I'd be very surprised to see this team win 30 games this year. 35 would shock me. This is a 15-25 win team most likely.
It's nice to have hope, though. Give it 3-5 more years and we should be cracking 35 wins.
So, why were you so very wrong?
Mike
Since I got singled out, I'm happy to respond. If you find some more posts from me at the time, my problems with the team were pretty clear.
#1 - We had tons of redundant pieces. Rondo, Bradley, Smart, Turner, Thornton, Young all seemed like mediocre guards and I wasn't sure how having a bunch of them helped. Bass, Olynyk and Sully were all mediocre power forwards. We didn't have a true center. At the beginning of the season, Stevens was playing guys willy nilly with sporadic line-ups and no consistency. Players can't succeed in that environment. THey need defined roles and clear paths towards minutes.
#2 - Rondo was overrated and hurting the team. This was proved in 2013 when Rondo was having his best statistical season ever, got hurt with the team below .500, and KG and Pierce somehow put the team on their backs and lead us to the playoffs. The offensive improved without Rondo that year. There were doubters, but then it happened again last year when the team was 6-26 in games that Rondo played. Still were doubters, but once again we moved Rondo and predictably improved... meanwhile Dallas unquestionably has been worse since adding Rondo. It was also clear that the team played "Stevens ball" with Rondo out and reverted to "Rondo-ball" with Rondo in. THat was a problem that couldn't be fixed due to Rondo's offensive limitations. Seeing the same issue in Dallas.
#3 - Jeff Green was mediocre. Every advance stat proved that the guy didn't add much beyond sporadic scoring. His role on the team was greater than it should have been. I saw him and Evan Turner as redundant.
#4 - Size was a serious issue. You can't play 6'1 Rondo and 6'2 Bradley at the same time. You can't play Jared SUllinger or Kelly Olynyk at center. This is just backwards basketball.
At the time, 30 wins would have been a stretch.
What changed:
Trading ROndo obviously helped. Trading Jeff Green obviously helped. Classic addition by subtraction. We dumped a bunch of players and guys got injured. Suddenly our roster had some clarity. We have a 3-guard rotation that makes some sense. Olynyk and Bass at PF makes sense. Zeller's rise was a bit unforeseen. He's a legitimate center. Long-term he's probably a back-up, but on Boston he provides the most competent "legit center" we've had since 2010.
Also, Marcus Smart has the size to offset Avery Bradley. Bradley can guard the opposing team's PG while Smart (6'4 220) can cover the larger guard. This, of course, is why you're unlikely to see IT start unless Bradley goes to the bench.
So what you have is a functional basketball team with almost traditional roles. Smart/Bradley makes some sense in the back-court. Turner (who I always saw as redundant with jeff Green) is an effective SF who can take over ball-handling duties. Arguably most importantly... having Zeller starting means we're no longer playing a PF out of position at center.
That, and I underrated how good Brad Stevens is. We're sitting at 35 wins. LarBrd33 from October is shocked. But I was basing my comments on the team as it currently looked in October. I wasn't factoring in the potential to have 40 different players on the Roster in 2014-15. If predictions were contingent on "potential to add DeMarcus Cousins mid-season", I probably would have had a different opinion as well. That team from OCtober would have won 25 games max.
Also funny that most of the people in this thread picking the "over" did it, because they thought Rondo could rise the level of the players. I obviously was in the other camp... I thought as long as he was here and Stevens was trying to run his system, we'd have problems. It's not like anyone here predicted, "Over 35 as long as Zeller steps up his game, Sully gets hurt, and we trade Rondo and Jeff Green for future picks... they are holding us back".
NOTE: I was wrong about the 2012 Celtics in a similar way. That team had a major glaring issue... lack of center. They had all sorts of failed attempts at adding big man help that season. They missed out on David West, Perk had been traded. Shaq had retired. Kristik decided to never come back to the States after the lock-out. Jermaine O'Neal didn't work out. Brandon Bass was brought in to replace Glen Davis off the bench as a 4th/5th big man. I was pretty adamant leading up to the trade deadline that the team either had to miraculously land a starting center or blow it up. The team was struggling until suddenly they decided to switch KG to Center. That changed everything. KG ended up being the center we were looking for all along. Injuries forced Doc to define roles and the team actually overachieved all the way to the ECF.
Topic: You Pick.. Over/Under 35 Wins?(Revisited) (Read 11064 times)