Brandon Bass vs big baby davis

[Evantime34]

Baby was never known as an especially good defender in college (correct me if I'm wrong), but I think playing in our system along with his quick feet lead him to become a good defender.

I would say Bass will be helped on defense by being on this team. I know the Magic were a good defensive team but that was mostly because of Dwight, where the Celtics play better team defense.

The thing that worries me about Bass is his hands compared to Baby. IMO Baby snared a lot of difficult passes from Rondo because he had excellent hands. In the first game I saw Bass miss passes that Baby would have caught. Hopefuly this is just familiarity with Rondo and not a problem with Bass.

[Fafnir]

Points and not getting your shot blocked are superficial?  Points win the games.  Big Baby's inability to finish strong (with dunks, yes they do actually have value) took points off the board for us.

Yes, "points win the games" is exactly the type of superficial approach I'm talking about. What wins you games is the scoring more points than the opposition... which has 2 components: (a) scoring points, and (b) preventing the opposition from scoring points.

The typical belief is that (b) is more important than (a), as evidenced by the success of recent Celtics and Spurs teams, and the failure of recent Suns teams, to name a few.

I really don't think Davis is that good of a defensive player.

He's versatile and we'll certainly miss that, but his help defense was overblown as his "charges drawn" exploded.

[Roy H.]

doesn't hurt having the L's best passer setting you up.  I think he'll struggle in the paint this year w/ Nelson feeding him.

He shot 51% two years ago, 59% his second year, and 54% as a rookie.

I don't think Rondo's passing has a lot to do with his FG% down there, rather its his comfort finishing and his fitness level.

I don't see why the quality of your PG wouldn't help your FG % around the rim.  In addition to playing alongside a big like KG who spreads the floor (while Howard doesn't).

I think an elite PG creates more chances at the rim, more than he effects your overall percentage of conversions.

If he's shooting 45% on jumpers, and 65% inside, though, it stands to figure that getting a greater percentage of shots closer to the hoop will increase his overall FG%, even if he converts inside shots at about the same percentage as always.

I don't know if that was clear, but getting more 65% shots, and fewer 45% shots, would seem to help his overall efficiency.

[TheReaLPuba]

He def. jumps higher...but rebounding has never been about how high you jump.

Offense is half of the game, and Bass is actually a better rebounder than Davis.

His defense worries me to a small extent, but its not like BBD was able to anchor the defense without KG protecting the rim for him either.

We have guys who can score.

But every player to a man must play defense.

[Interceptor]

Defense wins championships, sure, but that's largely because getting turnovers off great defense can also open up offensive opportunities. A fast break off a steal or a rebound (from forcing a low-percentage shot) can be an easy bucket, and Bass is good for that part of it, too.

As I type this, I recall BBD getting rejected by the rim on a fast-break dunk.

[Fafnir]

doesn't hurt having the L's best passer setting you up.  I think he'll struggle in the paint this year w/ Nelson feeding him.

He shot 51% two years ago, 59% his second year, and 54% as a rookie.

I don't think Rondo's passing has a lot to do with his FG% down there, rather its his comfort finishing and his fitness level.

I don't see why the quality of your PG wouldn't help your FG % around the rim.  In addition to playing alongside a big like KG who spreads the floor (while Howard doesn't).

I think an elite PG creates more chances at the rim, more than he effects your overall percentage of conversions.

If he's shooting 45% on jumpers, and 65% inside, though, it stands to figure that getting a greater percentage of shots closer to the hoop will increase his overall FG%, even if he converts inside shots at about the same percentage as always.

I don't know if that was clear, but getting more 65% shots, and fewer 45% shots, would seem to help his overall efficiency.

But we're not talking about his overall efficiency, but rather whether or not Bass brings more as a finisher around the rim.

I think he does, but I don't think the difference is very much. Its his greater accuracy on his jump shots that separates him offensively from Davis.

If he improves his efficiency even more he'll be pushing TS% of .600, that'd be huge similar to what Powe gave us before his knees gave out.

[Interceptor]

As I type this, I recall BBD getting rejected by the rim on a fast-break dunk.

Replying to myself, found the clip in about 3 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkdpjA1uSiQ


This ain't happening to Bass, just saying.

[SHAQATTACK]

BiG BaBy ... will pork out soon as he finds all the Burger Kings in Orlando .

[Snakehead]

Points and not getting your shot blocked are superficial?  Points win the games.  Big Baby's inability to finish strong (with dunks, yes they do actually have value) took points off the board for us.

Yes, "points win the games" is exactly the type of superficial approach I'm talking about. What wins you games is the scoring more points than the opposition... which has 2 components: (a) scoring points, and (b) preventing the opposition from scoring points.

The typical belief is that (b) is more important than (a), as evidenced by the success of recent Celtics and Spurs teams, and the failure of recent Suns teams, to name a few.

I am very well aware of this.  But you are talking as if BBD is KG.

The fact is that the Celtics have already been a top level defensive team and what has held us back is our offense, which is middle of the road.

I'll give BBD credit for contributing to our D, but the possible drop off from BBD to Bass on D is absolutely worth the upgrade Bass brings to the table on offense.

I am all about defense (keep in mind I'm one of the few Avery Bradley fans on here), but as some point you also have to score the basketball and do so effeciently (which is not BBD).

[mmmmm]

Points and not getting your shot blocked are superficial?  Points win the games.  Big Baby's inability to finish strong (with dunks, yes they do actually have value) took points off the board for us.

Glen Davis shot 63% at the rim last year, Brandon Bass shot 66% at the rim last year.

Davis was a better finisher than you'd think from how often his shot ends up getting blocked.

Yeah, he was generally okay at the rim.  The problem for BBD was what happened between 16-23 feet.   

Its not JUST that he's been a terrible shooter out there the last couple of years (31% in 2009-10, 35% in 2010-11).   Its the decision making exhibited by the sheer _number_ of such shots he was taking out there.   This last year, his attempts from that range rocketed up to 4.6 per game!  That's WAY WAY more than he took from any other range.  He only took 3.1 per game at the rim!

When you consider that almost ALL of the rest of our top-rotation players shoot significantly better than he did from that range (and several shoot better from THREE PT range) it was just poor, poor decision making to take so many shots.   

Rondo, also, takes a large percentage of his own shots from that same range.  The difference is that for Rondo that was still secondary to the amount of shots he took at the rim, AND in Rondo's case, that range was Rondo's 2nd best shooting range (Rondo shot 41% from there).

If you replace BBD's shooting percentage for those same attempts with an actual competent shooter from that range ... say ... Brandon Bass at 44% - then instead of making only 1.6 of those attempts, you make 2.02 of them.  So that means two things:  Thats an additional ~.8 pts per game AND it's ~.4 fewer _missed shots_ per game.   The latter become defensive rebounds about 70% of the time - so that's like an _extra_ turnover every third game.

In the NBA, possessions are finite and missed shots are brutal because the defense grabs ~70% of all missed shots.  So you DON'T want to be taking 35% shots.  Yet BBD took 355 of them.

And the thing is, this really understates how bad the problem got.  The poor numbers for BBD above are for the season - but he actually was very good in the first half and then completely degenerated in the second half.  He was taking more and more shots outside and shooting more and more poorly.

I think there were a couple of contributors to this.  Obviously, BBD got fat.  His knee got injured.  He was in a contract year.   I think that basically, he lost the hops to be confident going inside and preferred to drift out and take jump shots.  I also think he was playing selfish, trying to pad his 'superficial stats' as koslodoev calls them.

And that was just killer for our offense overall.

[RyNye]

I love Big Baby for everything he did for this team. However, this past year made it clear that he simply wasn't a good fit for this team, anymore. He wanted a starting role. Which is fine, it just wasn't the role that we needed to fille. Bass fills the hole we need. Baby did not, unfortunately.

[LB3533]

Bass will be good for us. I will miss Baby, and it was clear, his intentions for his career did not fall in line with what we wanted out of him.

[cman88]

BBD is a solid player and COULD be a good player for us off the bench IF he can understand what his role is and stick to that.

that is inherent the problem. He never fancied himself as a role-player with us and looked for his shot often..standing outside shooting contested jumpers. BBD's game is using his strength in the post and he didnt do that last year either.

I think Bass has rougly the same skills as baby(and hes moer athletic so he has bigger potential imo) with a better jumper...but the most valuable asset he may have is KNOWING what his role is and sticking to it. BBD tried to do too much

[Fafnir]

BBD is a solid player and COULD be a good player for us off the bench IF he can understand what his role is and stick to that.

that is inherent the problem. He never fancied himself as a role-player with us and looked for his shot often..standing outside shooting contested jumpers. BBD's game is using his strength in the post and he didnt do that last year either.

I think Bass has rougly the same skills as baby(and hes moer athletic so he has bigger potential imo) with a better jumper...but the most valuable asset he may have is KNOWING what his role is and sticking to it. BBD tried to do too much

Another problem Davis had was he was playing defacto starter minutes for most of last year. It wore him out and his play suffered for it.

Whenever he's had to player starter level minutes his play has suffered, I think he lacks the stamina to be more than a 20 or so minute player a game and give you his best.

Maybe the same is true of Bass, but I doubt Doc will rely so heavily on him.

[kozlodoev]

Points and not getting your shot blocked are superficial?  Points win the games.  Big Baby's inability to finish strong (with dunks, yes they do actually have value) took points off the board for us.

Yes, "points win the games" is exactly the type of superficial approach I'm talking about. What wins you games is the scoring more points than the opposition... which has 2 components: (a) scoring points, and (b) preventing the opposition from scoring points.

The typical belief is that (b) is more important than (a), as evidenced by the success of recent Celtics and Spurs teams, and the failure of recent Suns teams, to name a few.

I am very well aware of this.  But you are talking as if BBD is KG.

The fact is that the Celtics have already been a top level defensive team and what has held us back is our offense, which is middle of the road.

I'll give BBD credit for contributing to our D, but the possible drop off from BBD to Bass on D is absolutely worth the upgrade Bass brings to the table on offense.

I am all about defense (keep in mind I'm one of the few Avery Bradley fans on here), but as some point you also have to score the basketball and do so effeciently (which is not BBD).

We've got 4 other guys that can score the ball pretty efficiently. How much more scoring do you need?!