Rumors: Boston Celtics might trade 3rd overall pick in 2016 NBA draft for Okafor

[LarBrd33]

I dug into the numbers a bit and it looks like Okafor's on-court harm on offense comes from two sources: a lower steal rate, and a higher turnover rate.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/okafoja01/on-off/2016/

Looking at the lineup data, he was most often subbed out by Philly going small (with essentially two SFs and another big).

That could be contributing to both of those differences. Almost any small forward will have fewer turnovers and more steals than a typical C/PF.

 Of course, it's also likely that Okafor himself is at fault, being both both turnover-prone and hardly a ball-hawk.

If there's a silver lining, it's that turnover problems are one of the more fixable issues for young big men.

He only averaged 2.3 turnovers per game.  It was likely just the talent around him (athletic d-leaguers who can't shoot worth crap) having no clue how to play with a player like that.   As I said above, when your team is entirely composed of athletic d-league talent, you're going to have slightly more success in quick lineups that force turnovers for fast breaks.  Clearly, a half-court offense built around ball movement and spreading the floor for a dangerous post-player was out of the question.   As I said above, it also didn't help that Philly was intentionally trying to lose games and had little interest in putting a coherent lineup out there... Okafor often was playing next to Nerlens Noel, who is a wonderful prospect as well, but CLEARLY not a power forward.  Noel's numbers playing PF compared to playing C were dramatically different.   When they shared the court together, it was a disaster for pretty logical reasons.   Also, Okafor was getting double-teamed nightly so it's surprising he only had 2.3 turnovers per game.  There's several reasons for why the advance might stats look at Okafor poorly and most of them do not suggest Okafor is a bad player with a low ceiling. 

[PickNRoll]

Okafor could never be a net negative on offense.

he literally was one this year.

blame the system and blame the terribleness of his teammates. Fine, but when he played Philly was worse on offense than when he did not play. He was a net negative.

Thats not really negotiable.

BS.  Statistical BS.  I watched a lot of Sixer's games and he's far and away their best offensive player.  Arguably THE best offensive rookie.

that sucks for you.

I did not watch much Philly. Most of what I say here is based on stats a few games watched and other opinions of Okafor. I too prefer the eye test and have always been impressed with Jahlil. He also has always looked quicker to me than the scout reports indicate and the way he hold the ball is ridiculous. However, I have a hard time refuting that stat. It wasnt a small gap. It was like 8 points.

There was a huge amount of statistical variance.  One night they literally get blown out by 55.  Late in the season, with Ish Smith and a couple vets, they improve and stayed close in some games.  Imagine what can happen to plus-minus when your opponent goes on 32-6 runs with regularity.  This isn't the Spurs grinding you down.  This is a wildly inconsistent team.  Sometimes Okafor exits in a close game.  Often he exits down 20.  The 2nd team of 76er's D-leaguer's is every bit as likely to make a run as the first 4 plus okafor. 

Statistical noise.

[LarBrd33]

Okafor could never be a net negative on offense.

he literally was one this year.

blame the system and blame the terribleness of his teammates. Fine, but when he played Philly was worse on offense than when he did not play. He was a net negative.

Thats not really negotiable.

BS.  Statistical BS.  I watched a lot of Sixer's games and he's far and away their best offensive player.  Arguably THE best offensive rookie.

that sucks for you.

I did not watch much Philly. Most of what I say here is based on stats a few games watched and other opinions of Okafor. I too prefer the eye test and have always been impressed with Jahlil. He also has always looked quicker to me than the scout reports indicate and the way he hold the ball is ridiculous. However, I have a hard time refuting that stat. It wasnt a small gap. It was like 8 points.

There was a huge amount of statistical variance.  One night they literally get blown out by 55.  Late in the season, with Ish Smith and a couple vets, they improve and stayed close in some games.  Imagine what can happen to plus-minus when your opponent goes on 32-6 runs with regularity.  This isn't the Spurs grinding you down.  This is a wildly inconsistent team.  Sometimes Okafor exits in a close game.  Often he exits down 20.  The 2nd team of 76er's D-leaguer's is every bit as likely to make a run as the first 4 plus okafor. 

Statistical noise.

exactly... and that's why guys like Anthony Davis have advanced stats that showed they were better in lineups he didn't play - usually highly drafted rookies are playing on garbage teams. 

[hodgy03038]

In 2002, Ricky Davis averaged 20.6 points per game.

He was a BAD player. I'm sure there many other examples.

[Boris Badenov]

I dug into the numbers a bit and it looks like Okafor's on-court harm on offense comes from two sources: a lower steal rate, and a higher turnover rate.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/okafoja01/on-off/2016/

Looking at the lineup data, he was most often subbed out by Philly going small (with essentially two SFs and another big).

That could be contributing to both of those differences. Almost any small forward will have fewer turnovers and more steals than a typical C/PF.

 Of course, it's also likely that Okafor himself is at fault, being both both turnover-prone and hardly a ball-hawk.

If there's a silver lining, it's that turnover problems are one of the more fixable issues for young big men.

He only averaged 2.3 turnovers per game.  It was likely just the talent around him (athletic d-leaguers who can't shoot worth crap) having no clue how to play with a player like that. 

Those numbers aren't "advanced stats" but anyway Jerami Grant's turnover percentage is around 12% compared to over 19% for Okafor.

I agree with you about the style of play. I'm just decomposing the numbers.

Another interesting tidbit is that the ast% and fg% numbers both drop sharply with Okafor on the floor. Now, he himself had quite a decent fg%, so he wasn't shooting his team out of the game. More so that his presence was bogging down the offense.

Again, that's surely part him (a rookie big man playing against good team defense for the first time) and partly his teammates...the PGs were replacement-level at best, and the rest of the guys were as you say D-leaguers.

I end up coming down pretty firmly with the view of "these could be very fixable issues on a different team but we don't know for sure."

[Ilikesports17]

For me Okafor came into the league as a guy who we knew would be able to score in the post, but we didnt know if he could rebound and there were concerns about his defensive ability and ability to fit into a lineup because of his oddly 1 dimensional skillset.

Now we have answered 0 questions, raised probably a few more, confirmed he can score in the post and also added character concerns and a knee injury to the equation.

That all adds up, to me, to Okafor having a substantial but not mindnumbing drop in value from last draft when he went 3rd behind Deangelo Russell. As such, I think it would put his value close to the 3rd pick this year.

[LarBrd33]

I dug into the numbers a bit and it looks like Okafor's on-court harm on offense comes from two sources: a lower steal rate, and a higher turnover rate.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/okafoja01/on-off/2016/

Looking at the lineup data, he was most often subbed out by Philly going small (with essentially two SFs and another big).

That could be contributing to both of those differences. Almost any small forward will have fewer turnovers and more steals than a typical C/PF.

 Of course, it's also likely that Okafor himself is at fault, being both both turnover-prone and hardly a ball-hawk.

If there's a silver lining, it's that turnover problems are one of the more fixable issues for young big men.

He only averaged 2.3 turnovers per game.  It was likely just the talent around him (athletic d-leaguers who can't shoot worth crap) having no clue how to play with a player like that. 

Those numbers aren't "advanced stats" but anyway Jerami Grant's turnover percentage is around 12% compared to over 19% for Okafor.

I agree with you about the style of play. I'm just decomposing the numbers.

Another interesting tidbit is that the ast% and fg% numbers both drop sharply with Okafor on the floor. Now, he himself had quite a decent fg%, so he wasn't shooting his team out of the game. More so that his presence was bogging down the offense.

Again, that's surely part him (a rookie big man playing against good team defense for the first time) and partly his teammates...the PGs were replacement-level at best, and the rest of the guys were as you say D-leaguers.

I end up coming down pretty firmly with the view of "these could be very fixable issues on a different team but we don't know for sure."

Bottom line is that there's a multitude of factors that contribute to those "on court/off court" stats.

It doesn't really come down to them making more shots with Okafor sitting.  If anything, it's defense-related.  Obviously the anti-okafors will jump for glee at that comment, but I think it's less about Okafor and more about Nerlens NOel.  Noel has proven to be an exceptional defensive player.  He has by far the highest defensive rating on the team and clearly plays far better when he's anchoring the defense from the center position.   His stats at center vs power forward last season were night and day.  Any hope at success Philly had last season revolved around Noel's defense creating offense - and any lineup featuring Okafor pushed Noel out of the picture for the most part. 

So it shouldn't be a total surprise that a team of young athletic players would feed off Noel's defense.   It's not like they flourished - they still sucked... but obviously philly didn't have the right talent to put around Okafor and any lineup featuring him was going to struggle compared to a lineup built around Noel's defense.

That said, Okafor is young and can improve on the defensive end.  And anyone who has watched him play can see he's a versatile and potentially dominant offensive threat that you can succeed with if you have the right surrounding talent. 

Boston has some decent guards.  Having Okafor down low could potentially open things up for them.  There's a chance Okafor would flourish here.   When you consider that some of our options with the #3 pick might result in role player talent, it's easy to get excited about the possibility of trading the pick for a legit prospect like Okafor.

[LarBrd33]

In 2002, Ricky Davis averaged 20.6 points per game.

He was a BAD player. I'm sure there many other examples.

I think off-brand Jimmy Butler gets a bad rep.   Davis had some game. 

[D Dub]

I'm not convinced our team has the 3pt shooting to make Okafor thrive.  If he can operate in the P/R with Isaiah, I'm sure he'll do well --- but I don't think Brad intends to run much low post isolation. 

that said, Okafor can flat out score -- which is what we so desperately need so maybe Ainge thinks he should just nab him now and sort out the details later? 

[PickNRoll]

In 2002, Ricky Davis averaged 20.6 points per game.

He was a BAD player. I'm sure there many other examples.

I think by BAD you mean "guys with a score-first mentality" or guys who don't play the "Celtic way".  I don't think Davis was "bad".

[Granath]

Bottom line is that there's a multitude of factors that contribute to those "on court/off court" stats.

The #1 factor being Okafor was on the court.

It doesn't really come down to them making more shots with Okafor sitting.  If anything, it's defense-related. 

The 7.5 point differential is offense only. Philly was also markedly worse defensively with Okafor on the court but I'm not even bothering to factor that in.

Obviously the anti-okafors will jump for glee at that comment, but I think it's less about Okafor and more about Nerlens NOel.  Noel has proven to be an exceptional defensive player.  He has by far the highest defensive rating on the team and clearly plays far better when he's anchoring the defense from the center position.   His stats at center vs power forward last season were night and day.  Any hope at success Philly had last season revolved around Noel's defense creating offense - and any lineup featuring Okafor pushed Noel out of the picture for the most part. 

So it shouldn't be a total surprise that a team of young athletic players would feed off Noel's defense.   It's not like they flourished - they still sucked... but obviously philly didn't have the right talent to put around Okafor and any lineup featuring him was going to struggle compared to a lineup built around Noel's defense.

If your argument is that Okafor was so bad on defense that he dragged down the offense, I don't think that's helping your cause any.

That said, Okafor is young and can improve on the defensive end. 

Couldn't get much worse, that's for sure. But he may never get better.

And anyone who has watched him play can see he's a versatile and potentially dominant offensive threat that you can succeed with if you have the right surrounding talent.

I wouldn't call him versatile. It's not like you can stick him out at 3 point land. He's an interior PF/C who does have some nice scoring touch. He's also currently a space-hogging, ball-hogging, old-fashioned PF/C who is a mediocre rebounder and who doesn't really generate offense for the other players on the court.

Boston has some decent guards.  Having Okafor down low could potentially open things up for them.  There's a chance Okafor would flourish here.   When you consider that some of our options with the #3 pick might result in role player talent, it's easy to get excited about the possibility of trading the pick for a legit prospect like Okafor.

There is a chance that Okafor would flourish here. There's also a chance that he's not going to get significantly better.

Look, Philly was truly awful last year. Okafor gets somewhat of a pass for that. But it's hard to look at him and his stats and then compare those with someone like Noel. Despite how terrible Philly was, Noel's advanced statistics aren't awful - especially when you consider that they played a lot together (in fact, it was Philly's most common lineup). Which means when you look at lineups for Philly, Noel + Okafor was a disaster. Okafor without Noel was a disaster. But Noel without Okafor was actually reasonably (at least for that team) successful.

I'm not entirely anti-Okafor. But the excuses that some of you concoct to try to excuse his play last year are pretty absurd. Not only does ANYONE in Philly need a different environment to try to thrive, Okafor needs some serious coaching, a conditioning expert and a good swift kick in the ass so he pounds the boards better, he actually tries on defense and he's not a black hole on offense. Now if Danny & Co. believe that they can do that, then I'm all for it. But don't act like Okafor's not a major project - there's a lot of work to be done for him to be a true pro and a lot of that work is between his ears. That kind of work scares me a bit because there's only so much someone else can do in that case. If he's not motivated to play defense or hit the boards, he'll find his role in the NBA is just being a scoring punch off the bench.

By the way, that "swift kick" is one of the reasons I think trading Smart would be a mistake if you bring in someone like Okafor. Smart's offensive game last year was awful but let's face it his defensive effort was infectious. The team responded to his lockdown defense and that's why all of his advanced metrics are much, much better than just his ppg stats. He has the ability to lead and putting Smart, Bradley and Jae on the wings would go a long way in hiding Okafor's defensive issues until such time he gets better. That fit is too natural to trade Smart in a package to get Okafor.

[PickNRoll]

A few assorted points

1.  advanced stats have almost no value in analyzing the 2016 Sixers as individuals
2.  Okafor is a far better player than Noel.  I can easily imagine Okafor being a starter on a contender.  Noel is too limited unless your team exactly wants a Tyson Chandler.  Okafor can be an elite scorer and adequate at everything else.  Elite scorers are the hardest to find.
3. Okafor isn't THAT bad a rebounder.  Better D rebounder than O.  17+% of D rebounds is OK.
4. Just because you have a capable post player doesn't mean you throw away your gameplan and feed him like Hakeem.  Steven's biggest strength is finding the best way for guys to contribute, and I'm confident he'd do so with Okafor.

[kraidstar]

I dug into the numbers a bit and it looks like Okafor's on-court harm on offense comes from two sources: a lower steal rate, and a higher turnover rate.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/okafoja01/on-off/2016/

Looking at the lineup data, he was most often subbed out by Philly going small (with essentially two SFs and another big).

That could be contributing to both of those differences. Almost any small forward will have fewer turnovers and more steals than a typical C/PF.

 Of course, it's also likely that Okafor himself is at fault, being both both turnover-prone and hardly a ball-hawk.

If there's a silver lining, it's that turnover problems are one of the more fixable issues for young big men.

He only averaged 2.3 turnovers per game.  It was likely just the talent around him (athletic d-leaguers who can't shoot worth crap) having no clue how to play with a player like that.   As I said above, when your team is entirely composed of athletic d-league talent, you're going to have slightly more success in quick lineups that force turnovers for fast breaks.  Clearly, a half-court offense built around ball movement and spreading the floor for a dangerous post-player was out of the question.   As I said above, it also didn't help that Philly was intentionally trying to lose games and had little interest in putting a coherent lineup out there... Okafor often was playing next to Nerlens Noel, who is a wonderful prospect as well, but CLEARLY not a power forward.  Noel's numbers playing PF compared to playing C were dramatically different.   When they shared the court together, it was a disaster for pretty logical reasons.   Also, Okafor was getting double-teamed nightly so it's surprising he only had 2.3 turnovers per game.  There's several reasons for why the advance might stats look at Okafor poorly and most of them do not suggest Okafor is a bad player with a low ceiling.

A lot of what you're saying is true, but i think you're missing the larger point.

Okafor reminds me a LOT of brook lopez, al jefferson, greg monroe, enes kanter, elton brand, etc. He's primarily a slow-ish post scorer with questionable range and sub-par defense, and is not a "bruiser." You raise the point that Okafor is only 20 and has upside. This is true, maybe he ends up better than all the guys I just mentioned.

But when was the last time we saw a player of his type as a core member of a championship team? I can't think of any offhand, maybe kareem late in his career, after his athleticism had dwindled.

When push comes to shove, I think opposing teams will find a way to solve him in the playoffs. His defense and rebounding will be exploited.  His passing will be exposed via double-teams. Does he have the toughness to battle through a crowd to get a necessary bucket late in a big possession, especially if the refs are swallowing their whistles? Is his FT% high enough so that an opponent can't just foul even if he does get a good shot? This all concerns me.

I just don't think Okafor's skillset translates to victory in the NBA playoffs, especially in this era. The holes in his game will hurt his team if he doesn't have the ball in his hands. He'll need either to improve significantly passing, on the glass and on D or he'll have to have great 2-way players around him. And finding those 2-way players players, especially after surrendering a high draft pick, will be very difficult.

[LarBrd33]

Bottom line is that there's a multitude of factors that contribute to those "on court/off court" stats.

The #1 factor being Okafor was on the court.

It doesn't really come down to them making more shots with Okafor sitting.  If anything, it's defense-related. 

The 7.5 point differential is offense only. Philly was also markedly worse defensively with Okafor on the court but I'm not even bothering to factor that in.

Obviously the anti-okafors will jump for glee at that comment, but I think it's less about Okafor and more about Nerlens NOel.  Noel has proven to be an exceptional defensive player.  He has by far the highest defensive rating on the team and clearly plays far better when he's anchoring the defense from the center position.   His stats at center vs power forward last season were night and day.  Any hope at success Philly had last season revolved around Noel's defense creating offense - and any lineup featuring Okafor pushed Noel out of the picture for the most part. 

So it shouldn't be a total surprise that a team of young athletic players would feed off Noel's defense.   It's not like they flourished - they still sucked... but obviously philly didn't have the right talent to put around Okafor and any lineup featuring him was going to struggle compared to a lineup built around Noel's defense.

If your argument is that Okafor was so bad on defense that he dragged down the offense, I don't think that's helping your cause any.

That's about as far as I got.

You aren't understanding my point.  If you don't have players who can shoot or score, one method of scoring might be through creating turnovers and having fast breaks.  Philly's team was garbage, but one thing it had was athletic and explosive d-league talent.   

By suggesting my argument is that "Okafor was so bad on defense he dragged down the offense", I have to assume you aren't understanding what I'm talking about.  Nerlens Noel is an exceptional defensive player.  His defense is actually one of the lone bright spots of that roster.  In-fact, during the 2014-15 season, Philly's defense was #1 in the entire league in minutes Noel played.  Fast-forward a year and Philly is trying to integrate Okafor into a rotation that has no supporting pieces for Okafor's game.  When Okafor is on the floor, Noel was playing out of position and not doing what he does best - creating offense through defense.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of creating offense through defense, you might want to read up on the 1960s Celtics.   Bill Russell wasn't a great offensive player.  Do you think Boston's offense was better or worse with Russell off the court? 

Anyways... this is getting boring.  People don't get it with Okafor.  It's fine.  Ainge does.  That's all that matters.  Hopefully Ainge can get him.

Still waiting for someone to look up the on court/off court rookie stats for guys like Anthony Davis as a rookie.  If it was 5+ points better without him, does that mean the #1 factor in the stat was that they were bad with Davis on the court?  heh.

[PickNRoll]

I dug into the numbers a bit and it looks like Okafor's on-court harm on offense comes from two sources: a lower steal rate, and a higher turnover rate.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/o/okafoja01/on-off/2016/

Looking at the lineup data, he was most often subbed out by Philly going small (with essentially two SFs and another big).

That could be contributing to both of those differences. Almost any small forward will have fewer turnovers and more steals than a typical C/PF.

 Of course, it's also likely that Okafor himself is at fault, being both both turnover-prone and hardly a ball-hawk.

If there's a silver lining, it's that turnover problems are one of the more fixable issues for young big men.

He only averaged 2.3 turnovers per game.  It was likely just the talent around him (athletic d-leaguers who can't shoot worth crap) having no clue how to play with a player like that.   As I said above, when your team is entirely composed of athletic d-league talent, you're going to have slightly more success in quick lineups that force turnovers for fast breaks.  Clearly, a half-court offense built around ball movement and spreading the floor for a dangerous post-player was out of the question.   As I said above, it also didn't help that Philly was intentionally trying to lose games and had little interest in putting a coherent lineup out there... Okafor often was playing next to Nerlens Noel, who is a wonderful prospect as well, but CLEARLY not a power forward.  Noel's numbers playing PF compared to playing C were dramatically different.   When they shared the court together, it was a disaster for pretty logical reasons.   Also, Okafor was getting double-teamed nightly so it's surprising he only had 2.3 turnovers per game.  There's several reasons for why the advance might stats look at Okafor poorly and most of them do not suggest Okafor is a bad player with a low ceiling.

A lot of what you're saying is true, but i think you're missing the larger point.

Okafor reminds me a LOT of brook lopez, al jefferson, greg monroe, enes kanter, elton brand, etc. He's primarily a slow-ish post scorer with questionable range and sub-par defense, and is not a "bruiser." You raise the point that Okafor is only 20 and has upside. This is true, maybe he ends up better than all the guys I just mentioned.

But when was the last time we saw a player of his type as a core member of a championship team? I can't think of any offhand, maybe kareem late in his career, after his athleticism had dwindled.

When push comes to shove, I think opposing teams will find a way to solve him in the playoffs. His defense and rebounding will be exploited.  His passing will be exposed via double-teams. Does he have the toughness to battle through a crowd to get a necessary bucket late in a big possession, especially if the refs are swallowing their whistles? Is his FT% high enough so that an opponent can't just foul even if he does get a good shot? This all concerns me.

I just don't think Okafor's skillset translates to victory in the NBA playoffs, especially in this era. The holes in his game will hurt his team if he doesn't have the ball in his hands. He'll need either to improve significantly passing, on the glass and on D or he'll have to have great 2-way players around him. And finding those 2-way players players, especially after surrendering a high draft pick, will be very difficult.

Almost every good team has big slow guys with limited range: Duncan, Tristan Thompson, Valunciunas, Bynum.  Heck, it's probably been true since Naismith.  It's why we have positions.