I Bet AB's Trade Value Is Higher Than Most Think

[CelticSince83]

I would really like to keep him around as this team begins to take the next step.  I think there is an intrinsic value of being the lone holdover from the Big 3 era.  I would imagine it's helpful having a veteran in the locker room who grew up in the organization under PP and KG. 

[csfansince60s]

I agree. ....TP to the OP.

Aside from Curry, just ask Damian Lillard.

“I told him he was the best perimeter defender in the league,” Lillard told reporters via MassLive following Thursday’s game. “Because he is.”

and this is why:

According to Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated, Lillard, who is fifth in the NBA in points per game (25.2), has been held to just 33.6 percent shooting from the floor and 27.5 percent from three in his seven head-to-head contests against Bradley.

https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2016/04/01/damian-lillard-calls-avery-bradley-the-best-perimeter-defender-in-the-league

Curry and Lillard? Pretty impressive. Happy for AB, and hope we keep him.

[fairweatherfan]

I bet if it was higher, he'd already be gone.  I love Avery, but his size at the 2 probably makes teams more lukewarm on him than they should be.  And I think we'd move him before Smart or IT. 

Not to disrespect Avery though, I love him and he's our last link to the Big 3 era (Sully never played with Ray).  Huge part of our season and last night.

[Celtics18]

I bet if it was higher, he'd already be gone.  I love Avery, but his size at the 2 probably makes teams more lukewarm on him than they should be.  And I think we'd move him before Smart or IT. 

Not to disrespect Avery though, I love him and he's our last link to the Big 3 era (Sully never played with Ray).  Huge part of our season and last night.

Ideally Avery should be playing the point guard position full time defensively next to a two or a three who operates as the primary ball handler on offense.

He doesn't have that luxury in Boston, yet he still manages to be successful.  That's a huge credit to him, his back court teammates, and the coaching staff.

[konkmv]

I would trade bradley...but for what... pics we do not need... is a scorer like hayward thompson available?

[trickybilly]

i'd probably do avery for boogie

[Rosco917]

Avery, besides his basketball talent, is really a good respectful kid, gives 100% + all the time, and is a good Celtic. His teammates like and respect him. If you're considering trading him, make sure your not trading him for a punk nitwit, with good stats. Because if AB gets traded, a little bit of the heart of this team will be ripped out. Make sure who ever you trade him for can replace some of that heart, that his teammates see in him.   

[SHAQATTACK]

I agree

With hard work and Patience from DA .....AB is a very nice scorer , great D and decent all around game with,a SOLID attitude and level head .

His willingness to play Defense pushes him past many better shooters in my book who can't or won't play any defense.

AB can still hone his shooting skills more I believe .  He may get better yet.

[ForexPirate]

the new nba that is focused on perimeter shooting.  so when you have three of the top 5 nba defenders in the league, they can make the superstars on the other teams become mortal.  So Jae Crowder is right, the three of them together equal and allstar.  They are celtic green kryptonite.

[Greyman]

AB has more value than the stats show. As mentioned, he has the 'big 3 era' experience. He had to lead the team after that to a large extent. He has adapted well to the CBS system and fits nicely with the current roster. He has the attitude that suggests he will keep improving his shooting and all round play.

AB has great value as a reason why 'star' players would come to Boston. Other players on this roster and CBS have this value too. In AB's case that value could be worth more than his trade value as you would need to be getting an amazing player in to justify losing AB.

[BDeCosta26]

AB's value on the trade market is higher than most of CB realizes. LeBron or OKC would kill to have a guy like him.

I've always defended AB, but I've been open to moving him. Yet, if Ainge is able to make a "win now" kind of move/moves in the summer where we can contend next season (I hope you were watching the GS game KD!), AB needs to be a part of that. He's what, 25?. If we have even a snowballs chance at the finals next season (against GS, most likely), Bradley needs to be here. He's the best Curry defender in the league. That defensive showing on Friday was just spectacular.

[alldaboston]

I remember a few years ago when there was an idea to trade Avery for Ibaka, as a win win for both sides. Thunder get the perimeter defender they need and also another shooter/cutter. Celtics get the rim protector/floor spacing big they need. But at the time, many felt we would need to add more pieces to get that deal to work.

Now, I think the Thunder would need to add pieces to make a deal work, as Ibaka is in the midst of a down year.

I probably wouldn't ship out Avery to get Ibaka anymore, but I also feel that Ibaka should be a target for us, if we can't land bigger fish. He's having a bad year compared to his previous seasons (from what Thunder fans are saying), but his situation screams Batum to me. Batum was also having an awful year with Portland last season, but a new team led to his resurgence kinda. Now, Batum was sent out bc of a restart for Portland, but still, I wouldn't be surprised if the Thunder ship Ibaka. And we should pounce. He could have a resurgence season for us next season.

[crimson_stallion]

Everybody probably knows that I am huge on advanced stats (Real Plus Minus, etc) and I go off those stats a lot.

Avery Bradley is one of the only guys in this league who I have huge love for despite the fact that his advanced stats aren't ever that great.

Bradley currently has RPM stats of:

* Defensive RPM: -0.71 (44th among PG, 40th among SG)
* Offensive RPM: +0.75 (22nd among PG, 17th among SG)
* Total RPM: -0.71 (27th among PG, 28th among SG)

Regardless of whether you rank him at the SG or PG spot, that theoretically puts him in the category of average-to-poor among starting guards, and would lead to the suggestion that he is only borderline worthy of a stating role.

Yet I watch him play, and it seems almost every night I can see the positive impact he makes on the court.  People will argue that he is just a 3+D role player, but if I look at his game by game stats he has had 29 games this year where he has scored 18 points or more.  Considering the fact that he's only played 71 games, that's 40% of all his games played (or two games in five) that he's scoring 18+ points.

IMHO that is more than just an offensive role player.  That's good enough to be a legitimate 3rd scoring option on a Playoff team.

Yet if you look at his shooting percentages, only 64% of all his two point field goal attempts are assisted - which means about 1/3 of all his two point shots are shots he is creating himself.  Not exactly Mr. ISO there, but it shows that he is actually capable of creating offence, which tells me that he's not strictly just a 3+D guy.  In fact 60% of his offence comes from inside the three point line.

Then defensively - sure I know he has weaknesses (such as his struggles at times against really big guards, inability to swith onto bigger SF's, struggles with rotations / team D at times, etc) but his on ball D is absolutely ferocious...and when he is truly locked on, I think there are few players in this league who can disrupt an individual opponent ball-handler the way Bradley can.

All of this on it's own would be enough to make him an asset to any team, but when you throw in his athletic abliity, his youth (25-26 atm) and the fact that he is pretty much the ULTIMATE team guy (work ethic, motor, modesty, willingness to sacrifice for the team, loyalty, etc) you can understand why he'd be a hotly desired asset in the NBA.  I think just about any team in this league would absolutely love to have a guy like Bradley on their squad, especially at his current bargain pay rate.

Really, the only significant criticism you can make about Bradley as a person is you could argue that maybe it would be nice if he was a little bit more angry, or a little bit more ambitious, or a little more versatile in his skill set - but that's really all nitpicking for a guy who you're only paying $7m a year.  I think what we get from him is pretty impressive.

[mmmmm]

Everybody probably knows that I am huge on advanced stats (Real Plus Minus, etc) and I go off those stats a lot.

Avery Bradley is one of the only guys in this league who I have huge love for despite the fact that his advanced stats aren't ever that great.

Bradley currently has RPM stats of:

* Defensive RPM: -0.71 (44th among PG, 40th among SG)
* Offensive RPM: +0.75 (22nd among PG, 17th among SG)
* Total RPM: -0.71 (27th among PG, 28th among SG)

Really, the only significant criticism you can make about Bradley as a person is you could argue that maybe it would be nice if he was a little bit more angry, or a little bit more ambitious, or a little more versatile in his skill set - but that's really all nitpicking for a guy who you're only paying $7m a year.  I think what we get from him is pretty impressive.

Several Celtics fall victim to huge collinearity effects which cause them to not show well with RAPM, so I would not hold Bradley's RAPM numbers against him.

The problem with the Celtics and RAPM is that the Celtics are extremely bipolar offensively based on whether Isaiah is on the floor or not.   Jae Crowder amplifies that effect because not only is he one of the team's strongest players, he has played a huge percentage (79%) of his own minutes with Isaiah.    But Isaiah himself has played only 68% of his minutes with Jae.  Jae's plus-minus data ends up looking pretty positive but others end up looking relatively worse off based on what percentage of their minutes have been on the floor with Isaiah or not.   

Avery, because he plays a lot of minutes with the bench unit, has a large chunk of his minutes (748 out of 2387) that do not have Isaiah on the floor with him.   The Net Rating of Avery's time WITH Isaiah is +7.4.   Without Isaiah it is -1.8.

That's a huge drop in net rating.   It's not because Avery is suddenly a crappy player without IT.  It's because our replacements for IT are ... not as good.

In theory, RAPM adjusts for these effects, but in reality it does a very poor job of it.  If two players play a ton of minutes with each other their +/- data is identical.  If one then plays just a few minutes without the other -- and with a significantly poorer alternative, then the difference in RAPM between the two players is suddenly based entirely on the small sample of crappy teammates that one of them played with and the other didn't.

The net-net of this is not to totally dismiss RAPM, but take it with GIGANTIC error bars.  Seriously.  There are some good papers out there that show that the error bars on RAPM are so huge that you can't really consider the guy ranked 50th as significantly better than the guy ranked 300th.

And with the Celtics, I would use an even bigger grain of salt.   I think you can't just stop at the one-number-to-rule-them-all RAPM.  You need to dive into the full 5-man unit data and the other details to see what is really going on.

On Avery : I concur with most everything you said and have felt that way for some time.  He has steadily improved his game in some important aspect each year, is still young and is a bargain already on his contract.

[LarBrd33]

I think as the team has more success and becomes more relevant, starters like Bradley get an uptick in trade value.   It's the ol Steve Kerr or Luc Longley phenomena.  Guys become more "valuable" by association.  Both those guys got decent contracts later in their careers almost entirely because they played alongside Jordan on championship teams.

Bradley hasn't played for a contender, but he's a starter for a decent playoff team.  His stats have been basically the same for the past 3 years, but I'd guess his trade value is higher than ever.  A couple years ago he might have been looked at as an empty stat guy on a bottomfeeder.  Now that his stats contribute to a back-to-back playoff team, it has to positively impact the perception of him.

Teams were offering us late 1sts for him last offseason, right?  Might be able to get a late lotto pick for him now.  He'd also fill a need for a team like Cleveland.  Bradley would probably be part of a larger trade package if we went after Kevin Love, for instance.