Where do you get that Mazzulla kept Jaylen out of a chunk of his 2Q minutes? He brought him back in with 8:30 left in the quarter which was over 1:30 sooner than he did in both G1 and G3.
Celtics vs Da Culture - Round 1 (FIGHT!)
- Thread starter Ed Hillel
- Start date
Yes, Tatum has clearly studied Miami's tendencies and approach to him really hard. Most of the time in this series, when he's taken what looks like an extra dribble, it's been because he's manipulating their defensive principles to open something up.
No worries about picking on me fair or unfair.
Kind of reminds me of discussion about pitcher wins in baseball. Yes, wins is not a great stat. But at the end of the day, it's a data point and when taking in context, might give us clues about a player's performance. I mean if a pitcher is piling up losses and the team is hitting, it's probably evident that the pitcher isn't pitching very well. Other stats may tell us why.
Just to put my post in context, there were murmurs that Jrue was not very good in the first three games. It was my impression that the people coming to this conclusion did so because they saw a few instances - over three games - where Jrue made a bad TO or took an ugly shot or failed to close-out or got lost on defense.
It is my belief that while Jrue might have been spotty on offense in G1-G3, his defense was for the most part superb and is a big reason why BOS is holding MIA under 100 points for 3 games plus G2 was more about a team-wide lack of effort, not just Jrue (which is why I decided to break down Exasperated Guy's G2 rant).
Along with my belief about Jrue, I offered up his +/- to show that maybe people who were thinking that Jrue sucked for three games may have overweighted his very visible bad plays and underweighted what he routinely does on the defensive end.
But I understand that +/- isn't conclusive. Sure, Jrue might have been super lucky to be on the court when other players went supernova or just took over certain periods, which would inflate his +/-. And frankly, we'll never have anything conclusive about how Jrue played in G1-G3 unless we broke down every play (which I presume the Cs have done).
So I don't mind when people mention +/-, even for one game. I think we're all smart enough to give it the appropriate weight (or lack thereof) depending on what point is trying to be made. I mean PHI in G1-G4 was something like +40 when Embiid was on the court and -38 in the 32 minutes that Embiid was off the court. I think (and other people who have podcasts also think) this says something somewhat meaningful about PHI's roster construction. Maybe you don't. Which is fine. But it's an interesting stat to mention.
And as we always say, YMMV.
I find Jrue maddening at times, mostly when it comes to occasional shot selection and the random lazy turnover, but I don't think any of that is new. I do think his defense may actually be a bit underrated. He's such a different type of defender than a lot of guards. He's not Marcus Smart, diving on the floor and doing really obvious DPOY-type stuff. His value lies in his versatility. He's so strong that he can guard 1-5, he has great hands, and he's such an unbelievable help defender that he blows up actions all over the floor. He's a bit like a guard version of Al Horford defensively.
Him and White just give you excellent, solid defense with 0 chaos.. and they play within the team’s scheme.. it’s calming to watch.
Small sample +/- is obviously wonky as hell, and you can’t take much from it going forward.
But, playoffs are all about small samples, and I think it’s fair to say that Jrue hasn’t hurt the team like some have said.
But, playoffs are all about small samples, and I think it’s fair to say that Jrue hasn’t hurt the team like some have said.
Well since you put it THAT way…..open the floodgates!!!!No worries about picking on me fair or unfair.
An “Airing of Grievances” thread could be SoSH legendary in here! Maybe after the parade when everyone is less stressed lol.
Love this idea. After the parade.Well since you put it THAT way…..open the floodgates!!!!
An “Airing of Grievances” thread could be SoSH legendary in here! Maybe after the parade when everyone is less stressed lol.
I'm coming after the Bender fans.
The silver lining of KP going down (for hopefully just a couple of weeks) is that this team has done a really good job all year of digging in and focusing when one of the starters is out. This is absolutely a game that this team has lost in the past, and I'm optimistic that KP being out means the team is less likely to put in a subpar effort in closing out the series.
Mazzula said on 98.5 this morning that KP will be re-evaluated in a week. If the Celtics win this series either tonight or Friday and Cleveland closes it out in 6 on Friday night, the series would start on Sunday. If any one of these two series goes 7, the 2nd round series would start on Tuesday.
Sean Grande posted the 2nd round series schedules. If the 2nd round series starts on Sunday, Game 2 would be Tuesday but Game 3 would not be until Saturday the 11th. After that there would be a game every other day If the series starts on Tuesday the 7th, Games 2-7 would be every other day. Regardless, the latest the 2nd round can go is 18 days from now. I believe the ECF would start on the 21st.
So, KP has 3 weeks to get right. Let's hope that is enough time.
Sean Grande posted the 2nd round series schedules. If the 2nd round series starts on Sunday, Game 2 would be Tuesday but Game 3 would not be until Saturday the 11th. After that there would be a game every other day If the series starts on Tuesday the 7th, Games 2-7 would be every other day. Regardless, the latest the 2nd round can go is 18 days from now. I believe the ECF would start on the 21st.
So, KP has 3 weeks to get right. Let's hope that is enough time.
Tillman v. Kornet (not that they can’t both get some run) is interesting. Offensively, X is closer to a like-for-like replacement with his theoretical range, but I worry that any minutes he’s in there Miami will just help off everything to leave him open perimeter looks a la Marcus and that unit will sink or swim based on whether he can hit one or two.
Whereas Kornet is more strictly going to be screening, moving the ball, and rim running so it’s a different look entirely.
Whereas Kornet is more strictly going to be screening, moving the ball, and rim running so it’s a different look entirely.
I love Tillman, but Kornet solves some rim protection and rebounding issues for us that only a super tall guy can do. Tillman should get some minutes to spell Luke. The offense has enough firepower not to care which guy helps the offense more.
This doesn't seem too hard a decision to me. We expected Kornet would be fine against Miami, they put him in, and he was fine.
He does a lot of stuff well in the offense that works against zone or man (underrated screener). He has a lot of additional OReb equity. And him in the drop isn't that different from KP, so Jrue/DWhite/Tatum can keep doing their thing.
I'd be mildly surprised if Tillman plays at all tonight, and very surprised if he plays more than 8 minutes.
This is a little random, but the thing I really love about watching Jrue play defense is how effective he is at getting people to go where he wants them to go.
It's partly his strength/size, and partly his quickness, and partly I'm guessing a good sense of anticipation, but he just consistently does a great job of making this difficult for people. Back when he was on the Bucks this could take the form of him getting Jaylen to go left when Jaylen really wanted to go right, and then doing that combination of trailing the play just enough that Jaylen didn't reverse and finally get to go right, while also being in the play enough to bother Jaylen's drive.
Playing against that guy must be constantly frustrating, and also a little exhausting, as everything is 10-20% harder than it might be on other nights.
This is one of those stereotypical things that doesn't end up the box score, or which can also sometimes look like bad defense. Like, Jrue can move guys off their line, and get them to take a shot they didn't want to take from a part of the court they don't shoot well from, and then at the end not contest the shot a ton, in part because he's been denying something else. And the lack of contest can make him look bad. But the lack of contest is part of what gets the guy to take a crappy shot. If instead, Jrue played tighter / more clearly got ready for a strong contest, maybe the guy pump fakes him into the air, drives to where he wanted to go originally, and takes a much better shot.
Anyway, that was a slightly random Jrue appreciation post for your Wednesday afternoon
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I think Tillman is more an answer for bigger teams and/or widebody scorers (Cleveland, maybe Orlando, Knicks or Philly/Mil/Denver) than a team like Miami. He might play depth minutes if needed because of foul trouble or if Kornet has some conditioning issue (doubtful) but I don't think he's a rotation guy tonight.
to build on EFDM's point on Jrue: he is one of the bsaketball players really skilled at "making them play left-handed" to use a Belichick phrase. And like many Pats D schemes, it's not easy to diagnose or measure other than in the results
to build on EFDM's point on Jrue: he is one of the bsaketball players really skilled at "making them play left-handed" to use a Belichick phrase. And like many Pats D schemes, it's not easy to diagnose or measure other than in the results
One of the nice thing about lawyers is that you can usually bet on them to not take personally something that was clearly not meant personally.No worries about picking on me fair or unfair.
To be clear, I largely agree with you that Jrue has been good to very good, and aside from some isolated plays has been a rock on defense. I genuinely didn't mean to pick on you or the point you were making because I happened to think it was true! But:
Yeah that's the thing - the proposition is likely no more or less true for having cited single-game +/- than if nothing has been cited at all.But I understand that +/- isn't conclusive. Sure, Jrue might have been super lucky to be on the court when other players went supernova or just took over certain periods, which would inflate his +/-. And frankly, we'll never have anything conclusive about how Jrue played in G1-G3 unless we broke down every play (which I presume the Cs have done).
So I don't mind when people mention +/-, even for one game. I think we're all smart enough to give it the appropriate weight (or lack thereof) depending on what point is trying to be made. I mean PHI in G1-G4 was something like +40 when Embiid was on the court and -38 in the 32 minutes that Embiid was off the court. I think (and other people who have podcasts also think) this says something somewhat meaningful about PHI's roster construction. Maybe you don't. Which is fine. But it's an interesting stat to mention.
And as we always say, YMMV.
There has been a long-term struggle to quantify single-game impact. In baseball, we have runs added from each at-bat, which is helpfully discrete, and can adjust for leverage, on-base and outs situation, and other such things to tell us exactly how much difference a player made on either side of the ball. In basketball, possessions are discrete enough, usually, but the interplay between players and the fluid impact of defense and decision-making means we'll only ever approach an idea of how much difference a player made on a given possession. But if we don't have that, we can't aggregate up to a single game, so we're left with top-down things that merely approximate.
One of those tools is plus-minus, or adjusted plus-minus, or box plus-minus, or the various derivations of it (which notably include DARKO and LEBRON). Another is game score, which is a nice little heuristic imported from baseball that probably has some value (as long as we note that it just measures what box score stats measure, which avoids a lot of defense). I think it's probably an incremental improvement over +/-, much the same as both are an improvement over "points!", which we thankfully usually avoid around here. +/- does have the benefit of capturing some aspect of a player's defensive contributions
But just as it's very possible to have a player who scores a lot of empty points in a game, it's very possible to have an empty plus-minus, where you were a passenger on some strong passages of play by the rest of your team, or the other team's shooters happened to hit when you were out and miss when you were in. That's why we have adjustments to the raw number, to account for some aspects of shooting variance, garbage time, who you played with, etc (depending on which version and how fancy it is). If someone deeper into the basketball analytics stuff than I am thinks there's a clear winner among the approaches, I'd be interested to learn it.
Hence the need to eliminate some of the noise by accumulating greater sample size of the metric, before we start drawing conclusions with it. And as with other similar metrics where with small sample sizes, the noise can swamp the signal, it is also true that extreme outliers can be notable even in smaller sample sizes. But that means, like, Embiid's 50-point game combined with a few other games. It doesn't mean the difference between guys' individual +/-s within a game can be reasonable compared, or (For small differences) even doing so across a 4-game sample.
We lawyers don't have feelings so you can say anything you want about us!
Maybe this is beating a dead horse, but just to be clear, I wasn't citing single game +/- (which is simply a discrete number that exists whether or not it provides much value) in support of my proposition.
I cited it to suggest that people may want to re-evaluate how they grade Jrue's actual on-court performance, which all of us do by instinct and some people do with a more stringent methodology. I understand that none of us generally have the time or inclination to re-watch previous games but the possibility that Jrue was not mediocre or worst may help when people look at plays or highlights from those games.
I definitely agree with you that there is no one statistic that is going to tell us whether someone played well in a game. In reality, the only way any of us could figure that out is to sit down and grade every play kind of the way PFF does it for football - although I'd guess that there's even more guesswork in basketball without knowing more about the offensive and defensive schemes that are being used.
Hope this makes sense.
Isn’t the +/- an issue of whether we view as predictive vs descriptive? +/- in a single game pretty clearly says what happened while that player was on the court, but a full season sample of +/- more accurately says how much of a role they played in that performance and what their expected impact is in the short term
i’d say it’s not descriptive either, because folks usually use it to point to some idea of individual impact. and it doesn’t describe impact well at all over a single game.
At its most basic, it says “the team outscored the opponent by this much when this player was on the floor” which has some value to show they were apart of lineups that worked or didn’t work. It doesn’t detail the amount of the impact or if it’s repeatable, but it tells a part of the story
Horford is only a plus two after one half of game five. Maybe he really is average.
The trouble is that it's usually cited as individual numbers - because they can be individualized - and then used to bolster narratives about players. So even when it's used only in a descriptive context, it's stretched beyond its breaking point by whoever is busting it out.
When people talk about the effectiveness of certain lineups, particularly over 100-200+ possessions together, I pay more attention, because it's usually being employed just as you say - used for tactical analysis rather than to grind some player-specific narrative, and aggregated over a reasonable sampling of opponents and game situations. But trying to use small sample sizes to argue about individual player merits - even descriptively - is a fool's errand. That's what I'm saying ought to stop.
The real trouble is that a lot of people don't have an understanding of why small sample sizes are a problem, so they don't recognize situations where small samples are the root cause of letting noise swamp the signal. I.e. That signal can only really be discerned in larger samples, particularly for high-variance variables - and +/- is absolutely one. It might be the single most unstable individual stat game-to-game, in fact.
It's not how big it is, it's how you use it.
Namely, whether you're using a respectable minimum sample size. Otherwise, you're just standing there wagging something ugly in front of the rest of us, and the grumblings are starting that there ought to be fines for such conduct
Even with it being a 5 gamer I’m not sure I can remember a more lopsided Celtics playoff series win. It took Miami getting historically hot from 3 to make one game competitive. I think 30 point leads or close to it in every other game.
Killed 'em in the first quarter, and then spent the next 36 minutes dragging the corpse up and down the Garden to raucous cheers.
I hope Bam can either find his mojo by late July, or give his roster spot to someone who can.
Gotta say, after dumping on Bam’s skills all season it was great to watch him dribble to 12 feet from the hoop, stall, then shoot a dumb fadeaway because he has no moves on every possession.
Fine player but needs to be no more than the 3rd best player on a team. He was joyously painful to watch as the 1A or 1B.
Fine player but needs to be no more than the 3rd best player on a team. He was joyously painful to watch as the 1A or 1B.
You all giving Bam shit are hilarious. He played great all series and his teammates are trash. Yes, he is not a #1 offensive option, we know that.
Give Bam and Butler a surrounding cast like DW, Jrue and Porter/Gordon and it'd be a very different team.
The heat, with the culture etc, , kinda gave up early tonight. Funny how culure, intangibles don't matter when you don't have guys out there that can make shots.