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White Brown Tatum trio was very good last regular season. With Horford was very good in regular season, ok in playoffs. With R. Williams very lightly tested. With R. Williams AND Horford was great in too small test.

Got to get bigger / better tests with R. Williams.

Run all combos of Horford, Porzingis and R Williams with the perimeter trio at least 500 minutes. Failure to do so would be malpractice.

Celtics have been fairly close but last playoffs found them less than sufficient on superstar, #2, bench, Coach and lineup management. Which of these changes? Enough to win title? I lean no.

Surprising 10th place on playoffs defensive efficiency. Is that going to significantly improve? Why?

10th place on own ft rate.

7th or worse in playoffs on 5 factors.

Not enough. Lost to Heat, a slightly better than average team in regular season that had slightly better than average playoff stats overall, despite 9th, 10th and 12th place on 3 defensive factors.


Every playoffs knockout since Stevens became Coach then GM (a 10 year span) has been by non title winners except in 2022.

Celtics most used lineup was great last season (+11pts/100p), starters with 1 big (Horford) and D White.

But the most used lineup in 2021-2022, the same except with 2 bigs (including R Williams) instead of another guard, was twice as great (+23pts/100p).

Brilliant or not so brilliant move? Led by new Coach, or prompted by Stevens' acquisition and faithfully implemented by Coach or suggested by analytics staff?

Tatum - Brown with / without:

https://twitter.com/sports_mediocre/sta ... 00129?s=20

If 82games.com data is correct, Tatum did not make a single shot in last 3 seconds of shot clock in 2022-23 regular season clutch situations. 0% fg% then. 31% in each of 2 prior seasons. 37.5% 4 seasons ago.

Brown made 30%.


Also in crunch / clutch time:

Curry 33%
SGA 40%
Jokic 42%
James 53%
Doncic 73% (53% and 60% in 2 previous seasons)


Smallish samples but worth noting imo.

Curry in 2021-22 in crunch / clutch time:
12.5% fg%.

Durant also 0% on this last season.


Wow.

Hear that anywhere else? I hadn't.

Embid 14%.



Would like to get playoff data but do not immediately have such compiled. I guess it could be found from play by play.

Tatum vs Miami in eastern conference finals crunch-clutch: 0 for 5. 4 of the misess were late in game 6. (He did hit several pairs of free throws in game 2 crunch-clutch.)

Who on Celtics explicitly knew this data and did they care? I don't know if they knew. I assume they didn't care. But I wonder.

Watch, think, decide what to do in those situations next season? I would.

Information uncovered by an outside analyst in a few moments of self-directed effort. More effort, likely more discoveries.

Small bits of data can have super huge impact / importance.

Tatum on lower end of shooters of non-corner 3s.

Jaylen Brown:

TS% has declined 3 straight seasons; 3pt fg% the last 2. Defensive rebounding, worst since rookie year. Second lowest ft rate. Worst TO%. Worst BPM since rookie year at -0.9.

Usage way up. Good for getting the huge contract.

Terrible contract.

I'd trade next off-season unless major improvement or title. I might still trade even if either of these things happen. He'll probably yield a good or great return, if traded soon.

Darko projection peaked early last season and has declined since.

I don't see their salary structure working when both Brown and Tatum are on the extensions. Would have to be willing to pay huge luxury tax.

For Celtics' 6th to 10th lineups most used in playoffs, 4 of the 5 were negative, 3 badly. Only one was even tested 50 minutes in an 82 game regular season. Relatively "blind" choices that didn't work.

After the latest trade, none of the Celtics 20 most used lineups is still possible. Net gain or not? Time will tell.

With the turnover in the rotation, I'd think high lineup concentration in top 10-20 lineups would be very appropriate to try to overcome the disruption. I don't think they will truly go highly concentrated but we'll see if they do and if they "needed" to.


Is new Celtics starting lineup the first over $150 million? Headed to $200 mil in near future.

Core of cores Brown - Tatum was only 7th best raw pair of 10 most used regular season pairs and 6th best of 10 most used playoff pairs. Will it work better with new pieces? Probably needs to in order to go further.

Budenholzer? Haven't seen his name mentioned with respect to Celtics. Probably nothing happening til next summer or later. But I'd keep him in mind...

Celtics coaching collective...

for the now and possibly in future scenarios...

the thinking behind it would be interesting to know.

Could get to same place with different thinking.

Starting unit is +31 pts / 100p in about 13 minutes per game. Nothing else used even 2 minutes per game.

Of course my advice would be use starting unit even more, especially in competitive games and test at least a few alternatives more to learn about them before the playoffs. You do these things by reducing share for other dink lineups.

3-0 but against the 2nd easiest SOS. SRS is currently 11th best but that could change quickly.

Offensive and defensive efficiency ranks are down 4 and 10 spots respectively.

Big minute pair data is super strong. But that compared to the overall average suggests meh to trouble with a large share of the dink pairs.

Jaylen Brown, about -1 team +/- while on court over last 10 games before tonight, worst on team. Probably somewhat random as individual stats are OK except for very weak 3pt fg%. But could investigate defense and lineup choices.

Starting lineup is -7pts / 100p over last 10 games, in sharp contrast with team 9-1 W-L. Own shooting is down for starters, defense might be too. A number of bad performing dink lineups also.

But it worked well tonight.

5 most used lineups for Celtics have remained at 35% of total time, earlier in season and in last 10 games.

In those last 10 games, the 5 most used lineups have accounted for 91% of net margin.