To your first point: Brad apparently has little choice but to ramp up the small ball minutes. But one thing the roster has more of is swings; Crowder, at 6'6", was hardly ideal in the role, but now there are five new players to potentially fill it: Morris, Theis, Ojeleye, Tatum, Yabusele (I've heard people speculate about Nader, too, but he's smaller than Crowder and has less of a solid base). Danny Ainge has gone all-in, it seems, on replacing old-fashioned bigs with new-fashioned swings.
To your second point: yes, but Horford does fit the roster in most other respects - including his veteran leadership - and his game should age well.
This brings us back to the defensive issues, though; if Horford is not big enough to guard the front-line bigs of the NBA, and not quick enough to guard the smaller, quicker 4's - well, where does that leave you?
Crowder is 6'6", 240.
Actually listed at 235.
Amir Johnson is 6'9", 240. KO is 7'0", 240. Together they played 5,481 minutes per game last year. Crowder played the 3/4 role, Johnson was defensive relief off the bench against bigger guys and KO provided outside shooting for the 2nd unit.
Johnson was the starter, actually, and played the role that Oracle defined above - taking the toughest Big cover.
Hayward plays the 3/4 role,
What Brad is proposing is that the 2/3/4 is interchangeable, though he acknowledges that Hayward has not played a lot of 4. But I don't think that you are claiming that Hayward is a big! I believe he has a 7' wingspan... yes, by all means add him to my list of swings.
Baynes is the defensive relief off the bench
That's what I was proposing - that Baynes comes in for Horford. Oracle's argument - which is solid - is that Baynes will start, playing Amir's role from last year. We shall see!
How did we get smaller?
I didn't say that. What I said was that there are fewer bigs: Johnson, Olynyk, Zeller, Jerebko are gone, with only Baynes coming in. You mention Hayward and Morris; but they are not in any sense bigs. At 260, Yabusele might be an exception.
A quick note about Jerebko - he got killed guarding 3's; though he's not a big Big, he played 4, having been ineffective, mostly, at 3 the previous season. Best described as a Tweener,
not a swing.
... I would argue that man-for-man the latter group is better.
However complete or comparable your two lists are, I would agree that the talent level of the roster is higher.
Hayward is a massive upgrade over Crowder.
Well, they have different games. Crowder was used as the Celtics premier wing stopper last year, and he's a much better defensive rebounder than Gordon; that he's also one of the best wing shooters in the league makes him a very valuable commodity. Hayward creates shots, brilliantly, and does it with extraordinarily low turnovers and high shot-efficiency on high usage. Crowder is very, very good.
I'd rather have Morris over KO.
I would not, but Morris is good and fills an important role.
And to answer your question as to who guards fast 4s, that's Morris and Horford takes the Center. If the Center is too much for Horford, then Baynes takes that role and Horford moves to the 4.
Exactly. That's the dilemma in a nutshell.
Horford starting with Morris - I agree, that's what I proposed. But I can also see Oracle's point about Horford guarding Towns and DeAndre, and all the rest...
Another point that I didn't mention is that Morris has a mediocre record as a defensive rebounder - and that was already a problem last year; four of Boston's top five defensive rebounders are gone (if you include Crowder...).
You argue the spacing isn't as good with Horford and Baynes? What spacing did Amir provide? It's not like was an offensive threat and was often left alone on the outside.
Amir had a 13% assist rate on low usage; Baynes had 3.9%. When Amir was left alone, he made opponents pay: .409 from three on 66 attempts.
Baynes may impact the spacing a hair but at least he'll clean up on the offensive glass.
10% last season - not one of the league leaders by any means, though better than any of the Celtics. If he's hanging around the paint that's probably hurting the spacing; he is an effective midrange jumpshooter, though.
He was ineffective on the glass many games and didn't provide much defense.
Eh?! Brad used Amir to guard the toughest big cover - that's the source of this discussion, that he did that so that Horford didn't have to. No - Amir is an excellent defender, and was one of the big reasons that the Celtics were 5th in eFG% against.
