Celtics will regret not re-signing Tony

[Witch-King]

Lol @ ScoobyDoo. We saw something like that happen at the beggining of last season when Alen Iverson signed with the Grizz and then left their team after only playing in three games. The obvious difference between Allen Iverson and Tony Allen is that Iverson is a former all-star and league MVP, though even he felt sort of insulted that he should assume a bench-role on a young team with players who weren't at the same stage of their NBA career as he was.

Tony Allen would probably cope better with a bench role on the Grizz seeing that he is not an NBA superstar, or former superstar by any means and has experience at being an athletic, defensive role-player and could possibly mentor the younger Grizz but as you stated the fact that they are youthful might mean less minutes for Tony. A few of these guys have experience in international basketball (O.J. Mayo - though he was cut by team USA, Rudy Gay and Marc Gasol) so they are defintely an emerging force in a league with the 'Boston 3-party', the 'Lake-Show' + Phil Jackson attempting to 3-peat for the 4th time and the 'Miami cHeat' featuring LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

[BballTim]

(although I dispute that Delonte will be potent enough on offense to insure that Paul will never be doubled by Delonte's man)

You're not going to stop teams from double-teaming. Teams doubled off of Ray Allen last season, for what it's worth. The issue here is making them pay, and I think West will definitely be potent enough to do this when defenses sag off of him.

The Celtics are one of the best teams when it comes to passing the ball so it almost seems unreasonable to try and double-team Paul Pierce while Ray Allen is on the floor since both players are exceptional 3pt shooters and Rondo is near the top of the league in assists. You are also right about Delonte being able to punish the double team as well since he is an above average shooter who passes well.

  For a shooting guard he's probably a little below average as a shooter.

From beyond the arch? he's a 37% shooter, I'd say thats pretty good for a SG who's coming off the bench. I mean ray, who in no way, shape or form am i comparing to delonte outside of raw numbers comparison, is a 40% shooter from down town.


I agree he has a very limited mid range game, but for a guard off the bench i think he provides good spot up offense.

  37% isn't bad, I was looking more at his .325 from last year. He seems to shoot better when he gets more playing time, which doesn't necessarily bode well. We'll see though.

[Witch-King]

Regardless of how good Delonte is at shooting compared to other sg's in the league, we are talking about him getting what would be in most cases a fairly open jumper in the situation where we would be passing to Delonte out of a double-team.

Unless you are trying to tell me that we would just go to Delonte West from the get-go and not wait around to see whether Paul Pierce or Ray would be double teamed first? I'm sure that our offense would be able to cope with special types of perimeter defense, whether it be setting screens or using the pick and roll, Rondo driving into the lane and then either going for a lay-up or feeding someone in the paint, kicking it out to an open shooter, etc.

[BballTim]

Regardless of how good Delonte is at shooting compared to other sg's in the league, we are talking about him getting what would be in most cases a fairly open jumper in the situation where we would be passing to Delonte out of a double-team.

  Isn't that generally what Delonte was doing in the past when LeBron was always double/triple teamed?

[LooseCannon]

  It shows that the team was outscored, but it doesn't show things like who was on the court with him. It also doesn't take into account the fact that Tony's sometimes used as a defensive substitution at the end of a quarter, where he'll be on the court for a defensive possession only. That kind of thing affects you.

The stat you might want to look into is adjusted plus-minus, which accounts for teammates.  It's better for comparing teammates than comparing players on different teams.  It does seem consistently reward strong defenders and penalize defensive liabilities. It's one of several stats which tell me that Tony Allen is a better player than Glen Davis (although the Celtics need Big Baby more due to depth issues).

Advanced metrics such as APM (of which there are several different versions) tend to say that Tony Allen is underrated by conventional stats in a manner typical of strong defenders.  It is quite possible that TA is as good a defensive SG as Rondo is a defensive PG and if he had any offense he'd be an NBA starter instead of a 7th or 8th man.

Evaluating TA's defense on Kobe in the NBA Finals is difficult because of sample size.  You also have to consider shooting percentage and not just points and whether or not he was lucky in terms of being forced into taking low percentage shot but making them at a higher rate than normal.