think that suggests that having a very good ball-handler with the ability to pull up from anywhere is a more important and valuable piece to have on the floor than many here seem to think.  The team seems to do pretty badly when the main guard out there is Smart, and not just this season.

- You've got to hope that Fournier can give you some of what Hayward did, at least offensively, and that a lineup featuring the Jays, Fournier, Kemba, and Rob Williams can really put up numbers on offense.  Defensively, I doubt that group will get many stops.  But if they have a 125+ ORTG, it may not matter against all but the best opponents.

- I'm also newly concerned that the team traded Theis.  He was consistently a part of the best lineups this team put on the floor since Horford left.  I understand why they did it: Rob Williams is part of the future, the team probably couldn't afford to keep Theis, and trading Thompson would have been too difficult given the time frame of working out a deal.  Still, Theis was a part of the core group that had actually had success recently, whereas Rob Williams has yet to have a really big game in a key spot against a good opponent.  I think trading Theis decidedly makes the team worse this season and will probably be felt in the playoffs.



Bottom line -- if your team doesn't have at least one go-to 5 man unit that has posted excellent results over a significant sample, you probably have no chance of going far in the playoffs.  All of the good teams have at least one really good lineup they can lean on.

TP for great analysis, Pho. I agree 100% about Theis, he was a very underrated player but he did all the things that most fans don't notice, and he marshalled our defense. That's going to be felt.

Another thing I noticed, and I'm not sure how to quantitatively measure this, but we seem to have lost the ability to win ugly. We've become the epitome of a make-miss 3 point team. I looked at our game logs this year, we didn't have a single game that we won where we shot 30% or less from 3, and we only won one game where we shot 33% or less. Last year we won 6 regular season games where we shot 30% or worse from 3, and 12 games where we shot 33% or worse. In fact the deciding game against Toronto we won despite shooting 40% from the floor and 23% from 3 but we found a way to win because we defended and made them shoot worse than us. (I looked at that Toronto series because Hayward wasn't there for it and I wanted to see what we were doing different than this year.)

And I was also thinking about opponent 3s this year vs last - an additional thing I'd be interested to know is if there's a correlation this year between us shooting poorly from 3 and the other team shooting well, which might suggest that our defense is getting affected by our missing shots, which Brad alluded to in his post game interview. That would provide a possibly hypothesis for the fact that teams are shooting much higher 3 pt % this year against us than last year. Because anecdotally a lot of those 3s seem to be open shots, it's the result of slow rotations and poor closeouts (they always seem to be scrambling and flying around when people drive the ball and kick it out). Now as to the reason for those, who knows if it's poor technique, timing or lack of effort. I think it's the former two - but it would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between them shooting poorly from 3 and consequently giving up a lot of open 3s to the opposition.