Magic Brad. His mere presence has caused the Wizards to pull a no-show defensively on the second night of a road b2b.
The Brad Stevens thread - More Clueless Than Alicia Silverstone
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And doing a hell of a job, up 4 early in the fourth. Love the fight in this team.
That was a fine, measured take on this team. I'm actually pleasantly surprised, thanks for sharing.
Of course, I got chills thinking that there will be a fan video at the end of the season using that sound bite from Wright about how they aren't winning this season akin to the "They hate their coach" rhetoric in the Do Your Job special.
If liking your own thread is wrong, I don't want to be right. Best coach in the NBA right now. Period.
If the Celtics backups take care of business vs. the tankers out West (Kings, Suns) and at home (Bulls, Hawks, Nets), this Celtics squad will end up with at least 54 wins, one more than last year.
Remarkable with the amount of turnover and injuries that Brad has had to deal with this year.
Yep, Danny has done a fine job building this team. But it's a pleasure watching a coach who can beat OKC and Portland back to back (the latter in their house) with a bunch of guys who wouldn't start on most teams. Almost complete roster turnover from last year. Larkin and Yabusele getting real minutes now. Tatum growing in leaps and bounds. Brad matches up well and takes advantage of what other teams do. Nurcic can't close out on Al at the 3, so they run that. Nurkic comes out, they crash the glass and get all the boards, and they start taking it hard to the basket. Need to go small? Yabusele out, Ojeleye in. Run Al at the 5 and Morris at the 4. How about Larkin and Rozier in the backcourt? No problem.
They way they switch between their base defense to the diamond zone thing sometimes, just to mess with an offense...It's amazing work.
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Brad deserves COY but Dwane Casey will win it instead. Raptors efficiency stats are better but they have basically the same team as last year with no major injuries. Brad has a brand new team and tons of injuries, much harder difficulty level. Brad should get the award.
Brad Stevens is the best coach in the NBA right now. To be doing what he's doing without Kyrie, Smart, Hayward, and Theis is unbelievable. He even had a plan for when Walter McCarty eventually left the Celtics for a college job. It's like he expected it to happen and had the Red Claws guys ready. It's incredibly lucky that we have Brad as our coach. Getting KG was the best thing that Ainge has ever done, but prying Stevens out of Butler is a close, close second.
And running up the court, fist-pumping and mocking Dennis Rodman in game 7 against Detroit is third.
I turned on the game with 7 minutes left, as Rozier's and-1 put us up 88-82. They got two quick scores to draw within 2. Brad takes a TO.
Then the team went absolutely fucking sports-movie-climax nuts. I'm pretty sure they scored on every single possession for about 3 minutes running. The PBP has it:
(BOS timeout)
6:08: Brown pull-up jumper at the elbow, 90-86
5:46: Brown steal, layup, 92-86
5:02: Horford layup, missed (!)
4:26: Rozier pull-up jumper from wide, 94-86
3:48: Horford 3-pointer, 97-86
(SAC timeout)
3:18: Baynes hook-shot, 99-88
2:40: Horford fade-away, missed (!)
1:52: Brown fouled, makes 2-2 FTs, 101-91
1:25: Ojeleye 3-pointer, 104-91
(bad-pass turnover by WCS, timeout)
So in that stretch, that's the team shooting 6/8 from the field, 2/2 from the line, with 2/2 3PT. I think Horford had 3 assists in that stretch. They're not known as an offensive team, but they absolutely could not be stopped. And in that same span, SAC went 1-for-9 from the field (with 2/2 FTs), despite some nifty offensive rebounds. I don't know what the Cs have been doing for conditioning or practicing their offensive action, but that went from "oooh, this could be tight at the end" to "easy double digit win" in a flash.
Brad's defensive schemes are remarkable.
Brad is getting some recognition. E.g., https://thebiglead.com/2018/03/26/brad-stevens-is-putting-together-the-best-season-of-his-career/
Brad is getting some recognition. E.g., https://thebiglead.com/2018/03/26/brad-stevens-is-putting-together-the-best-season-of-his-career/
Kyrie is playing good defense because defensive win shares? Come on.
It doesn't say that he plays good defense. It says he used to not play defense and now he does.
I would think it's fairly obvious that Kyrie this season has been better defensively than in years past.
The article was literally about how Brad Stevens has managed to hold the team together without GH and how he is continuing to hold the team together in Kyrie's absence and this is what you get from it?
I'm okay with using DWS as a proxy that the Cs are playing good defense as a team (since that's really what it measures). I'm also okay with using Kyrie's DWS as a rough approximation of what, as lexrageorge notes, we all see, which is that Kyrie is playing more defense than he did at CLE during the regular season.
How much more? Not sure. Really don't have a way to measure it. But more.
I'm not sure what you're looking for. The article simply doesn't say Kyrie is playing "good defense", but acknowledges his DWS has improved under Stevens. That's factual.
The article seemed lazy to me, using DWS
I think that was my point, that DWS is a better measure of team defense when you're on the floor than of individual defense. Early in the season I thought Irving's defense was pretty good, but it seemed that waned as the season went on. Maybe it was his knee bothering him, maybe he'll turn it back on. His DRPM is better (-1.43 vs. -2.30), but not a lot.
More to the thread topic, I thought the article was not particularly insightful, and I jumped on that one particular point as a means of illustrating that. I could have put more time into it, but it just didn't seem that worth it.
I get how Stevens can be so good in ways I don't understand in drawing up defenses and offenses. Like, I understand the process, the talent, the skills and learning involved. Even if I can't do it, I get how someone else can do it.
I even get how a great leader can inspire greater effort from people, and that some people have this ability be it through skill or natural talent or whatever.
I do not get how some rare individuals can get an NBA player who didn't play defense before to start playing defense.
Now, I also think there is some selection effect here in that Kyrie had a list of teams he'd go to and they almost all had good coaches. But the notion that Kyrie was seeking a guy like Stevens to make him do things he knew he should do but wasn't already doing only makes the whole thing more fascinating, imo.
I even get how a great leader can inspire greater effort from people, and that some people have this ability be it through skill or natural talent or whatever.
I do not get how some rare individuals can get an NBA player who didn't play defense before to start playing defense.
Now, I also think there is some selection effect here in that Kyrie had a list of teams he'd go to and they almost all had good coaches. But the notion that Kyrie was seeking a guy like Stevens to make him do things he knew he should do but wasn't already doing only makes the whole thing more fascinating, imo.
Not playing hard defense is contagious. If the other four guys are not doing their part and helping out, there's not much point to the fifth guy giving it his max effort. But put that guy in a system where everyone is playing good defense, and someone NOT doing his share will stick out.
I totally agree. But doesn't this beg the question?
Q: How the fuck did he make that guy play defense for him???
A: Everyone plays defense for him.
Of course, this could just mean that @The Allented Mr Ripley 's Jedi Hypothesis is still in play...
An important part of leadership is a consistent message and showing people the path to success. With Brad being a well respected, level headed person, people (even multi millionaires)nwant to earn his respect and defense is how you earn it. He started during the preseason with his 11 new players and he has guided them to where they are today. Everyone plays D. Crap, IT played D, he was just to short to be effective.
Hearken back to preseason: you want to be respected as a Celtic, you play hard on both ends of the court. Kyrie was never lazy, he just wasn't being guided in the right direction.
Hearken back to preseason: you want to be respected as a Celtic, you play hard on both ends of the court. Kyrie was never lazy, he just wasn't being guided in the right direction.
http://www.nba.com/celtics/news/sidebar/prac-100817-smarts-scrappiness-rubbing-new-celtics
I think it’s pretty complicated. A guy like Kyrie has the athletic talent and coordination to be a competent defender at his position; for him I think it’s a combination of increased effort and playing in a system and for a team that values defense at a greater level. The Cavs teams were not equipped to play defense at the level the Celtics play at; Kyrie normally shares the court with two elite level defenders (Horford and Smart) and a bunch of long athletes that play hard on the defensive end (Rozier, Brown, Tatum, Morris, etc.). He never had that kind of support in Cleveland, and certainly didn’t have a coach the caliber of Stevens. In short; take a bad defender and give him better teammates and a better coach with a better system, and he will statistically look like a better defender.
There are also players like IT, or to a lesser extent, Monroe; who athletically are just never going to be very good defenders no matter what system or support they have; and a team will have to hide them as best they can.
This Celtics team; with the exception of Monroe and Irving; only utilizes plus defenders imo as part of their normal rotation. That helps everyone look like a better defender on paper.
There are also players like IT, or to a lesser extent, Monroe; who athletically are just never going to be very good defenders no matter what system or support they have; and a team will have to hide them as best they can.
This Celtics team; with the exception of Monroe and Irving; only utilizes plus defenders imo as part of their normal rotation. That helps everyone look like a better defender on paper.
First part, yes, by definition. Second part, no, you really shouldn't be okay with using DWS like that. It's a top-down metric that stems primarily from team D-rating and minutes played. The Cavs were 21st in D-rating last year. The Celtics are first in D-rating this year. Kyrie is fourth on the Celtics in minutes played. Those factors account for the vast majority of his improvement in DWS. That doesn't mean he's not playing better defense, it just means we can't really tell that from DWS. It's also kinda weird that the author of that piece notes that the Celtics have a bunch of guys in the top 20 in DWS, without noting that, well of course they would since they have the best team D-rating. You'll see that even within any given team, there isn't a big variance in DWS and that it lines up pretty nicely with minutes. Kyrie isn't a better defender that Aron Baynes, Daniel Theis or Marcus Smart, but he has a higher DWS than them because he has played more minutes than them.
FWIW, I think that we are putting too much emphasis on the peer pressure and coaching inspiration part of the equation. Yes, it exists. Brad makes you want to play defense more, and your teammates doing so will help keep you motivated also. You know that your effort means something.
But I think that a bigger part is the system and the coaching within the system. Brad and the other coaches break down the assignments. What is your role on a high pick? If the ball gets inside and the big collapses the lane from the strong side, what's your job as a weak or strong side perimeter player? From what I have seen, every guy on the floor knows his job in every situation. Sometimes guys forget or don't execute well, but they always seem to know whose fault it was. It's not just Smart and Horford directing traffic on defense either. Lower minute guys like Ojeleye and Morris seem to know where everyone belongs. Even Nader and Yabusele--while clearly not as fluent as the others--are coming off the bench with a working knowledge of where to be.
Brad is the factor, but it's not just Zen Wizardry, culture, and motivational speeches. It's a good system and good coaching, and it makes everyone better.
I'm watching the Bucks play the Clippers, amazing how such a long, athletic team can play terrible defense. Got to have something to do with coaching.
My anecdotal observation about team defense is that a lot of it comes down to error rate. There will be some possessions where no defense could have prevented a score. There will be some where the offense was never going to score. But the rotations you make, how you shade the defender, when you switch, etc - in a poor defensive team, my impression is that they will make the wrong move, or fail to make the right move, more often. They won't rotate right. They won't help the helper. They accept bad switches instead of fighting to revert. Or two people assume the other was going to zig and so they both zagged. There are all sorts of little errors, some fraction of which lead to a score... but on good defenses, the error rate is just that much higher. And I think that derives more from coaching system and style (and repetition).
That said, some of the difference is hustle and level of effort, too. Closing out every shooter, never giving up on a play, crashing for an offensive board the right way, being a half-step behind the pick instead of a full step, therefore able to contest a bit more, lower the percentages on the next move... those are errors of a different class, because they're about focus. I absolutely believe part of Kyrie's improvement is the percent of time he is truly focused while on defense, mentally capable of giving all the effort he needs to, just as much as it is making fewer errors because of coaching style or system. That side of it is probably more black-magic personality-management stuff.
That said, some of the difference is hustle and level of effort, too. Closing out every shooter, never giving up on a play, crashing for an offensive board the right way, being a half-step behind the pick instead of a full step, therefore able to contest a bit more, lower the percentages on the next move... those are errors of a different class, because they're about focus. I absolutely believe part of Kyrie's improvement is the percent of time he is truly focused while on defense, mentally capable of giving all the effort he needs to, just as much as it is making fewer errors because of coaching style or system. That side of it is probably more black-magic personality-management stuff.
I think a lot of it is a scheme/team thing. The Celtics are a more focused defensive team than Cleveland was. Kyrie is still the Celtics' worst defensive starter by a country mile.
This is so true and difficult to understand how this can still be debated. Kyrie's DWS have improved playing next to Horford, Smart, and Jaylen over playing next to Love, JR Smith, and Korver......and this is surprising? NBA defense is cultural and it's a team effort. Not to mention the Cavs veterans were on cruise control throughout the regular season and that includes Kyrie.
Really? The thread is filled with posts saying how Kyrie didn't play defense before and now does. I'd argue he played better defense in the playoffs last year than he has in Boston this year.
I think it's inarguable that Kyrie has played better defense than his reputation would suggest. That does not necessarily make him a good defensive player, but we can live with slightly below average from him, and that's what he's delivered.
Playing defense is not playing good defense.
And you have always maintained that he turns it up in the playoffs, so I don't know if that's a straight apples to apples comparison.
This person:
That was in a response to an article someone posted that was lauding Stevens for keeping team playing well and in that article it was said "Irving is ranked 29th in DWS".
I'm being pedantic now, but no one said that means he's playing good defense. I think this board understands DWS enough to know that.
Very early in season there were definitely some posts about how his defense improved. Haven't seen that as much lately.
Here's the $100,000 question--is he playing better defense than IT4 did last year?
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He clarified, though:
And he's right, it's not that DWS doesn't tell us whether Kyrie's a good defender or not, it's that DWS doesn't really even tell us if Kyrie is defending better than he did last year, since it's primarily a function of team defensive rating and minutes, so it doesn't make any sense for the author of that article to cite it as evidence of anything.
If that's the case, then stuff like this threw me off:
Because Kyrie's DWS increase doesn't say that.
I just don't like to see a couple of dawgs talking past each other like this. What would Xzibit think?