Why We Stink: The Numbers

[Celtics2021]

This is all fair, but there is something the averages don’t capture. The Cs perform well below their averages in the 4th quarter, and have a terrible record in games decided by fewer than five points. Something causes them to fade when the game is on the line. The easy answer is that they just get tight and make bad decisions, and I think in this case the easy answer is correct. But what to do to change that is a lot harder.

Does an experienced, intelligent PG help there?

I think it’s a depth issue.  To me they just look gassed at the end of games.  Tatum is 3rd in MPG this year.  Brown’s numbers are deflated a bit by his minutes restriction when he came back from his hamstring (too early), but if you exclude those 5 games between his absences, he’d be top 10 in minutes.  One option would be to play them a bit less, and I think that should happen, but the bench behind the top 8-9 has been very suspect this season, and we’ve played most games without 1-2 guys in the top 8-9, which causes us to give up a lot of points in a short time in the second quarter or late third quarter.

This has been an ongoing problem the last few seasons, and it continues this year.  We’re burning roster spots on guys who aren’t playable, so that when we predictably encounter an injury, we’re left with either running our top guys into the ground such that they have no legs at the end of the game, or giving them rest but setting minutes on fire in the middle of the game.  I don’t know if it’s ownership being cheap or management was obsessed with retaining as much value as they could out of the picks they made, or some synergy between those two problems.

I think our top 8 guys play well together and do some good things.  I’m willing to even include Romeo in there as the 9th man, when he’s truly the 9th man as opposed to a starter or the 6th man.  I just want them to be able get down to 32-33 minutes a game without giving up 8-10 extra points in those 3-4 minutes extra that they’re out.

We’ve got the trade exceptions and mid-sized deadweight expiring contract to get someone who could go in the top half our rotation.  I hope Brad wins the argument with ownership to be able to get that guy.

(Although yes, I think a vet PG would help specifically, and Patty Mills seemed to have been the C’s top free agent target this off-season, but that didn’t happen).

[PhoSita]

The team just needs more playmaking and shooting up and down the roster.  And if we're going to continue to have Tatum and Brown as the main guys, more of the supporting cast needs to be made up of guys with experience who set a tone on the floor along two dimensions: discipline and physicality.

You need more guys like Al Horford and Jae Crowder, in other words, and you need a starting point guard who can do a little bit of everything, with a particular emphasis on passing and spot-up shooting.

Last point, of course, is that the Celtics simply need to have their main guys (i.e. the top 4-6) healthy and available to play at the same time for many, many more minutes.  There's no way for a team to have success without continuity among the main guys, especially when you can't expect any one (or even two) of the main players to carry the team.

[Somebody]

I think it's the system and the players in it.

The system sucks. It's even worse than Brad's egalitarian system that morphed into a weird iso ball/three man weave system during Kyrie's tenure and beyond that inexplicably put the team's best players sitting in corners acting as decoys, while others of much lesser talent ran pick n roll and three man weaves.

Udoka's system has different ball movement but still tons of isos. The off ball movement either goes directly through the ball handlers direct path to the basket, clogging the lane, or is a simple run around an outside screen to receive a hand off pass with very little other off ball movement. It appears that the few pick n rolls they do are predicated upon the desired result being a Timelord alley oop.

There is no pick n pop. There is next to no off ball movement around screens along the baseline to open shots. There is way too much standing around acting as decoys. And there is zero interaction between the team's two best players in the half court whatsoever.

Also, why does this team play at such a slow pace? Where are the fast break points? Why with such young legs is this team not getting up court and into their offense before the defense can set? Why does this team not pass forward to advance the ball and simply relies on a main ball handler to slow jog the ball into the half court offense that clearly isn't working?

Fix these issues. It's easy for me to see the system sucks and isn't doing itself any favors with poor talent around the Jays. My word, get better surrounding talent around the Jays. Get a stretch 4 or 5 that can actually hit threes. Get one SG and one PG that can consistently hit threes. Get a veteran, playoff hardened PG to run this offense.

And then if Grant and Smart are still here, get Grant Williams 4-6 threes a game and limit Smart to 1-2 threes per game. Heck, limit Smart to 3-4 shots per game, his historically terrible shot selection and shot making has to be completely phased out of this offense if he is retained, which I don't think he will be.

My solution would be to bring in Mike D'Antoni in an offensive coordinator type role as assistant head coach. Have Brad do his best to get the aforementioned talent. And, by gosh, keep the Jays and get players around them that make them better. They are still only 23 and 25. They are still 4 and 2 years away from entering their primes.

If a basketball idiot like me can see these things, then the guys running this team have to see it too. Make the changes because offensively, as Roy said, we stink.

It's one thing to be an assistant to Steve Nash, it's a completely different thing to be an assistant to the likes of Ime Udoka. I would simply hire MDA to be our next head coach and bring in better iterations of Ime to keep the dressing room happy while giving the team some defensive solidity.

I thought D'Antoni was "advising" Willie Green in New Orleans. If he is willing to do that to a worse head coaching prospect than Udoka for a trash franchise like the Pelicans, I have to believe taking on a 2nd in charge coaching position to a much better head coaching prospect for an elite franchise like Boston could entice him.

But perhaps just hiring him is the right decision. Either way, I think his system would benefit this offense greatly.

He was, my bad. I would disagree with that opinion though - Udoka was terrible in his last two stops in an expanded role as the defensive coordinator of the 76ers and Nets:

Udoka in
2019-2020 76ers rDRTG: -1.6
2020-2021 Nets rDRTG: +1.5

Udoka out
2020-2021 76ers rDRTG: -4.7 (3 point improvement!)
2021-2022 Nets rDRTG: -2.5 (4 point improvement!)

Now it was impossible to gauge Willie Green before he became HC of the Pelicans, but there was at least no evidence of him tanking a team with his coaching (even though we only had Udoka's 76ers data this summer, that's still a concerning black mark to me).

[blink]

I think it's the system and the players in it.

The system sucks. It's even worse than Brad's egalitarian system that morphed into a weird iso ball/three man weave system during Kyrie's tenure and beyond that inexplicably put the team's best players sitting in corners acting as decoys, while others of much lesser talent ran pick n roll and three man weaves.

Udoka's system has different ball movement but still tons of isos. The off ball movement either goes directly through the ball handlers direct path to the basket, clogging the lane, or is a simple run around an outside screen to receive a hand off pass with very little other off ball movement. It appears that the few pick n rolls they do are predicated upon the desired result being a Timelord alley oop.

There is no pick n pop. There is next to no off ball movement around screens along the baseline to open shots. There is way too much standing around acting as decoys. And there is zero interaction between the team's two best players in the half court whatsoever.

Also, why does this team play at such a slow pace? Where are the fast break points? Why with such young legs is this team not getting up court and into their offense before the defense can set? Why does this team not pass forward to advance the ball and simply relies on a main ball handler to slow jog the ball into the half court offense that clearly isn't working?

Fix these issues. It's easy for me to see the system sucks and isn't doing itself any favors with poor talent around the Jays. My word, get better surrounding talent around the Jays. Get a stretch 4 or 5 that can actually hit threes. Get one SG and one PG that can consistently hit threes. Get a veteran, playoff hardened PG to run this offense.

And then if Grant and Smart are still here, get Grant Williams 4-6 threes a game and limit Smart to 1-2 threes per game. Heck, limit Smart to 3-4 shots per game, his historically terrible shot selection and shot making has to be completely phased out of this offense if he is retained, which I don't think he will be.

My solution would be to bring in Mike D'Antoni in an offensive coordinator type role as assistant head coach. Have Brad do his best to get the aforementioned talent. And, by gosh, keep the Jays and get players around them that make them better. They are still only 23 and 25. They are still 4 and 2 years away from entering their primes.

If a basketball idiot like me can see these things, then the guys running this team have to see it too. Make the changes because offensively, as Roy said, we stink.

Pace seems to be a huge deal to me.  When we have three of the better players at attacking in transition: Jaylen, JT, and Timelord, why aren't we pushing the ball more?  Even big Al is decent pushing the ball sometimes.  Last night was a good example, Jaylen absolutely thrives with the quicker pace, not allowing the def to get set.  He was basically pushing the pace himself whenever he had a chance last night.  Timelord is also a great rim runner who can clean up transition drives to the rim.  It is like we have these great qualities / abilities on our team, but we don't utilize them very well.  We have to play to the strengths of our team.  A point guard like Lonzo Ball would probably be great for this.  Good def player, long, skilled with the ball, great passer, fast, good in transition.

Roy has shown pretty clearly how poor of an offensive team we are, and it is especially true in the 1/2 court.  We don't have enough consistent 3 point shooting, and our offense is just bad.  We have the type of team that could pressure the ball more, force the tempo, get us more transition attempts.  Why don't we do that?  One reason might be we don't have enough other good players right now.  If we are going to play with more pace it takes more out of the players and they can't play as many minutes, you need to run 10 deep and be confident with your bench.  That has obviously been an issue this year.

[Celtics2021]

I think it's the system and the players in it.

The system sucks. It's even worse than Brad's egalitarian system that morphed into a weird iso ball/three man weave system during Kyrie's tenure and beyond that inexplicably put the team's best players sitting in corners acting as decoys, while others of much lesser talent ran pick n roll and three man weaves.

Udoka's system has different ball movement but still tons of isos. The off ball movement either goes directly through the ball handlers direct path to the basket, clogging the lane, or is a simple run around an outside screen to receive a hand off pass with very little other off ball movement. It appears that the few pick n rolls they do are predicated upon the desired result being a Timelord alley oop.

There is no pick n pop. There is next to no off ball movement around screens along the baseline to open shots. There is way too much standing around acting as decoys. And there is zero interaction between the team's two best players in the half court whatsoever.

Also, why does this team play at such a slow pace? Where are the fast break points? Why with such young legs is this team not getting up court and into their offense before the defense can set? Why does this team not pass forward to advance the ball and simply relies on a main ball handler to slow jog the ball into the half court offense that clearly isn't working?

Fix these issues. It's easy for me to see the system sucks and isn't doing itself any favors with poor talent around the Jays. My word, get better surrounding talent around the Jays. Get a stretch 4 or 5 that can actually hit threes. Get one SG and one PG that can consistently hit threes. Get a veteran, playoff hardened PG to run this offense.

And then if Grant and Smart are still here, get Grant Williams 4-6 threes a game and limit Smart to 1-2 threes per game. Heck, limit Smart to 3-4 shots per game, his historically terrible shot selection and shot making has to be completely phased out of this offense if he is retained, which I don't think he will be.

My solution would be to bring in Mike D'Antoni in an offensive coordinator type role as assistant head coach. Have Brad do his best to get the aforementioned talent. And, by gosh, keep the Jays and get players around them that make them better. They are still only 23 and 25. They are still 4 and 2 years away from entering their primes.

If a basketball idiot like me can see these things, then the guys running this team have to see it too. Make the changes because offensively, as Roy said, we stink.

It's one thing to be an assistant to Steve Nash, it's a completely different thing to be an assistant to the likes of Ime Udoka. I would simply hire MDA to be our next head coach and bring in better iterations of Ime to keep the dressing room happy while giving the team some defensive solidity.

I thought D'Antoni was "advising" Willie Green in New Orleans. If he is willing to do that to a worse head coaching prospect than Udoka for a trash franchise like the Pelicans, I have to believe taking on a 2nd in charge coaching position to a much better head coaching prospect for an elite franchise like Boston could entice him.

But perhaps just hiring him is the right decision. Either way, I think his system would benefit this offense greatly.

He was, my bad. I would disagree with that opinion though - Udoka was terrible in his last two stops in an expanded role as the defensive coordinator of the 76ers and Nets:

Udoka in
2019-2020 76ers rDRTG: -1.6
2020-2021 Nets rDRTG: +1.5

Udoka out
2020-2021 76ers rDRTG: -4.7 (3 point improvement!)
2021-2022 Nets rDRTG: -2.5 (4 point improvement!)

Now it was impossible to gauge Willie Green before he became HC of the Pelicans, but there was at least no evidence of him tanking a team with his coaching (even though we only had Udoka's 76ers data this summer, that's still a concerning black mark to me).

While those numbers are true, it doesn't account for the fact that only 4 of the Nets top 10 players in minutes last year have played for them this year.  Further, the players that are out of the lineup this year had 5 of the 6 worst individual D-Ratings last year of that group of 10, and the only player who had a bottom 6 D-rating that has been in this year's lineup was Joe Harris, who went from leading the Nets in minutes last year to being 8th this year.  The Nets this year have a lot of different personnel, especially from a full-year perspective given the amount of roster movement that went on last season.  It's really too different a team to make a comparison too.

Also, the Celtics defense isn't the problem.  It's the offense.  The C's defense has improved from last year, and if we cut out the first two weeks of the season, it has improved dramatically (top 5 since the Bulls meltdown).

I'm not sold on Ime, personally, but your argument based on limited data that should require a ton of caveats doesn't say much one way or the other.

[Roy H.]

Why don't we do that?

Assuming the answer simply isn't "poor coaching", my guess would be:

1.  Ime is trying to get the team to buy into defensive principles, which are easier to apply at a slower pace; and

2.  The rotation is pretty shallow.  Should Ime expand it?  Probably.  But, since we're only going with 9 guys or so, running isn't always realistic.  It will completely gas our guys).

Numbers I'm too busy to look at:  have minutes gone up?  Could fatigue be one of the reasons that guys are missing more?

[blink]

Why don't we do that?

Assuming the answer simply isn't "poor coaching", my guess would be:

1.  Ime is trying to get the team to buy into defensive principles, which are easier to apply at a slower pace; and

2.  The rotation is pretty shallow.  Should Ime expand it?  Probably.  But, since we're only going with 9 guys or so, running isn't always realistic.  It will completely gas our guys).

Numbers I'm too busy to look at:  have minutes gone up?  Could fatigue be one of the reasons that guys are missing more?

Yeah I went back and edited my post, and kind of answered  #2 myself in the same way.  We just don't have a 2nd team that can pull that off.  But our starters seem like they could, maybe without Smart and another PG...not sure.

[Who]

Also, the Celtics defense isn't the problem.  It's the offense.

The dude is sacrificing the offense to put defense-first lineups on the floor. It is Udoka's defense-first mentality that is making our offense unwatchable.

[Goldstar88]

Why don't we do that?

Assuming the answer simply isn't "poor coaching", my guess would be:

1.  Ime is trying to get the team to buy into defensive principles, which are easier to apply at a slower pace; and

2.  The rotation is pretty shallow.  Should Ime expand it?  Probably.  But, since we're only going with 9 guys or so, running isn't always realistic.  It will completely gas our guys).

Numbers I'm too busy to look at:  have minutes gone up?  Could fatigue be one of the reasons that guys are missing more?

The defense hasn’t been the issue for a while now. I feel like the only time this team looked OK was when the rotation was shorter and the team was taking less 3’s. Smart, Brown, Tatum, Horford, Timelord is a solid starting lineup with Schroder, Richardson, Romeo and Grant coming off the bench. Even with all of those guys playing, this team just doesn’t look right offensively. The shooting from 3pt has been poor since pre-season. It’s just who they are.

[Csfan1984]

A team struggling to score that walks the ball up too often. That's on Ime to have guys push it. Whenever this team gets a lead above 6pts they turn on the brakes and milk the clock losing all its momentum.

[Who]

Smart is too darn slow at PG. One of the slowest PGs in the league. Terrible push-man on the break.

Then we play two big lineups with plodders like Horford or Grant Williams at forward who are often at a quickness disadvantage.

[Csfan1984]

Smart is too darn slow at PG. One of the slowest PGs in the league. Terrible push-man on the break.

Then we play two big lineups with plodders like Horford or Grant Williams at forward who are often at a quickness disadvantage.

Agree. Only tine Smart races up is to jack up early threes on the shot clock.

I don't mind Grant at PF only, and in certain match ups, and always off the bench. Covid makes that hard at times. We need Tatum at PF because he struggles to drive past quick defenders.

[Neurotic Guy]

A team struggling to score that walks the ball up too often. That's on Ime to have guys push it. Whenever this team gets a lead above 6pts they turn on the brakes and milk the clock losing all its momentum.

Aside from being a team determined to shoot lots of 3s when they shoot 3s poorly, the other factor is this inability to sustain an aggressive mentality. They can get up by 6 or 10 or more and then just stall. No lead feels comfortable with this team. Also, similar things happen when they make comebacks — they’ll get to a tie or a small lead and then revert to slow down. These factors along with an inability to gut out tough wins leave me wondering about what’s happening in the collective head/heart of this team.  It’s frustrating to watch.

[Who]

NBA teams don't know how to run fastbreaks anymore. All they do is clear the way spotting up for 3s either for a ball-handler to go coast to coast or to get a kickout.

Guys don't know how to fill a lane and get layups & dunks anymore.

It is so nice watching games from 10+ years ago and watching teams who know how to run a break. We need Don Nelson to come back and be a consultant. Teach guys how to run a break.

[RodyTur10]

Smart is too darn slow at PG. One of the slowest PGs in the league. Terrible push-man on the break.

Then we play two big lineups with plodders like Horford or Grant Williams at forward who are often at a quickness disadvantage.

Agree. Only tine Smart races up is to jack up early threes on the shot clock.

I don't mind Grant at PF only, and in certain match ups, and always off the bench. Covid makes that hard at times. We need Tatum at PF because he struggles to drive past quick defenders.

This might be slighty off-topic, but I have the same observation (TP). Tatum is not that great at taking advantage of smaller players who are good defenders (examples: Lowry, Holiday, Beverley). But against average athletic forwards or bigs he looks better. Tatum at PF and Timelord at C are the positions I'm most confident in as a recipe for future success.

I'm off of the 2-big-line-up. That's not working for the Celtics. Horford should be the back-up center as an anchor for the second unit.