The myth about Celtic's post ASG record

[celts55]

As someone who thinks the Celtics overachieved at the end of the year, my suspicion covers and was born out of the 25-12 record they compiled after the All Star Break, not just the last 13 games. It seems peculiar to me that you would pick the last 13 games, and feels rather arbitrary, given that most people talk about the post ASG in total, rather than starting with one game at the end of March.

Feel free to do a similar analysis of all the post-ASB games if you think that was cherry-picking.

Sure, I can go back and subjectively analyze games and whether or not the other team was "really trying." Seems like a good use of my time.

Why are you too busy thinking up snide replies. Are you really always this negitive, or it just your shtick?
You certainly do not have to agree with everything posted, but why do you feel the need to make these cutting posts to others? Where you not hugged enough as a baby?

[GratefulCs]

Well...

Maybe the record was a little misleading




But i think it was dang impressive




Love this team

[incoherent]

In the final 13 games, 7 of them were against teams in direct competition with us for a playoff seed. We won 6 of those 7 games. Very clutch for a young team.

[PhoSita]

In the final 13 games, 7 of them were against teams in direct competition with us for a playoff seed. We won 6 of those 7 games. Very clutch for a young team.

I agree it was impressive for a young team.

Still, I also think it's fair to point out that the quality of competition for those last playoff spots wasn't exactly star studded.

[greece66]

Not sure what we are arguing about here

1/ The OP made a point about our performance in the regular season not the playoffs.

 And yes, there are several reasons to think the C's will perform better in the RS than the playoffs in the coming season too. (lack of stars/deep bench).

2/ A win against the SAS and a win against Philly both give you one point.

There is no such thing as "I see you have two wins against the Cavs, but they were clearly tanking, so soz but no points for you".

3/ Our schedule is easier than that of most teams.

We play in the easiest division of the easier conference. This means a few extra wins every season; I can live with that.

Main point is, no one here is arguing the C's are a contender.
A 45 win season many of us anticipate/hope for would put us in the same category as the 'reeling' Toronto and the 'young' Bucks (using Phosita's descriptions).

We are not a contender and we'll lose most games against contenders next season. Question is, what's the problem with that?

[PhoSita]

You calling the Hornets crappy but we were in the same exact spot as them, we were also crappy!!! And we get penalized in the minds of the fans because you label the other team crappy and of course we should have won, right?

OK, let me walk you through the contradiction here.

"Our record at the end of the year proves we're not a crappy team!"

"But our opponents were not very good."

"Yes, but we weren't very good, either, so it's impressive that we won so many of those games!"

So ... still a crappy team despite the record, then?

[celticsclay]

In general there was a huge gap in how a lot of people expected the team to perform and how they did in the second half of the year. When one's expectation for an event is so dramatically different from the actual outcome, the national human psychological reaction is to search for an explanation that would explain why the expectation was so far off including attributing the event to things like luck or randomness.

Any human being does this to a degree. When you step back and go through the event step by step in this particular case it is clear that by any metric they were a good basketball the second half of the year. We can make non-fact based statements related to this like "the other teams were not trying" "we snuck up on teams that weren't expecting us to be so good" or "we out hustled them in these particular games, but that is not sustainable." These are not real actual expectations grounded in statistics, but attempts to reduce the gap between expectation and outcome. Just my thoughts on it all.

[PhoSita]

Based on a quick look I'd say one of those wins was against a team clearly resting its best players (the Cavs game you list).

Minor point, but two of those Cavs games involved the other team resting players.

The Cavs flat out sat LeBron, Kyrie, and Love in one of the games, and in the other game they only played LeBron 26 minutes and Love 30 minutes.  Irving didn't play.  Delly played 40+ minutes.

[GreenFaith1819]

TP to the OP.

The Boston Celtics EARNED a trip to the post-season last year.

We'll EARN another one in 2015-16, too...with a more experienced squad AND the additions of David Lee and Amir Johnson.

Coach Stevens has more weapons to play with AND more experience as well. I'll sit back and enjoy this ride.

[PhoSita]

In general there was a huge gap in how a lot of people expected the team to perform and how they did in the second half of the year. When one's expectation for an event is so dramatically different from the actual outcome, the national human psychology reaction is to search for an explanation that would explain why the expectation was so far off including attributing the event to things like luck or randomness.

A very astute observation.

One side responds by saying, "The Celtics are a lot better than we thought they'd be!"

The other side responds by saying, "The record is deceiving, the other teams weren't trying / were injured / were surprised etc."


The truth probably lies somewhere in between.  Or perhaps you could say both sides are right.

[Evantime34]

I agree with the OP.

If teams were taking the Celtics lightly it speaks ill of the mental focus and effort of those teams. That same mental focus and effort that the Celtics will play with should spur them to victories this upcoming season in the same fashion.

If you are discounting the Celtics winnings at the end of the season due to their performance in the playoffs doesn't their opponent have to factor in? The fact that they were playing the second best team in the NBA (and a healthier version than the one that lost in the finals) doesn't mean that the stretch run should be completely discounted, just that the C's weren't as good as the second best team in the league. 

The Atlanta Hawks, also got steamrolled by the Cavs (worse than the Celtics did actually) but I don't see anyone discounting their season.

It seems like people are arguing that the Celtics peak performance won't be as good as the peak performance of other teams and thus won't win as many games as last year because other teams are likely to play closer to their peak performance against the Celtics. The Celtics will win a lot more games because their average performance is going to be at a higher level than the average performance of other teams.

[D.o.s.]

As someone who thinks the Celtics overachieved at the end of the year, my suspicion covers and was born out of the 25-12 record they compiled after the All Star Break, not just the last 13 games. It seems peculiar to me that you would pick the last 13 games, and feels rather arbitrary, given that most people talk about the post ASG in total, rather than starting with one game at the end of March.

Feel free to do a similar analysis of all the post-ASB games if you think that was cherry-picking.

Sure, I can go back and subjectively analyze games and whether or not the other team was "really trying." Seems like a good use of my time.

Why are you too busy thinking up snide replies. Are you really always this negitive, or it just your shtick?
You certainly do not have to agree with everything posted, but why do you feel the need to make these cutting posts to others? Where you not hugged enough as a baby?

I don't think Loose Cannon was offended by that post, nor did I intend to offend him (or incoherent) with it. Frankly, I don't recall ever seeing your username before, and I am a little befuddled by how up in arms you are about a post that doesn't concern you in the slightest.

[D.o.s.]

Not sure what we are arguing about here

1/ The OP made a point about our performance in the regular season not the playoffs.

 And yes, there are several reasons to think the C's will perform better in the RS than the playoffs in the coming season too. (lack of stars/deep bench).

2/ A win against the SAS and a win against Philly both give you one point.

There is no such thing as "I see you have two wins against the Cavs, but they were clearly tanking, so soz but no points for you".

3/ Our schedule is easier than that of most teams.

We play in the easiest division of the easier conference. This means a few extra wins every season; I can live with that.

Main point is, no one here is arguing the C's are a contender.
A 45 win season many of us anticipate/hope for would put us in the same category as the 'reeling' Toronto and the 'young' Bucks (using Phosita's descriptions).

We are not a contender and we'll lose most games against contenders next season. Question is, what's the problem with that?

Right, I think we're all in agreement here, for the most part.

[greece66]

Just for the record, the C's had injuries last year too.

As a matter of fact, most teams have injuries most of the time 

I realize it is natural to put more weight on DRose or Chris Bosh injury than a Kelly Olynyk one, but the other side of the coin is that this is precisely one of the tactics the C's are using in the Regular Season: using quantity/depth against quality.

[PhoSita]

.

If you are discounting the Celtics winnings at the end of the season due to their performance in the playoffs doesn't their opponent have to factor in?

Simply put, what should we view as more indicative of how good the Celts were last year, their record during the stretch run, or their inability to compete in the playoffs against a legitimate contender?

I think the stretch run indicates we can expect the Celts to continue to play well against teams in the bottom half of the league, while the playoffs indicate the Celts are still nowhere close to competing with the teams in the top third of the league when the games actually matter.

Overall, I think that means we can expect another middle of the road regular season record and a quick out in the playoffs. 

A major trade or a breakout season from Smart or one of the other young guys could change that trajectory, though.