The star is missing

[Future Celtics Owner]

I enjoy rooting for a team without a superstar.  Of course it makes your chances of winning it all very slim, but it's fun (at least for me) when a team full of role players can come together, play hard, play smart, play for each other, and be competitive against teams with more top level talent.

It's what the Celtics were able to do last year, and I'm hoping for improvement on that this year.

Fair enough, but rooting for the scrappy underdog gets kind of old after the third or fourth straight first-round beatdown.

I'll hope for another 40-45 win season and be happy with anything close to that, but I'll also hope our picks and other assets end up giving us a shot at a star or potential star, via moving up or trade.

Yeah best case for me would be the team actually winning a couple playoff games and then getting multiple top ten picks from the Nets and Mavs.   Head into next year with some legitimate young pieces and maybe a modestly exciting free agent signing in top of the infrastructure already in place.

Best case for me is repeating what kid pho pho said and adding a Celtic record under 20 wins.

The best way to do that is to develop our players and trade the guys who are close to or at their ceiling. Then trade for prospects like Myles Turner and etc.

[TheTruthFot18]

Cavs lebron and irving and love
Heat wade and dragic and bosh
Pacers george and ellis
Hawks horford and milsap
Bulls rose and butler and gasol
Wizzards wall and beal
Bucks monroe and giannis and parker

Detroit magic hornetts raptors all have potential stars

Us? Ok we have a coach, a system but but... i am not so optimistic than others
Nba is a star league.. i see some players who could be great... star potential? None. Maybe smart maybe...
I do not see us reaching the playoffs... unless everyone gets injured again

Minus Indy, all those teams had multiple shots at a top 3-5 pick with most of those picks panning out as seen above.

You can't trick free agents into coming here, in the end they make the choice and I'm sure DA did what he could for the right guys.

Outside of Cleveland and a healthy (unlikely) Miami, I don't see those other teams getting to the ECF. Some people do enjoy division titles and 2nd round exits though.

[td450]

I agree with Roscoe917. For the purposes of winning a championship, the only player listed that matters is LeBron.

League history over 60 years is clear. Teams with a top 3 player win almost all the championships. Once in a decade or so, another team sneaks in and wins. 

[MrMorrill]

I just don't see the crazy amounts of hype for Giannis, he's good but is he a star? Will he even be a star? His per 36 stats are pretty much the same as Evan Turner...

There is a lot of aging "stars" on that list and a few that may not be on the same team next year so the Celtics are missing a star but you never know, gotta let things unfold. Plus like many have said before, I love following this "starless" team!

[D.o.s.]

The hype for Giannis has a lot to do with his age and his insane athletic gifts. If he can ever put that together with a slightly-above average game he will be a great player and (more importantly, insofar as the hype is concerned) the steal of the draft.

If Monta Ellis is a star, so is Isaiah Thomas. If Parker is a star, so is Smart.

Monta Ellis would be the best player on the Celtics if he was able to sign with us in free agency tomorrow -- and I don't think anyone has referred to him as a star since the 2007 playoffs.

[konkmv]

In the list there are  at least 10 stars... and the others have more chances than our players to become one...
So giannis parker monroe are not stars yet... if they try to sell them.. will they get more or less than us trying to sell smart... that is the real question... even okafor embiid russell towns have at this stage more value than smart... and they have not played a game yet... i am just saying... we have no leader... we were lucky with so many injuries of stars last year.. we played well...lets see us facing all these stars, no team has ever overachieved without a leader in this league

[konkmv]

We are at least 2 good draft choices away for competing

[DarkAzcura]

Hmm you are very generous with your list there.

I would not say Irving (overrated), Dragic, Millsap, Ellis, current Rose, current Gasol, current Wade, Beal, Giannis, Parker, and Monroe (especially Monroe) are as good as you think. Most of the 9 players (obviously Irving is a 'star'..I just think he is overrated) I listed are not stars and most of them are not head and shoulders better than IT or where Smart may potentially end up.

Dragic, Millsap, current Rose, current Wade, Monroe, Ellis, and Beal are especially not anything to write home about relative to the players on this team. IT outplayed Dragic on his own team in Phoenix, and their constant back and forth led to both of them being traded in the end. Millsap is alright, but there is no reason Sullinger and/or Olynyk can't match him up within a year or two if not now. Current Rose is an inefficient volume scorer who can't pass that well. Wade is still good but there are injury concerns there. Beal is awesome in the playoffs, but he has yet to put together anything but an average regular season for a NBA player. He's not close to IT's efficiency and scoring volume. Monroe has no game outside the paint and can't defend if his life depended on it. Red flag in my book. At least have some range if you can't defend well.

Giannis and Parker have potential. I'll give you that. Most of your list, though...all it proves to me is actually how "okay" the Celtics are relative to this conference. There isn't a lot of star power on this coast.

The only stars on your list are Lebron, Love (so underrated), Bosh, George, Butler (I'm reaching on this one honestly), and Wall. I don't think we have players who can match those 5-6 players. Hopefully we can get a player with that kind of potential in the 2016 draft via BKN. The other 9-10 you listed, though? I'm not losing sleep over it. We have enough potential on this team to match and surpass the likes of Monta Ellis and Monroe.

Some gotta relax. The talent on this team is far better than most of you give it credit for.

EDIT: I forgot Horford. That guy is legit. I'd put him with that short list of stars in the East. 

[D.o.s.]

I like how you say Kevin Love is underrated despite the fact that he's hot garbage.


(he's not actually hot garbage but he's basically the definition of a bad-team big numbers guy, especially compared to some of the other players on your list).

[DarkAzcura]

I like how you say Kevin Love is underrated despite the fact that he's hot garbage.


(he's not actually hot garbage but he's basically the definition of a bad-team big numbers guy, especially compared to some of the other players on your list).

I disagree. A lot. Love is hugely underrated. It's not his fault Cleveland doesn't know what they are doing and decided to peg him as the third guy while completely limiting his ability. Irving should be the third option. They will continue to struggle when all 3 play until they actually figure out who their best offensive options are. They got option 1 right with Lebron obviously. They got it twisted with Irving and Love, however. Trading for Mozgov saved their experiment. Their defense is much better now, and they will survive despite not playing to their true offensive potential. 

I'm not sure how much you watched Love in Minnesota, but he is as much a "bad team big numbers" player as Pierce was pre-2007. Meaning...he's not. He's legit. Bad team big numbers players are generally volume scorers with no efficiency in their game at all. Love went into every game as one of the only legit offensive options in Minnesota and put up great efficiency despite that. Bad team big numbers guys don't score with that kind of efficiency.

True examples of big number bad team players are players like Shareef back in the day and Monta Ellis in GSW.

I've never in my life seen a "big numbers, bad team" player average a 26 PER with 60% TS. He's the best outlet passer in the league. He's a really good outside threat and can mix it up in the post.  He's really good at drawing fouls also. He has the full offensive package. Cleveland isn't using him right.

Anyway, I like how you point out one player on my list, lol. That's so not the point anyway. Just pointing out that the OP is overrating a bunch of players in this conference.

[D.o.s.]

No, I understood your point and agreed with a lot of it: no point in discussing things we both agree on though, right? 

Posted a long response, got logged out.

The problem with Love is that if he's your best player, you're not making the playoffs, and if he's not your best player, he's going to underwhelm. That's disconcerting to see, particularly since Love hasn't show any adaptability to his game -- unlike Ellis, who has shown that he can contribute positively to a team when paired with good teammates -- when he isn't the #1 option. There's also his, uh, disdain for defense, which he can't offset by being a ballhandler or an offensive playmaker (and shouldn't have to in Cleveland, anyway). That's not to say he's not a multi-faceted offensive player, but he's hella overrated.


What I won't do is have a discussion centered around PER, since the stat is kind of useless.

[DarkAzcura]

No, I understood your point and agreed with a lot of it: no point in discussing things we both agree with though, right? 

Posted a long response, got logged out.

The problem with Love is that if he's your best player, you're not making the playoffs, and if he's not your best player, he's going to underwhelm. That's disconcerting to see, particularly since Love hasn't show any adaptability to his game -- unlike Ellis, who has shown that he can contribute positively to a team when paired with good teammates -- when he isn't the #1 option. There's also his, uh, disdain for defense, which he can't offset by being a ballhandler or an offensive playmaker (and shouldn't have to in Cleveland, anyway). That's not to say he's not a multi-faceted offensive player, but he's hella overrated.


What I won't do is have a discussion centered around PER, since the stat is kind of useless.

There is no discussion centered around PER. PER is actually a fine stat to figure out a player's offensive production/impact. It correlates fine on that side of the floor, and if you understand that, PER is good enough in a sense. Now if you use it to judge a player's overall impact (including defense), then yeah, you are looking at a mess of an argument. That's not what I am doing, though.

Also, it's not really fair to say Love can't adjust if he isn't the best player. In the modern era, with the pace so low, it's pretty much proven at this point that the third player on these "Big 3" teams will get slighted quite a bit. The adjustments Love has to make isn't really fair for a guy with his skillset. Contrary to popular belief, Ray Allen didn't really work that well in Boston. It was clear by the end of it all, he felt slighted and felt like he sacrificed too much for the Celtics. It's true. His ball handling duties greatly diminished the minute he walked in the door, and while his shooting was amazing, we didn't get the "full" Ray Allen experience. The offense was never as good as it should have been between Pierce, Garnett, and Allen. We had some of the best defense ever to make up for it, though. Bosh suffered the same issues in Miami.

I'm not even sure who is overrating Love these days anyway. Everyone was pretty much down his throat this whole season about how much he "sucks." Everyone knows he is an offensive player first. He won't be able to make the defensive changes that Bosh made. They are using him wrong, imo.

To be honest, while Love hasn't made the most ideal adjustment to "role player" status like these third guys do...I question how much Irving could make that adjustment even though I think he'd be best in that role. To me, before this past season, Irving was more of an example of a "big numbers, bad team" player than Love was. On second though, I don't like that phrase much anyway. We had to deal with general NBA fans underrating Pierce for years for similar reasons, and we all know/knew how untrue it was. Irving and Love can both clearly play on winning teams. They make winning plays and are smart offensive players. I just think they'd be a better offensive team if they flipped their roles.

[D.o.s.]

I think you're glossing over the fact that Allen was 32 and coming off of dual ankle surgery (a procedure that ended his season) when you try to equate the two situations. Milwaukee's Ray Allen was not walking through that door.

The Bosh comparison is similar, but I think Bosh is a better player than Love is -- born out by the fact that he was able to adjust his game accordingly when paired with better teammates. Now, there's an argument to be made that Love hasn't had a fair chance to get over the adjustment period, but the idea that the Cavaliers should make the adjustments around the third most important player on their team (yeah, we disagree here) is hilarious to me.

Also [dang] dude quit adding paragraphs while I'm responding. 

[DarkAzcura]

I think you're glossing over the fact that Allen was 32 and coming off of dual ankle surgery (a procedure that ended his season) when you try to equate the two situations. Milwaukee's Ray Allen was not walking through that door.

The Bosh comparison is similar, but I think Bosh is a better player than Love is -- born out by the fact that he was able to adjust his game accordingly when paired with better teammates. Now, there's an argument to be made that Love hasn't had a fair chance to get over the adjustment period, but the idea that the Cavaliers should make the adjustments around the third most important player on their team (yeah, we disagree here) is hilarious to me.

Yeah we will disagree there. I don't think Irving is that amazing, and that's where the difference in opinion will be.

[D.o.s.]

I think you're glossing over the fact that Allen was 32 and coming off of dual ankle surgery (a procedure that ended his season) when you try to equate the two situations. Milwaukee's Ray Allen was not walking through that door.

The Bosh comparison is similar, but I think Bosh is a better player than Love is -- born out by the fact that he was able to adjust his game accordingly when paired with better teammates. Now, there's an argument to be made that Love hasn't had a fair chance to get over the adjustment period, but the idea that the Cavaliers should make the adjustments around the third most important player on their team (yeah, we disagree here) is hilarious to me.

Yeah we will disagree there. I don't think Irving is that amazing, and that's where the difference in opinion will be.

That's so not the point anyway.