Just to flesh this out, here's a really easy way the team could be worse next year:
- Let Bass, Jerebko, and Datome walk.
- Give Crowder the QO but let him walk when some desperate team offers him well over the full MLE.
- Stay put in the draft at all spots and make a couple of draft-and-stash picks in the second round. (e.g. Portis, Wright, Jaiteh, Vezenkov)
- Sign a couple of young-ish buy-low guys (e.g. Biyombo, Aminu)
Opening night roster:
Smart / Thomas / Pressey
Bradley / Young / Wright
Turner / Aminu / Wallace
Sullinger / Portis
Zeller / Olynyk / Biyombo
Sophomore Smart/more integrated IT
Older AB/Sophomore Young
is better than the backcourt we had over the entire course of last season.
Turner/Aminu is about as good if not better than Turner/Crowder.
Older Sullinger/Portis
More integrated and older Zeller/Older Olynyk/Big mob
is superior to the frontcourt we had over the entire course of last season.
With the youth of our team, including that of our coach's, and considering the hole that the Rondo/Green duo dug the team into early on, it is very hard -- even ignoring all the possibilities of immediate upgrades such as Love, Cousins, Monroe, Thibs as defensive assistant -- to imagine us being worse than last year record-wise.
This is just as much nonsense as optimists portraying the slim chance that we're getting Love to be a reliable option for the team's summer plans. We won't be worse next year, barring injury.
Edit: oh, and, I doubt Danny was disappointed we made the playoffs.
And the flip side is Smart has a sophomore slump, Bradley, Sully and Olynyk all regress and do we really need to say anything else about Turner and how inconsistent he is?
I'd want no part of a roster like that.
And Al Farooq Aminu??? Seriously??
At least bring Crowder back.
Sure, it's possible that we're worse for the reasons you mention, but far from likely. What percentage of teams with the number of 28 and under players that we have end up seeing regressions in more players than they do improvements? I'd guess it's well under 50%.
Aminu played essentially the same role Crowder did on the Celtics for a bit better Mavericks squad playing in a tougher conference. Even if you don't buy into the argument that he has a higher ceiling because of his facilitation skills on offense and defense, he's not a worse player by any means.
This is just as much nonsense as optimists portraying the slim chance that we're getting Love to be a reliable option for the team's summer plans. We won't be worse next year, barring injury.
Eh, except for all of the other variables that can bring a (very, very young) team down aside from injury.
Look, I'll be the first to admit it's entirely possible the team could win MORE games next year if they head into next year with substantially the same roster.
It's also very possible the team stumbles its way to 30 wins, or some similarly disappointing total.
Why are people so certain the Celtics are just gonna keep rolling at the same kind of pace they were on toward the end of this season, when we just watched a far more talented Hawks team race out to a league-leading record only to play .500 ball straight on into the playoffs? The Hawks weren't really hammered by the injury bug until they got to the playoffs, either.
The smaller sample size you have with a core group of players, especially young players, the harder it is to predict how successful they will be in the future. That principle worked in the Celtics' favor this season to the tune of 40 wins -- 10 more than the typical prediction for the team before the season started. It could easily go the other way next year.
It's not just entirely possible, it's more likely than not.
You ask things like why people are "certain" that we'll be better. Sure, I said definitively that we "won't" be worse, just like many of those that agree with your point of view say definitively that we "won't" get Love. Everyone agrees there is an existent albeit slim chance of landing Love, but it is "slim" that is the key word which makes such absoluteness excusable. In other words, there is a chance that 5-6 of our best young guys look worse than they did last year, but the chances of such an outcome don't seem significant enough to me to even inject it as an alarming possibility into the conversation.
Looking at our final record as an indication of this current group's capability is rooted in a false premise. It's not the same team that looked high lottery bound. And while it's very possible that the league adapts to us coming to play every night, even a notable regression from the 2014-15 IT-led Celtics' win percentage would only bring us back to .500 ball. Over the course of the season that is still 1 win more than we had last season, highlighting the ridiculousness of recognizing an even more extreme regression as being legitimately feasible.
Topic: Steve Bulpett: Next year's team could be worse than this years (Read 30593 times)