2023-24 Celtics
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Is there any use for any other single game Stat? Personally I find knowing how the team did with a player on or off the court more useful than how many points they scored. That they were +12/-10 with JB on/off is at least interesting. No one is trying to claim it's somehow predictive of anything.
February 4th—after a dusty eyes-level tribute to Marcus Smart, he lights up the Celtics at the Garden for their first home loss. The game ends with the Celtics somehow having more time outs available than they began the game with.
For some reason, I feel like the most Marcus thing will be for him to get super-tight on his homecoming, go like 2-11 from 3, make some over-the-top hustle plays, but lose by 15.
Maybe we can get one more Marcus Smart Lecture on how much the Celtics will fold up without his intangibles & locker room presence.
Ha, hope he gets his flowers, he deserves them and it always felt like he was the de-facto Captain.
BUT man the NBA media rode the Smart culture shock angle hard this summer
Sure. It's interesting. Like points rebounds, and assists are interesting. Even though less informative.
I've been saying this since that headline came out. While we haven't even hit our stride yet despite being 25-6 we have some challenging road stretches that we haven't faced yet so I don't buy whatever they are using to say we have the easiest aside from us being better than most of our opponents which is going to be the case with any 25-6 team.
By having one of the worst offensive showings of any team in the league this year against Indy's awful defense.
For me, using a number that is tied to coaching decisions as well as four other players output for a single game to describe anything seems kind of useless.
For example, you can't take that JB +/- stat and use it for anything - how often will they use some of the line-ups? And unless its an emergency, would they ever do so in the playoffs? Its based on a tiny sample and describes a very unique situation - with a lot of noise layered in.
FWIW, I agree that box score stats by themselves are also pretty useless but X points on Y shots is fairly descriptive and the other box score attributes do tell you something about individual player output versus averages etc. But they aren't really predictive of anything either.
Finally some - not all - people use single game +/- because they can often get numbers that support their biases. We have examples in this very thread.
For a single game, it's descriptive, but of course not predictive. It only becomes predictive in large samples, obviously. Nobody here would try to argue relative player quality using it. But talking about it in the course of explaining what happened in a game, or who had an impact not captured by counting stats, it's still useful.
So, I wouldn't go conflating a bunch of different purposes under the term "using" a stat. Really depends on your goal with it, imo.
Is it really descriptive? For example, some of us joked about the White Sale lineup last night (Derrick, PP, Hauser, Kornet and Zvi). Someone can check me on this but I think they were -1 together on the court. But even if they were +10 or whatever, I am not sure it tells you anything given all the other variables and the single sample size. We likely won't see that lineup much again and if we do it will likely be against different players.
There is almost no informational value to single game +/- imo. People are free to use it of course but maybe include season averages too as a means of comparison. Otherwise it feels like people are using it to make arguments and highlight problems that don't really exist or cannot be proven by traditional stats or actual wins or losses.
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Wut. Can you flush this out? I don’t remember feeling “humiliated” watching this game.
All season long, the Pacers have only held an opponent to fewer than the 112 points the Celtics scored twice. And those were bad offensive teams: the Bulls (21st in offensive rating) and the Spurs (29th).
On top of that, this was the in season tournament elimination game. Which, on the one hand, who cares? But, on the other hand, the Celtic showed that they cared by running up the score the previous week against the Bulls in order to qualify.
Do you think the Celtics felt humiliated? The game was tied with 2 min to go despite a poor shooting night for the Celtics and some absurd makes from the Pacers on contested 3s. And the game was in Indy with a playoff like atmosphere. Good lord.
Outscored 17-7 in the final 2 minutes of an important game is not usually considered a resume builder.
Nor is it considered humiliating. Particularly when 4 points came on a contested 27 foot 3 + foul, and 3 came with 0.1 on the clock when neither team expected Hield to launch a 3. That’s 7 points that I’d put more towards the luck, vs humiliation bucket, but I’m not an expert in analyzing the behavioral attributes of a group of 20-40 year olds I’ve never met in person.
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Man, it takes a lot of effort to find a solitary regular season loss humiliating. Compound that with the facts that this was on the road against a solid team that went nuclear from 3 and was close in the final minutes...yeesh.
Jrue is kind of like a machine but even he had to be tired after picking up Cade 1/2 to 3/4 court for most of the night before. I know Cade looked to be pretty worn down by it.
Agree that DWhite's main limitation - which is probably why he was available for Brad to pounce - is that he's likely not able to be a lead scorer on a team. But he's so good at everything else, he's a great player to have on a championship contender.
He's got to also be close to a lock for the next Olympic team if he wants it.
Eddie House pushed for this on one of the post-game broadcasts.
But it will depend on who is willing to play. According to this article, these players have already expressed interest in playing (It's been reported that Embiid has agreed to play for US, which happened after the article as posted). The team gets to 12 pretty quickly, and while the coaches may prefer a connector to a star, it's going to be hard saying no to all of these stars.
- Curry
- Embiid
- LeBron (maybe)
- KD
- JT
- AD
- Booker
- Kawhi
- JB
- Bam
- Donovan Mitchell
- Zion
- Butler
- Kyrie
- Paul George
- DeMar DeRozan
- Bradley Beal,
- Khris Middleton,
- Julius Randle,
- Zach LaVine
- Aaron Gordon
- Kyle Kuzma,
- Fred VanVleet
- Brook Lopez
I think the 50-point win margin we hung on Indy earlier in the season qualifies, if anything does. But yeah as for the IST game, I'm with Red Averages. It sucks we ran out of gas but that was very much a "ahhh, we'll get 'em next time" kind of loss for me.
well, to start, Zion will be injured….:
a number of those guys don’t fit in that Kyrie, LaVine, Randle, DeRozan, Beal, Kuzma need the ball to be valuable and are duplicative of better guys who need the ball.
I do agree with your larger point—it probably will be tough to pick. And I hope the powers that be recognize you want a few Whites and Bams and Lopez’ to go along with the scorers
It is unclear to me why x points on y shots is used so often, rather than points per possession. An extreme hypothetical could be say Andre Drummond going 1-1 from the field with 10 other shooting fouls drawn. He goes 4 of 20 from the line. 6 points on 1 shot sounds good, but 6 points on 11 possessions not so good.
Another example would be a team with a high number of turnovers making the FGA ratio mislesding.
Not sure if this was posted a few days ago, but its a good 15mins.
@Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat will enjoy the Derrick White All-star consideration talk and STATS
ALSO does anyone have a problem with JJ highlighting absolute +/- for White over 26 games?
OR maybe JJ is using +/- because he wants to confirm his Derrick White bias
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O5u6AzArlY
@Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat will enjoy the Derrick White All-star consideration talk and STATS
ALSO does anyone have a problem with JJ highlighting absolute +/- for White over 26 games?
OR maybe JJ is using +/- because he wants to confirm his Derrick White bias
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O5u6AzArlY
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He's not DPOY or HoFer or anything like that, but White's impact reminds me a bit of Bergeron's for the Bruins. (as does the discussion of his place on a World competition team). You just want him out there at the end. Not for anything in particular. Its just that he is likely to make a positive impact in just about any scenario.
DWhite's impact seems extremely similar to Draymond's on peak Warriors.
You can't build an offense (or a defense, although that's more debatable with Draymond) around just him, but if you have stars, you can put him with any configuration of those stars and he'll drastically enhance every part of their games.
The Celtics have 3 elite offensive players, and DWhite is better than almost anyone out there at enhancing them. That goes way, way beyond "role player."
Draymond was an all-star 3 straight years, and I don't think it's heresy to think DWhite should be, for almost exactly the same reasons.
You can't build an offense (or a defense, although that's more debatable with Draymond) around just him, but if you have stars, you can put him with any configuration of those stars and he'll drastically enhance every part of their games.
The Celtics have 3 elite offensive players, and DWhite is better than almost anyone out there at enhancing them. That goes way, way beyond "role player."
Draymond was an all-star 3 straight years, and I don't think it's heresy to think DWhite should be, for almost exactly the same reasons.
Not that this is incorrect, but I've felt pretty strongly for awhile now that Draymond is exponentially more valuable to Golden State than he would be to just about any other team in the league. His complete inability to shoot from outside is mitigated somewhat when you play alongside 2-3 of the best shooters of all time.
This is in stark contrast to Derrick White, who I think would fit in very well on literally every contender in the league. At this point it may not be fair to call him a role player, but he's plug and play in a way that Draymond absolutely never was.
White feels more like the Celtics version of Iguodala than Draymond but these comparisons are never really great. Andre and DWhite aren't similar players but the both have the ability to morph into whatever role is needed for a given matchup and sequence.
And unlike many other players, you almost always have to account for either on D because their capability to score from all the levels (White is obviously better from distance but Iguodala was credible enough to not leave completely alone).
And unlike many other players, you almost always have to account for either on D because their capability to score from all the levels (White is obviously better from distance but Iguodala was credible enough to not leave completely alone).
Jrue out today. Listed as sprained elbow but Mazzulla says he's not wirried about it. I wonder who starts, Al or Hauser. Given the recent play of our #3 and #4 centers, I suspect Al will get the start.
I think the Draymond/Iggy comparison is much, much more apt than Begeron. Bergy is HoF…and I love DW, but that comparison really sells Bergy short
I definitely agree with your overall point and it’s something that @HomeRunBaker has been hammering for a long time. It’s just much more stressful being the #1 or #2 option on offense and dealing with defenses loading up on you and expending energy to stop you.
You did a gear job of pointing out the nuance there. It’s nothing against DWhite, he’s an absolute stud at what he does. It’s just pointing out that he’s an amplifier/Alfred (to use JJ redicks term)
Since being 6-5 on the road, the Celtics have gone 4-1, giving them the best road record in the NBA. Still undefeated at home, of course.
Scal and Drew were in rare form tonight, they cracked me completely up at least a half dozen times.
Drew mentioned it on the telecast but including tonight the Celtics have scored 120 or more points in seven straight games. The franchise record is nine straight games. If they can score that much against OKC in their barn - no small task given the Thunder D - they have a shot given that they have the Jazz as well as IndyX2 on the follow.
Tuesday's game is obviously a big deal so this just adds some spice.
Tuesday's game is obviously a big deal so this just adds some spice.
I'm a bit more bullish peak Draymond, because his defense was so, so good. While he needs elite shooting, there are other elite shooters out there. He'd go great with Lillard+another shooter, or KD+Kyrie, Booker+KD.....honestly even peak Kemba probably goes well with Draymond.
Your overall point makes the comparison even better for DWhite though, so I like that.
I get the comparison, but White's shooting is a really material difference, and probably accounts for a good deal of the huge on/off impact he has as an amplifier.
Iggy with White's shooting would have been something else altogether...
A few things I expect to see in the New Year:
1. More Tatum C&S 3s
2. Pritchard with more on-ball initiating responsibility (when White is sitting)
3. Brissett as the 10th man and consistent minutes during the dog days of the regular season
4. Kornet starts launching top of the key 3s
5. Less Double Big use of KP & Horford together
1. More Tatum C&S 3s
2. Pritchard with more on-ball initiating responsibility (when White is sitting)
3. Brissett as the 10th man and consistent minutes during the dog days of the regular season
4. Kornet starts launching top of the key 3s
5. Less Double Big use of KP & Horford together
This prompted me to see how often this was happening - in the 20 games they've played together, they average 12 minutes of double big. That really surprised me just how much it's been used, especially considering that Al only averages about 27 minutes a game. So nearly half of his minutes are in a double big lineup.
This team looks more dynamic on both sides of the floor with one Center. PLUS, they can get more mileage out of Horford using him this way.
Horford/Hauser/PP/Jrue/Tatum has been their 3rd most-used lineup and puts up a
131.9/102.6/+29.3 net rtg
while White/Brown/KP is one of their better 3-man combos 126/104.9/+21.1
At the end of the day, health & rest should be a big part of the strategy over the next 50 games. Joe can easily manipulate rotations/rosters to offer the best chance of getting to the playoffs in one piece.
KP sure has been cold from 3 lately. He really takes long threes, too. I wonder if he really needs to be 3 feet past the arc to keep the spacing or if he could make things a little easier on himself by moving a little more in.
Has he been cold though? Prior to last nights 0-7 he shot 37% for the month of Dec, higher than his career pct and higher than his season pct. He's not a high pct 3-pt shooter but the spacing his range provides more than makes up for a couple pct points.
On ESPN, I see 47% for October (I know, unsustainable) then 28% for November and 32% for December. So, that's two months of 30% or so.