Biggest Disappointment So Far

[SHAQATTACK]

Lots of guys can improve and grow up.

Until this team is presented with a true rim protector , force in the paint ....so everybody can play their natural positions .....

We are going to be stuck behind the eight ball


Expecting Bass , Sully and KO to hold down the five position. An't going to work against the better teams who all have a nice seven center in the paint

Weakness is obvious .   Team and coach can only do so much .   .....lack of a big man ....is going to kill the Celtics chances.

[D.o.s.]

Or Tony Parker for that matter. Fisher was a bad defender and all he did his last year was spot up and "defend".

  Beat me to it. Chris Paul is a very good defender. TP is average(ish). Fisher? No way.

Interesting. I've always thought that Paul is a horrible defender who gets a lot of steals by gambling in the passing lanes, Iverson-style.

While being a good defender and a player that's good at getting steals are two different things, I'll never understand why steals remain the Rodney Dangerfield of the box score, particularly when they're so irreplaceable.

Because there's nothing irreplaceable about being caught out of position trying to swipe the ball?

Hahahahaha. There's no one recording that, though, at least not data we can access publicly.

What I mean by 'irreplaceable' is that the steal, unlike pretty much everything else in a box score, is the least likely thing to transfer from a team's efforts when a given player is taken out of the equation. There will still be assists, there will still be rebounds, baskets scored, etc., but that transitive property doesn't apply to steals. I'll poke around for it, but there's a great fivethirtyeight article about it.

[BballTim]

Or Tony Parker for that matter. Fisher was a bad defender and all he did his last year was spot up and "defend".

  Beat me to it. Chris Paul is a very good defender. TP is average(ish). Fisher? No way.

Interesting. I've always thought that Paul is a horrible defender who gets a lot of steals by gambling in the passing lanes, Iverson-style.

While being a good defender and a player that's good at getting steals are two different things, I'll never understand why steals remain the Rodney Dangerfield of the box score, particularly when they're so irreplaceable.

Because there's nothing irreplaceable about being caught out of position trying to swipe the ball?

Hahahahaha. There's no one recording that, though, at least not data we can access publicly.

What I mean by 'irreplaceable' is that the steal, unlike pretty much everything else in a box score, is the least likely thing to transfer from a team's efforts when a given player is taken out of the equation. There will still be assists, there will still be rebounds, baskets scored, etc., but that transitive property doesn't apply to steals. I'll poke around for it, but there's a great fivethirtyeight article about it.

  I think a lot of that's based on the relative rarity of a steal. Losing one steal is like losing 9 points or 5 boards or 2 assists. I don't think there's enough of a correlation between number of steals and winning for more people to take notice though.

[aingeforthree]

My biggest disappointment this young season:  Kelly Olynyk.  The first game was statistically nice, 19 points, but that had less to do with asserting himself and more being in the right place at the right time.

Since then, he seems to be standing around, afraid to shoot, gets in early foul trouble, afraid to take charge. 

When Sully starts off bad, he just seems to shake it off, crash the boards, stay engaged.  Kelly seems afraid to hurt his teammates' feelings by taking a shot.  He is probably one of the top 2-3 3 point shooters, certainly the best among the bigs, and seems more content passing it up to a weaker shooting team mate. 

Am I being too harsh here?

Yes.  Solid, good first game.  The last 2 the refs took him out of the game.  Wasn't really his fault.  Some big time horrid calls.

[mmmmm]

3 games in... come on now..

but since we're doing it... Rondo. The assist numbers will always be there, but he's got some major lapses on D and that shot... *sigh

I'll still blame hand injury... for now

what? You can't take the assists for granted. 15 assists in a game is darn good. What did Kelly give us? I think right now we are better off giving Bass KO's mins. Kelly needs to earn back his mins. He can start by cutting his hair. I find it hard to take him seriously when he's constantly adjusting his hair.

Assists are overrated.   You get in assist for passing the ball to someone making a tough jump shot.  Getting open for a shot and making it is more important.

  You get a lot more assists passing the ball to someone to make an easy shot like Rondo does.  Not for nothing, but last year the Celts eFG% on shots from passes (it would be an assist if the basket was made) was about 55%. Their eFG% on all other shots was about 40%. In the average game they'd take about 44 assisted fg attempts and get about 48 points, they'd take about 40 fg attempts that weren't assisted and get about 32 points from those shots. So, in the grand scheme of things, assists really aren't overrated.

If the Celts didnt have rondo or another pure pg ,other players assist numbers would increase. We have many skilled passers on the team unable to use their skills to the max bc of rondo. Look at the way the spurs play

Right now number 1 priority is for Rondo to concentrate on keeping his man in front of him on every possession possible(playoff rondo) , sufficating him.

Your thesis presumes that the eFG% off assist-opportunities is equal for all players.  The data that Synergy/SportsVU provides suggests strongly that it is not.

Your thesis also presumes that, given a touch of the ball, that the chance that a shot will be generated by a player's team is the same for all players.   Again, the data that tracks this disagrees strongly with that.

The variations strongly suggest that 'creating an assist-opportunity' is a distinct skill that is variable across players just like any other skill.

We know from tracking data that, given a touch of the ball, the team was more likely to get a shot off  if Rondo was touching it last year.  We also know that the resulting shot had a much higher eFG% if it was following a Rondo touch.

For a pass to become an assist it first must be an 'assist opportunity' - it must be possible for the shooter to take a shot based on the pass.   So far this season, Rondo leads the NBA in creating 'assist-opportunities' in the NBA at 22.0 per game.  He also leads the NBA in points created off assists at 26.3 points per game.   

His teammates are shooting 53% FG% when they take shots off Rondo's passes through these first 3 games.

Considering that the Celtics as a team are shooting 45.5% FG% overall, that means they are shooting MUCH worse when it is NOT off a Rondo pass:  Just 42.8%.

[mmmmm]

We don't have anyone on our team who can guard Valanciunas.

Tim, I didn't catch the Houston game but I did see most of Dallas. It was a crappy stream (with the Mav's commentators, to boot), but everyone's defense in that first half seemed pretty egregious, not just Rondo's.

On Valanciunas, in general, yeah - he's a tough matchup.  But Sullinger actually defended him very well in the last pre-season game when they were matched up.

On the Dallas game, most of the damage was done by Dallas' big men hitting every shot in the first period -- and then our bench completely getting schooled.   In particular a huge 15-4 burst in less than 4 minutes near the end of the period when Jeff Green and Sullinger went to the bench (replaced by Smart and Bass) followed shortly after by Olynyk, Rondo and Bradley going to the bench (replaced by Zeller, Thornton and Turner.    With our starters out, the game went quickly from 8 points down to 19 points down in the blink of an eye.   In 3 minutes, 50 seconds, to be exact.

That's not on Rondo. That's on the bench.

[Tr1boy]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

[mmmmm]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

Sure.  Rondo should take a game off against an easier opponent than the three best offenses in the NBA (Dallas, BKN & HOU) so you can have one data point upon which to make sweeping extrapolations.

 

[BballTim]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

  Does it need to be a whole game? Can't you just watch for the team to play well in a couple of his 4-5 minute breaks during the game and extrapolate the entire season based on that?

[Tr1boy]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

  Does it need to be a whole game? Can't you just watch for the team to play well in a couple of his 4-5 minute breaks during the game and extrapolate the entire season based on that?

Sure. Vs the mavs with 3 min left in the 2nd quarter, smart comes in for rondo. And then magically our defense is better (smart not letting his man get by, no domino effect). Our offense plays better. And we start cutting into the lead, build confidence and gaining momentum

[D.o.s.]

We don't have anyone on our team who can guard Valanciunas.

Tim, I didn't catch the Houston game but I did see most of Dallas. It was a crappy stream (with the Mav's commentators, to boot), but everyone's defense in that first half seemed pretty egregious, not just Rondo's.

On Valanciunas, in general, yeah - he's a tough matchup.  But Sullinger actually defended him very well in the last pre-season game when they were matched up.

People keep saying this, but from up close it was pretty apparent that Valanciunas just missed his shots, rather than being defended well by Sullinger or Olynyk (although Sully did a better job, out of the two). Of course, that's the danger of the eye test, I suppose.

[LarBrd33]

The team lacks offensive identity.  They don't know who will be their scorer from one night to the next.  Oly probably is the most consistent shooter on the team.  I don't know that he's going to be made an offensive focus, but he's a good player to have out there.  That's why he remains in the starting lineup despite the fact he's clearly not a center.

[BballTim]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

  Does it need to be a whole game? Can't you just watch for the team to play well in a couple of his 4-5 minute breaks during the game and extrapolate the entire season based on that?

Sure. Vs the mavs with 3 min left in the 2nd quarter, smart comes in for rondo. And then magically our defense is better (smart not letting his man get by, no domino effect). Our offense plays better. And we start cutting into the lead, build confidence and gaining momentum

  Smart didn't come in for Rondo with 3 minutes left in the half, he came into the game with just over 8 minutes left in the half. At the time we were down 25, we ended the quarter down 26.

  Rondo did come out of the game with 3 minutes left in the half. We were down 28, and in those 3 minutes the team built a ton of confidence and gained a boatload of momentum by shaving an entire *2* points off the lead.

  Hilarious.

[wayupnorth]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

Do you get how illogical you sound?

Frankly, you are WRONG about Rondo in almost every single aspect, and it shows your lack of ability to analyze the game of basketball.

Some posters don't like his game, some don't like him, but you are by far the most irrational poster when it comes to Rondo, and it affects your credibility in all other basketball aspects.

Get a clue.

[Tr1boy]

Isnt it time for Rondo to take a game off or something.  We will see if your theory is true. Bc we dont know if without Rondo this teams offense will suffer. Some actually have said the ball moves around better , which leads to easier baskets.

And likely our defense (ab, smart) will improve without Rondo.

Do you get how illogical you sound?

Frankly, you are WRONG about Rondo in almost every single aspect, and it shows your lack of ability to analyze the game of basketball.

Some posters don't like his game, some don't like him, but you are by far the most irrational poster when it comes to Rondo, and it affects your credibility in all other basketball aspects.

Get a clue.

Ok thanks. Try watching tonights game without your rondo jersey or goggles. Watch how he plays defense .