Rondo was a -15 last night. Smart was +13. I'm not sure the conclusion is as simple as "Rondo plays 20 minutes - We lose".
That's not to say that we should run Rondo out of town with pitchforks, but he (along with most of the starters) played poorly last night.
Can someone, maybe who works at Celticsblog, take a look at +/- within the context of 5 man units?
Looking at +/-, as a stand alone metric at one particular game doesn't say a heck of a lot.
I did quick rundown over the monthly +/- minus, and I know the month of Dec is not over.
Each of Rondo, Sully, Avery and Green's +/- are drastically improved this month, but Green's improvement has been on the smaller change. Green's statistical production and efficiency has improved the most. His teammates' production have either stayed roughly the same or decreased. Their minutes and USG rating have also been less this month (so far) compared to Nov.
Based on the context of these statistics and data of evidence....I am going to say that Green is the reason our team's +/- has flipped into the positve in our favor.
As poorly as Rondo has appeared to play recently, Rondo has the 2nd highest +/- (20.5) out of the above 4 players for the early month of Dec. [Bradley is leads this group of 4 with (23.9), yet his statistical production is slighly down for Dec. but Avery's 3PT shooting efficiency has vastly increased.)
Yes that's correct, the numbers are saying that Sully (11.1) and Green's (9.2) +/- statistics are lower than Rondo and Bradley's rating.
Entering Sunday's game Rondo had the best +/- in the NBA for December (they showed a graphic during the Wizards telecast -- it was Rondo #1 and then 4 Wizards 2-5.) That was before he got a triple-double and a +/- of +7 in an 8-point win. Yes, he stunk yesterday, and it was probably a good decision by Stevens to keep playing the hot hands who got the team back into it. But of course, it wasn't only Rondo who was benched, but also Sully, Bradley, and Zeller. And this is something we see all the time in the NBA - one team's starters get up or down and then the backups turn the game around, for better or worse. Happens with every team. Stevens just did the unconventional and left the backups in there, whereas Doc would have put back in the starters to bring it home.
I personally was screaming at the TV to put back in Rondo during the second overtime, when again the offense started to play too fast and get bad shots, coughing up the lead, but whatever. The bench did a good job this game. Goodness knows they've given up their shares of leads a few times this season. It's but a single game, that was very different from the prior four games.
Topic: I'm confused? Rondo talk obv. (Read 5420 times)