Why We Stink: The Numbers

[Chef Parish]

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.

I think the same thing evertime I watch games now

[pokeKingCurtis]

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.

You know what, between this post and an article on celticsblog, I'm wondering if the coach should get the team more focused on the midrange

Jaylen is a midrange beast, Al is automatic. Tatum I think he forgot how to shoot from mid, but was good before. Smart has a lot of nifty finishes from mid range.

Not sure if anybody emphasizes the mid range that much now though. Maybe the Spurs with Demar and Aldridge, maybe Kawhii Leonard teams?

[mr. dee]

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.

You know what, between this post and an article on celticsblog, I'm wondering if the coach should get the team more focused on the midrange

Jaylen is a midrange beast, Al is automatic. Tatum I think he forgot how to shoot from mid, but was good before. Smart has a lot of nifty finishes from mid range.

Not sure if anybody emphasizes the mid range that much now though. Maybe the Spurs with Demar and Aldridge, maybe Kawhii Leonard teams?

I have a feeling JB would thrive on a team that have some ounce of Triangle on their playbook. His game reminds me of MJ and Kobe.

[pokeKingCurtis]

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.

You know what, between this post and an article on celticsblog, I'm wondering if the coach should get the team more focused on the midrange

Jaylen is a midrange beast, Al is automatic. Tatum I think he forgot how to shoot from mid, but was good before. Smart has a lot of nifty finishes from mid range.

Not sure if anybody emphasizes the mid range that much now though. Maybe the Spurs with Demar and Aldridge, maybe Kawhii Leonard teams?

I have a feeling JB would thrive on a team that have some ounce of Triangle on their playbook. His game reminds me of MJ and Kobe.

I think last year JB had a monster year efficiency-wise just shooting a bunch of mid range shots?

[Kiorrik]

3PT%:  24th
3PAs:  9th
TS%:  23rd
eFG%: 24th
2PT%: 20th
Assists:  24th

lol - this made me think. If you're that bad at shooting, aren't you just bad at basketball? :]

[SHAQATTACK]

3PT%:  24th
3PAs:  9th
TS%:  23rd
eFG%: 24th
2PT%: 20th
Assists:  24th

lol - this made me think. If you're that bad at shooting, aren't you just bad at basketball? :]

Yeah I think the main idea is having to put the ball in basket .  Celtics have sucked since IT was great at scoring in his prime.   Danny was cheap skate ,  scoring costs more money than defense . 

[#1P4P]

Those stats paint a picture of this team being not good enough offensively, but we’re in most games goii is my into the 4th quarter.

The stat that displays this team’s struggles is the 4th quarter Net Rating. Only the Nuggets are worse, they’re only one game above .500 despite Jokic having another all time great MVP season.

A top NBA team has to be elite at closing out games unless they’re dominating teams pre-4th like the Nets. I’ve pointed this out in the past, Tatum nor Brown just aren’t there yet to takeover the 4th. Schroder and Smart don’t have the BB IQ to make the right play reliably (which is why Udoka went to an either/or closing lineup).

My suggestion has been to run our offense through Al in the 4th like the 2018 playoffs. Until then, these 4th quarter woes are going to stick.

[Irish Stew]

Since our offense is based on the three, which we don't shoot very well, and you have to start somewhere, how about a deal centered around Hield for Smart when it becomes legal?

[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).

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.

And I could say the same for our personnel: we have acquired an excellent defender in Horford while the growth Robert Williams has made our interior defence skyrocket (not to mention the addition of Josh Richardson, who is another solid wing defender that we didn't have last year). Improving by 1.4 points on defence doesn't impress me when last year's team had significantly worse personnel and a coach who was completely burnt out - I don't buy cutting the first two weeks of the season out because I feel that the players compensated for his ineptitude with their individual brilliance after the players meeting. Our defence has returned to being crap in the past 10 games or so with a dismal 110.4 DRTG, good for 21st in the league if that was our defence for the season so far.

[SHAQATTACK]

We probably can’t afford to keep Smart as a luxury defense specialist, at the cost of no offense.

[Csfan1984]

We probably can’t afford to keep Smart as a luxury defense specialist, at the cost of no offense.

He wouldn't be as bad if Ime wasn't playing him in the same rotation of Al and TL. The team needs better spacing. They need three scorers as the Jays aren't exactly creators. Lineup examples with Smart I'm okay with

PG- PP/Schro
SG-Smart
SF-JB/Langford
PF-JT/GW
C-TL/Al

Now if you want to keep Smart at PG and Tatum at SF then we better be starting GW at PF for his corner 3s. But that puts Parker into the rotation more which is hit or miss.
 
Keep it simple and plan on
PG-PP/Schro
SG-Smart/Josh
SF-Brown/Langford
PF-JT/GW
C-TL/Al

Stop the Smart at PG with AL and TL combo.

[Goldstar88]

64 points in the paint for today’s game and the C’s only took 27 shots from 3pt. Even though they didn’t shoot a great percentage from deep, they had a good lead almost the entire game. Rotation was shortened to 8 players. That’s the recipe for not stinking.

[Vermont Green]

Here are some numbers I find interesting:

The good:
Smart       +96
Brown       +94
Tatum        +91
Freedom    +59
Schroder   +47
Richardson +40
RWilliams   +39

The midling:
GWilliams  +5
Horford     -2
Parker      -7

The Ugly:
Fernando  -37
JHern:      -40
Nesmith   -46
Pritchard  -51
Langford  -55

I find it interesting and telling how these +/- totals are stratifying.  It is a good sign that our best players who get the most minutes are in the "good" category.  The outliers are Freedom and Horford.  It is also surprising how bad the numbers are in relatively few minutes for some of our deeper bench although Nesmith, Pritchard, and Langford are 3 players that we need something from but the results have been really bad.

I know, +/- can be distorted for an individual player by a whole host of things but this is a fairly large sample of games allowing for a large number of line up combinations.  The Celtics have played 37 games and Nesmith, Pritchard, and Langford have all played in around 30 of them.

In total, these 3 have accounted for a cumulative -152 or about -5 per game.  Bruno and JHern have done their damage in far fewer games and minutes.

[Vermont Green]

Another interesting number (at least to me):

Tatum    +207  (in 16 wins)
Tatum    -116   (in 17 losses)

No other player is even close in terms of the disparity in wins vs. losses.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

Another interesting number (at least to me):

Tatum    +207  (in 16 wins)
Tatum    -116   (in 17 losses)

No other player is even close in terms of the disparity in wins vs. losses.

This is exactly what my eyes see on the court. Every role player is playing really well this season, but the ceiling of any team is connected to its best players. We've got all the pieces, but we need Tatum and/or Brown to take that final leap.