The fact that no one can find Robert Williams for easy lobs other than Smart and occasionally Tatum is infuriating. Last year the Celtics were able to find him on a pick and roll 27% of the time. This year it's only 18%.
The bottom line is that no one on the floor right now can competently run a pick and roll, which is the main diet for their offense.
The Celtics best pick and roll player by PPP is Jaylen Brown, at 1.02 PPP. He's in good company, that's 84th percentile. The rest of the Celtics are under 1 PPP, besides Carsen Edwards, who has a comically high PPP in very few possessions.
Uninspiringly, Jaylen uses the pick and roll the least of the starters, only 15% of the time, while Kemba, who is in the 66TH percentile and scores .92 PPP on the pick and roll, uses it 47% of the time. He's worse than Lonzo Ball, Marcus Smart, Andrew Wiggins, and Tim Hardaway Jr., and tied with Collin Sexton. Kemba is in the 66th percentile in pick and rolls. He uses 9 of them a game, 2 more than Tatum and three more than Jaylen and Marcus Smart combined. Even Fournier beats him out, scoring .95 over in Orlando.
The fall-off after .92 is pretty steep. There's a lot of bad guards on the list below .92. There's just no way to justify Kemba running the offense. He should be taking catch-and-shoot shots way more often, but of course there's no one else who has the energy to throw themselves at the defense 9 times a game on this team and do so with any efficiency. I don't blame Kemba, either. As recently as 2017-2018, he was producing 1.03, just about the same as Chris Paul, Lebron James, and Kevin Durant. 2018-2019 was good too. Last year was even better. And this year he fell off a fucking cliff.
It's no wonder the offense is so mediocre. Jaylen gets knocked for his handle and his vision, which are still under development, but the man is the best scorer they had, and they miss him very badly right now.
The bottom line is that no one on the floor right now can competently run a pick and roll, which is the main diet for their offense.
The Celtics best pick and roll player by PPP is Jaylen Brown, at 1.02 PPP. He's in good company, that's 84th percentile. The rest of the Celtics are under 1 PPP, besides Carsen Edwards, who has a comically high PPP in very few possessions.
Uninspiringly, Jaylen uses the pick and roll the least of the starters, only 15% of the time, while Kemba, who is in the 66TH percentile and scores .92 PPP on the pick and roll, uses it 47% of the time. He's worse than Lonzo Ball, Marcus Smart, Andrew Wiggins, and Tim Hardaway Jr., and tied with Collin Sexton. Kemba is in the 66th percentile in pick and rolls. He uses 9 of them a game, 2 more than Tatum and three more than Jaylen and Marcus Smart combined. Even Fournier beats him out, scoring .95 over in Orlando.
The fall-off after .92 is pretty steep. There's a lot of bad guards on the list below .92. There's just no way to justify Kemba running the offense. He should be taking catch-and-shoot shots way more often, but of course there's no one else who has the energy to throw themselves at the defense 9 times a game on this team and do so with any efficiency. I don't blame Kemba, either. As recently as 2017-2018, he was producing 1.03, just about the same as Chris Paul, Lebron James, and Kevin Durant. 2018-2019 was good too. Last year was even better. And this year he fell off a fucking cliff.
It's no wonder the offense is so mediocre. Jaylen gets knocked for his handle and his vision, which are still under development, but the man is the best scorer they had, and they miss him very badly right now.
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