Fire Joe! ... or critique Joe ... or defend Joe... or worry about Joe's coaching

[Roy H.]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel. 

[Kernewek]

The only person talking exclusively about offensive rating in this conversation is you.

[ChillyWilly]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

Objection! Your honor

[SHAQATTACK]

I’m still predicting Joe won’t be back next year.

[Roy H.]

The only person talking exclusively about offensive rating in this conversation is you.

What metric would you use?  Offensive rating is by far the best measure of offensive, because it measures offensive production per possession. 

[Moranis]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

offensive rating and league rank

Stevens 21 - 114, 10th
Udoka 22 - 114.4, 7th
Mazzula 23 - 118, 2nd
Mazzula 24 - 118.3, 8th

We added Brogdon, but Rob was hurt for Mazz's 1st 3 months, but otherwise the talent was virtually the same between the end of 22 and beginning of 23.

[Roy H.]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

offensive rating and league rank

Stevens 21 - 114, 10th
Udoka 22 - 114.4, 7th
Mazzula 23 - 118, 2nd
Mazzula 24 - 118.3, 8th

We added Brogdon, but Rob was hurt for Mazz's 1st 3 months, but otherwise the talent was virtually the same between the end of 22 and beginning of 23.

Udoka, January through April: 120.8 (ranked 1st)

Ime took a team that finished .500 the prior season and turned them into the best team in the NBA from January on.  He reached the Finals.

Joe took over an NBA finalist that added the 6MOY, and they regressed after a hot month.  The team lost to a #8 seed missing multiple rotation players.

[smicker16]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

offensive rating and league rank

Stevens 21 - 114, 10th
Udoka 22 - 114.4, 7th
Mazzula 23 - 118, 2nd
Mazzula 24 - 118.3, 8th

We added Brogdon, but Rob was hurt for Mazz's 1st 3 months, but otherwise the talent was virtually the same between the end of 22 and beginning of 23.

Udoka, January through April: 120.8 (ranked 1st)

Ime took a team that finished .500 the prior season and turned them into the best team in the NBA from January on.  He reached the Finals.

Joe took over an NBA finalist that added the 6MOY, and they regressed after a hot month.  The team lost to a #8 seed missing multiple rotation players.

I think Ime is better than Mazz but why use the smaller sample size for Ime only? In that case let’s look at the offensive rating in the playoffs.

Mazz - 116.1 ranked 4th
Ime - 110.3 ranked 9th

It also seems unfair to ignore the fact that the roster changed to have Horford instead of Kemba under Ime but make sure to highlight the addition of Brogdon and improving personnel there.

I think Ime is a better coach but mainly because he seemed to have them focused on defense more consistently.

[Moranis]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

offensive rating and league rank

Stevens 21 - 114, 10th
Udoka 22 - 114.4, 7th
Mazzula 23 - 118, 2nd
Mazzula 24 - 118.3, 8th

We added Brogdon, but Rob was hurt for Mazz's 1st 3 months, but otherwise the talent was virtually the same between the end of 22 and beginning of 23.

Udoka, January through April: 120.8 (ranked 1st)

Ime took a team that finished .500 the prior season and turned them into the best team in the NBA from January on.  He reached the Finals.

Joe took over an NBA finalist that added the 6MOY, and they regressed after a hot month.  The team lost to a #8 seed missing multiple rotation players.

I think Ime is better than Mazz but why use the smaller sample size for Ime only? In that case let’s look at the offensive rating in the playoffs.

Mazz - 116.1 ranked 4th
Ime - 110.3 ranked 9th

It also seems unfair to ignore the fact that the roster changed to have Horford instead of Kemba under Ime but make sure to highlight the addition of Brogdon and improving personnel there.

I think Ime is a better coach but mainly because he seemed to have them focused on defense more consistently.

And didn't Boston have like the greatest offense ever for the first couple months of Mazz as well.  There is a reason you take full seasons and not partial ones.

Edit: 121.4 for the first 26 games of Mazz. 

[ozgod]

Being a visual person I decided to download all the Celtics advanced game logs from the start of the (pandemic) 2020-21 season, which was Brad's last, up to the current game which was yesterday. 306 games in total, regular season and playoffs. It's basically what you guys are talking about except I didn't look at it year on year or even month on month, I did a 10 game moving average of our offensive and defensive ratings game by game to show how the averages of those two ratings trended over time, through Brad, through to Ime, through to Joe. Orange line is Offensive Rating, blue is Defensive Rating.

Where the orange and blue lines intersect and where the blue line is above the orange are where our net rating (Offensive minus Defensive) is zero or negative, so you could say those were our struggle periods. We had one at the end of Brad's tenure where the Nets beat us 4-1, and it carried into Ime's first month or so. Then we had a period from Nov to Jan where we were inconsistent (we all remember that) then early Jan they figured it out and went on a tear, where there was a large delta between the orange and blue lines up to the end of the 2022 season where we lost to the Dubs in game 6 of the finals. Then Ime got suspended/fired and you can see the results during Joe's first season - for the most part we had a positive net rating but there were those times where we had losing streaks. So far this season we've started on a high but recently we've not been putting teams away and so the net rating is nearing zero again.

click to enlarge


For anyone interested in the source data I used, it's all available from Basketball-Reference.

click to enlarge


This isn't anything that people don't already know...but I like looking at it in graph form 

[tenn_smoothie]

Why are folks criticizing Ime's offense?  Wasn't it the #1 offense from January through the end of the season?  We had an Off Rtg of over 120, better than either this year's or last year's team (despite inferior personnel).

Obviously, I am no defender of Joe, I wanted him gone after last season.

My problem with Ime's offense was that it ground to a halt in the playoffs, especially in the finals vs a very good defense with a coach who had the ability and extra time provided within a series to scheme the defense to stop our offense, which was on the one-dimensional side. Though effective in regular season games due to sheer talent and a team playing with intensity and focus due to the culture developed by Ime himself, we were susceptible to stagnation for several of the reasons being discussed here. Not saying Ime was terrible on the offensive side of the ball, but was average at best, which is not usually enough to win titles. I wish the guy was still here and had brought in coaching help to improve the offense.

[cman88]

at the end of the day, its fair to question whether celtics should've went with mazzula to begin with, but why are we still even crying about Ime? dude did it to himself. just because Houston hired him doesn't mean the celtics would've/should've surived the media scrutiny if it is true he continued to harass the woman he had an affair with after I don't see how celtics keep him on.

I also feel like celtics fans have this weird fairy tale view of his time here. basically we were amazing defensively for a 3 month span. and never saw that team again....the celtics in the playoffs were basically what we saw last year. inconsistent. they played with fire against Milwaukee/Miami and ultimately got burnt against Golden state.

hypothetically if Tatum never sprains his ankle its possible we make it back to the finals and lose to the nuggets. ending up exactly where we were with Ime...

[Kernewek]

The only person talking exclusively about offensive rating in this conversation is you.

What metric would you use?  Offensive rating is by far the best measure of offensive, because it measures offensive production per possession.

I think we can all agree on two points, right?
1) Our concerns are not with the team's offense when it comes to our team's ability to score a lot of points.
2) People get worried (rightly or wrongly) when we revert to looking like the 0-28 from deep Harden-Paul Rockets.

Like Tenn points out above, the extra wrinkle - making the extra pass, unexpected cutting, variations on expected offensive results - this is the stuff that we've seen in flashes from these guys but never really seen consistently for more than, what, 6-8 weeks at a time?

For me, I would probably start by looking at a moving average for ORtg, like Oz has nicely put together - and then in a perfect world I would contrast that data with another season-on-season plot of things like assist ratio, assists produced vs potential assists, turnover percentage, and so on. Because offensive efficacy (not a typo) is great, but I think what we're talking about here is essentially charting three or four different outcomes for an offensive possession of 'playing the right way' where you have:
1- Possession ending in a score
2- Possession ending in a miss but a 'miss the right way' (e.g. good ball movement [x+ passes], some amount of time off the shot clock, whatever)
3- Possessions ending in a miss 'the wrong way' (i.e. a heat-check three, contested drive into traffic, broken play)
4- Possession ending in a turnover.

And once you have that data, it's not terribly difficult to chart that between the coaches - it's just time-consuming (if someone reminds me I'll put something together over the holidays since we're not travelling this year). You could even expand that to playoffs vs regular season as well.

Now, all that said - you're correct that the team has had better offensive personnel every year - because this has been a point of emphasis for Stevens as GM.

And I'm certainly open to the idea that Udoka is a better HC than Mazz, but in terms of our offensive schemes, this is what I would be interested in evaluating between the two guys.

[green_bballers13]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

Are you suggesting that the Celtics fire Joe at 16-5? What do you recommend going forward?

[Roy H.]

Perhaps because looking at the couple of months where things are going well doesn’t discount the ‘your turn my turn’ game that we saw under Udoka (and Stevens, and Mazz)

The run to start last season was superior to the finish of Ime’s season, if we’re going to pick only the highlights. But fundamentally that isn’t what the discussion is about. It’s about the relapses under all the schemes and all the coaches

It takes time to break bad habits.  Ime vastly improved the offense and defense from the prior year.

Then, Joe came along, and while it took him a couple of months, the team went back to its uninspired play despite upgraded talent.

And no, our offensive rating under Joe's 1st three months was worse than the last 3 months under Ime.  Worse offense, worse defense, better personnel.

Are you suggesting that the Celtics fire Joe at 16-5? What do you recommend going forward?

We should have fired him after the season.