Its simple, Davis fits in much better with the starters because of his defense, passing, and mid range shooting. It is similar reasons that Scal was starting before he got injured.
Hollinger takes his love of the numbers too far sometimes, and fails to actually look at the real basketball reasons.
I am fine with him saying the Powe is better than Davis (although I think it is closer than the numbers show), but when you are looking at how players are used, there is much more to it than who's better. Especially when you are talking about players like Powe and Davis, who both still have holes in their games.
Is that true, though? I hear what you're saying, but overall, the team has played pretty poorly with BBD as a starter. Yes, the team has a winning record (5-2), but the team has looked poor in several of those wins, especially on defense (New Jersey, Indiana, Philly, etc.) None of those were "easy" wins, unlike what you see when Scal fills in for KG a lot of times.
Of the five player combinations the Celts have played over 100 minutes, the one where BBD plays in place of KG has been by far the worst. In fact, defensively, it's tied for our worst lineup overall, and it's tied for our fourth worst offensive unit. Opposing teams outscore that player combination 66.7% of the time it's on the floor. http://www.82games.com/0809/0809BOS2.HTM
Objectively, I can't look at numbers like those and say BBD is a good fit. I know many people like to ignore stats, claiming they don't accurate depict what's going on in the floor. However, at some point, don't the statistics shed some light on things?
On the other hand, in limited minutes, the combination of Powe with the starters has yielded a more efficient offensive team than our normal starters, with only a slight dip in defense. It's a limited sample size, but it's statistics like that that make guys like Hollinger notice that something isn't working like it should on paper. Maybe the stats truly are wrong, or maybe the team has other reasons for playing BBD. However, it's clear, at least, why Hollinger thinks Powe is a better fit.
In terms of who is a better player, I agree with the statement above that the two play different positions right now, and shouldn't be evaluated as rivals. However, statistically, Powe has definitely been the better performer. Offensively, Powe has been much better, and defensively, statistics suggest that Powe is a lot closer to BBD than many give credit for. That being said, I think BBD has looked great over the past couple months, and I'm glad they're both here. I'd like them both to get minutes over Mikki Moore in the playoffs, since both BBD and Powe are better overall players.
Like Always, I don't buy the stats. Just watching the games, you can clearly see that the starters have not been playing well since Davis has taken over...but I think it is tough to blame it on Davis. There are just too many different variables to say he is the problem with that unit.
But anyways, I think I didn't make part of my point well. While I think a big reason Davis starting is that his skillset fits in better with the starters than Powe's does, just as important is how well Powe fits with the bench unit.
The bench unit really needs Powe's rebounding and scoring much more than the first unit does.
This is one of the main reasons Scal was put into the starting unit last year when KG was hurt, despite the fact that he wasn't even really part of the rotation at the time. Doc likes to try to keep some level of consistency among units.
The fact is Powe and Davis both bring a lot to the table, and they both are going to play. So it makes a lot of sense for Doc to be playing them with units that fit their skillsets better, rather than worrying about starting whoever is "better".
Topic: ESPN article says Powe > Davis, and its a mystery why he starts.. (Read 24878 times)