Kelly as a Center.

[Celtics18]

http://www.82games.com/1415/14BOS20.HTM#bypos

According to 82games.com, Kelly Olynyk played almost 8x more minutes at center than at power forward last season.

When Kelly played center, the team had a net offensive rating of 105.2 and a net defensive rating of 96.0. 

The second number is what stands out the most to me.  The Celtics were very good defensively with Kelly at center. 

I'm not sure how accurate 82games' numbers are, but this is an encouraging sign. 

It seems that most are convinced that Kelly is categorically not a center, and should not be playing there.  Folks think of Kelly as a power forward.  He is seen as soft and unathletic and as someone who will simply get pushed around on the interior.

Yet, the numbers suggest that the team didn't suffer, rather they flourished, when KO was playing as the man in the middle defensively. 

Some time over the course of last season, I started to see what Brad obviously was seeing as well.  Kelly's most useful position is at the center position.  As a four, he frequently struggled when he had to guard players who were more perimeter oriented.  His one on one lateral foot speed trying to stay with guys on the perimeter leaves a lot to be desired.  However, when he gets to guard players who primarily play inside and aren't looking to take their man off the dribble, he is an effective defender.

Sure, he would get bullied on occasion by bigger, stronger, more athletic players.  However, he more than made up for that by being a competent, aware, and disciplined pick and roll defender.  He rarely seems to over commit to either the roll man or the ball handler on the pick and roll.  He is good at keeping contact with both long enough to force the ball handler to make a difficult play.


Offensively, I would think that the advantages he presents at center are much more self evident.  Opposing centers don't want to have to come guard their man behind the three point line.  This of course opens up the middle for drivers and cutters to get easy baskets. 

I'm leading the charge for Kelly Olynyk as our starting center with Amir Johnson as the power forward.  I think the two of them have a nice, complementary skill set that will make for a very effective front line. 

 

 

[LarBrd33]

Interesting.  Looking forward to seeing an educated rebuttal on this.  Common wisdom was that Olynyk was getting minutes out of position, because the team needed to develop him and we already had Bass and Sullinger getting major minutes at PF.   I'm too lazy to search for the articles myself, but I've read multiple times that he was a complete disaster as a rim protector.   If he was even moderately capable of being a center, he wouldn't have lost the starting role to Tyler Zeller. 

[tarheelsxxiii]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

[Celtics18]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

I do recall.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one who brought it up.  I thought it would be interesting if the idea had it's own thread, though.

[Eja117]

Yes. He could be our third string center. I could see that.

First string
Lee, Amir

2nd string
Zeller, Sully

3rd string
KO, Mickey

for now.

[tarheelsxxiii]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

I do recall.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one who brought it up.  I thought it would be interesting if the idea had it's own thread, though.

Yep, we're on the same page. I hope that at the very least he's given enough mins / opportunity to prove whether he can or can't succeed in significant mins at C.

It will be interesting to see how large you can build the "KO enthusiast clan" until that time comes. 

[Celtics18]

Interesting.  Looking forward to seeing an educated rebuttal on this.  Common wisdom was that Olynyk was getting minutes out of position, because the team needed to develop him and we already had Bass and Sullinger getting major minutes at PF.   I'm too lazy to search for the articles myself, but I've read multiple times that he was a complete disaster as a rim protector.   If he was even moderately capable of being a center, he wouldn't have lost the starting role to Tyler Zeller.

I'd love to see an educated rebuttal on this myself. 

I'm not going to hold my breath, though. 

[Jon]

Everything the OP makes perfect sense. I'd add to that that too much is made of the PF/C positions as Brad Stevens has pointed out. I feel like on the C's roster, it matters even less. A "PF" (Johnson) will likely start at "center" and our one supposed true "center" isn't a rim protector and has less of a wingspan than some of our "PFs."

[Celtics18]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

I do recall.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one who brought it up.  I thought it would be interesting if the idea had it's own thread, though.

Yep, we're on the same page. I hope that at the very least he's given enough mins / opportunity to prove whether he can or can't succeed in significant mins at C.

It will be interesting to see how large you can build the "KO enthusiast plan" until that time comes. 

I've been trying awfully hard.  So far, not a ton of takers. 

As to the first part, if 82games can be believed (which, admittedly, I'm not entirely sure they can), then he's already been given plenty of mins/opportunity at center and proven he can succeed there.

Unfortunately, nobody else seemed to notice. 

I'd like to add that I've been beating the Kelly as a center drum for much longer than I was aware of the 82games stats that claim he was extremely effective playing the five. 

[tarheelsxxiii]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

I do recall.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one who brought it up.  I thought it would be interesting if the idea had it's own thread, though.

Yep, we're on the same page. I hope that at the very least he's given enough mins / opportunity to prove whether he can or can't succeed in significant mins at C.

It will be interesting to see how large you can build the "KO enthusiast plan" until that time comes. 

I've been trying awfully hard.  So far, not a ton of takers.

Back on a serious note, if he is given the opportunity, do you think he can limit his fouls  enough to take advantage of it?

[LarBrd33]

Still waiting for someone smarter than me to give a more in-depth breakdown, but I looked at the site and here's some observations:

http://www.82games.com/1415/1415BOS2.HTM

I sorted all 5-man units by DEF (the unit's points-per possession allowed)

Highlighted lineups with Olynyk at center in green:



So yeah... looks like our best defensive lineup was indeed PG - Smart, SG - Marcus Thornton, SF - Turner, PF - Bass, C - Olynyk... 

But it also says they only played a total of 42 minutes together... so how much clout should we really give that?  Possibly too small of a sample size for it to be relevant.

I'll filter out the less-used line-ups and only show our most popular ones (at least 70 minutes together):



That paints a different picture.  You'll see that the only lineups defensively worse than Olynyk at center are lineups with Jared Sullinger at center... All the top lineups had Zeller at center.  This shouldn't be much of a surprise.  You'll see that of our 4 most popular lineups, the worst was Olynyk at center... and I'm not sure how much clout you should give that either since that line-up featured Rajon Rondo and Jeff Green.   It doesn't seem that any of our major line-ups (post all-star) featured Kelly Olynyk at center this season... at some point they recognized that we were far better off defensively with Zeller in the middle.

None of this speaks to how Olynyk was defensively on an individual level.  I know that his block rate was dismal.   Ping Roy Hobbs... he's been good at finding individual defensive statistics in the past in regards to how a player impacts field goal percentage based on their proximity to the basket.  I'm not sure what resource he used for that.

I still see nothing to sway my belief that Olynyk is a power forward and will never be a long-term solution at center aside from gimmicky line-ups where you need long distance scoring from the position.

[Celtics18]

Lee may well come in and snag that PF spot and I would be surprised if Amir isn't the best two-way player on the team this season.

That said, I hope you're right - I'm still relatively optimistic KO can be a solid player at the 5 (we discussed this and the 82games stats in another thread recently actually, if you recall). And it would bode really well for him to play C... if he steps up, he could find himself almost splitting time with Amir, if that's the way Stevens chooses to go. Especially true if one of Zeller/Sully are gone.

I do recall.  I'm pretty sure I'm the one who brought it up.  I thought it would be interesting if the idea had it's own thread, though.

Yep, we're on the same page. I hope that at the very least he's given enough mins / opportunity to prove whether he can or can't succeed in significant mins at C.

It will be interesting to see how large you can build the "KO enthusiast plan" until that time comes. 

I've been trying awfully hard.  So far, not a ton of takers.

Back on a serious note, if he is given the opportunity, do you think he can limit his fouls  enough to take advantage of it?

I think he'll improve his foul rate.  It's extremely common for bigs to have much higher foul rates during their first couple of years in the league. 

[PhoSita]

Defensively, Kelly makes more sense as a center because his poor lateral quickness makes it very tough for him to chase guys on the perimeter, or try to stay in front of guys with the ability to perform a dribble drive.

Still, it places a lot of pressure on the rest of the lineup because he doesn't have the tools to hedge, recover, and contest at the rim when defending the pick and roll, nor does he have the length or leaping ability to effectively bother and block shots inside.

It's generally harder to find guys who can anchor a defense at PF as opposed to C, so placing Kelly at C puts more strain on the way the rest of the lineup must be constructed.  KO and Sully have not worked together well at all in the past, and I don't really expect that to change.  A lineup with KO and Lee out there together would likely be similarly disastrous.


Anyway, as far as the numbers in the original post, my first question would be how they are skewed by the fact that Kelly was mostly playing against bench players.  My second question would be how the team fared on the boards with Kelly holding down the middle. 


Having a center who can hit an open three and also pump, drive, and finish is a great asset.  It's no surprise that lineups with Kelly at center did well on offense.  He's a taller, more skilled version of Matt Bonner or Pero Antic.  Most centers aren't equipped to defend guys like that, and it creates a lot of space on the floor if both big men can hang out on the perimeter and still pose a threat.

Nevertheless, like Antic and Bonner, Kelly is not a very good rebounder.  He hurts the team in that area.

I think Kelly's inability to lock down a starting spot and stay on the floor for more than 25 minutes or so each night speaks to his troubles defensively and on the boards, despite what the Net Rating numbers say.

[tarheelsxxiii]

Lar, that +/- is what immediately stood out to me.

For another perspective, his DRPM last season was 1.71. 24th among Cs.

[LarBrd33]

Lar, that +/- is what immediately stood out to me.

For another perspective, his DRPM last season was 1.71. 24th among Cs.

So does that +/- reflect the great defensive impact Olynyk had during those brief 42 minutes?... or does that all fall on the great Marcus Thornton?... or should we read into the fact that line-ups featuring Marcus Thornton probably weren't going against top competition?   Thornton played a total of 39 games for the Celtics... he didn't start a single game.   So consider that when looking at those 42 minutes where Olynyk was a beast defensively in a lineup featuring Marcus Thornton...

The other "big" defensive line-up with Olynyk playing center played together for a whopping 26 minutes... and it featured Smart, Jae Crowder and Jonas Jerebko.   We crediting Olynyk for the success of the 26 minutes featuring Crowder, Jerebko and Smart?   

Again, you have to search for some individual defensive stats.  Everything I've read about Olynyk over the past year suggested he was a complete disaster as a rim protector and it wasn't until the increase of Zeller's role that we started making some gains.  IMO, Olynyk was only ever starting at center, because we didn't believe we had an alternative.  The kid needed developmental minutes and we set off with intentions of bottoming out.  We couldn't play both Olynyk and Sullinger at PF at the same time... so the taller one got stuck playing out of position at center.   

Olynyk is a PF.