During the 2011-12 season the Celtics averaged 19.8 assist per game. In games that Rondo did not play, they averaged about 21 assists per game. That means in the games that Rondo played in, they must have averaged a little less than 19.8.
In 2012-13, I don't remember the exact numbers but the average assist with and without Rondo were very close but we did get sightly more assists without him than with. The team was running at a higher assist rate without Rondo when KG was playing but when he got hurt, things dropped off.
Now you can look at all the efficiency numbers and assists per 48 that you want but I am not sure how fewer total assists in a game can be better than more assists in a game.
The differences are small but any stats that imply we get more assists when Rondo plays are either inaccurate to the bottom line or some how misleading.
Explain to me how stats that show how many assists per minute we average with and without Rondo over the course of 3 entire seasons and playoffs is misleading or inaccurate.
If you just look at the 12-13 season, we were averaging 23 apg when Rondo went down, 23 apg when KG went down and 22.7 apg when the season ended. So we had a jump in assists after Rondo went out, but the fact that our average when KG went down shows that the numbers dropped before then. Part of the reason we had a bump in assists was some of our key scorers (PP/Jet/Green) getting healthier, and part of it was from radically changing the offense (which rarely happens in mid-season in the nba).
But a large part of why our assists went up after Rondo's injury and before KG went out was that in those games we played 6 games against top 10 defenses and 11 games against bottom 10 defenses. When you look at the assist numbers in the smallish number of games Rondo missed you didn't give any thought whatsoever about whether anything else (such as the health of other players or the quality of our opponents) might impact the results. The reason the numbers I posted (which cover every minute of 3 seasons) seem to be misleading or inaccurate is because it's a larger sample size so it's not being skewed by factors you didn't consider.
First, I want to be clear that I didn't say your stats were inaccurate, just inaccurate in support of the bottom line of total assists the team generated. I don't doubt the zealousness of your research.
Not for nothing, but in effect you're claiming that a measurement of the total assists a team generates isn't an accurate reflection of the total assists a team generates.
In the first half of the 2012-13 season, Rondo was generating assists at a historic pace yet the team was not winning. When Rondo got hurt, we started winning more and generating more team assists (until KG got hurt too). You quote stats that confirm this.
Half right. I said that our assist total spiked a little when Rondo left but was dropping *before* KG went out. Imagine that our average for the year was 20 apg on Jan 1, 22 apg on Jan 15 and 20 apg on Jan 30. If our average was 22 apg on the 15th and 20 on the 30th then we'd had to have averaged *less* than 20 apg during that time in order to have the average drop down to 20. Those numbers and dates aren't accurate, just demonstrating that simple math shows we were averaging fewer assists before KG went out.
Now, I know that nothing is in isolation but your point seems to be that Rondo makes everyone more efficient, even though in this case they weren't but then kind of say this was because the key players were healing from injuries and the team was playing better teams.
Yes, and that's a fairly key point. You're talking about how the team performed with and without Rondo and how that shows his impact on the team. That's only really the case if Rondo leaving the lineup was the only change to the team that impacted it's fortunes. That would seem to imply that you either didn't notice any of the other change or don't think that they had an impact on our fortunes. I'd like to point out a few other changes that happened:
1) Green's play improved as he got healthier/less rusty. before the all-star break he was 10.3 ppg on 54% TS%, after the break he was 17.3 ppg on 59% TS%. His play improved over the course of the season, but his play early in the year was very inconsistent.
2) PP and Jet were both playing poorly in late Dec/Jan due to injury. They combined for 31 ppg on 59% TS%n Nov, dropped to 23 ppg on 50% TS% in Jan and were back up to 29 ppg on 58% TS% by Feb.
3) The defense, as everyone recalls, was terrible the first few months of the season and started to improve after that. We went from bring a bottom 5-6 defense to a top 5-6 defense.
How much would you say those 3 things *combined* to impact our record early in the season? Go to a website with nba standings and look at point differentials, you'd see that being 5 or so points a game better (offense and defense combined) can improve your win total by 20-ish games. You could easily argue that those effects combined would have more of an impact on the team than 5 ppg. How does any of this figure into your with/without Rondo analysis?
Many poster who feel that I am too critical of Rondo (which you have said you are not one), make the argument that Rondo is great becasue he set assists records and that any player that sets assists records must be making all the other players better. So in effect, taking certain stats in isolation.
My judgment that Rondo does not impact the game to the degree that one would think based on the number of assists he gets is based on more bottom line stats of team assists and team wins but also largely based on what I see when I watch the games.
Since someone else came up with the link, here are some numbers that a Wizards fan came up with by watching every pass Rondo made that resulted in a scoring opportunity over a 3 or so month period:
Celts non-Rondo assisted makes/opportunities: 935/2650 = 35.3%
Celts Rondo-assisted makes/opportunities: 231/413 = 55.9%
Difference: 20.6%.
For Wall this number is 9.2%.
Again, the league average for difference between assisted and unassisted is 8%, Rondo was 2.5 times better than average. Is "the Celts score much more efficiently when Rondo's distributing the ball than they do in other cases"? Because that's clearly what's happening on the court. If you don't see what the stats seem to bear out you have to wonder why.
I also flat out distrust certain stats such as Rondo's FG% because when I watch the game, I see a player who can't shoot nearly the level an NBA PG should.
This is an interesting subject. Rondo was well above the league average for point guards in fg% on his long 2s last year. You can argue that those are open shots (although if you spent a game just watching whether long 2s are taken by players who are open you'd be surprised by what you see). Is it a problem the defenders give him a little extra space when he has the ball? It would be if you could demonstrate that he has trouble finding people who are open or if you could demonstrate that his teammates have trouble scoring after he gets them the ball. Clearly neither of those are true.
I'd kind of like to hear your explanation of why Rondo has the success that he does in the playoffs and how the coaches of the top-ranked defensive teams that we generally face frequently comment on how important it is to keep Rondo in check and how hard that is to do when you feel that limiting his effectiveness is a fairly trivial task. Are our playoff opponents just uninterested in beating us?
Topic: what does Rondo have to do this year to not be criticized? (Read 24484 times)