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So since this is Boston and we fans are more often inconsolable than not, we ask the tough questions. What’s up with the downturn in the offense? Is it the bench? Do they miss James Posey? Did they need to go back to Rome for training camp? You expect me to know the answers to these hypothetical questions? Well I’ll try. . . . Is it Posey? Is it the Bench? The biggest star for the bench has in fact been Leon Powe who is ranked No. 2 behind Chris Paul for adjusted plus-minus, meaning the C’s are almost guaranteed to outscore their opponents when Powe is on the floor. Kevin Garnett, Kendrick Perkins, Glen Davis and Ray Allen are also ranked in the top 50 for this metric. If you look at the plus-minus collectively for the team and the bench, you would have a hard time pointing a finger at either, as both are ranked 9th respectively as a group according to 82games.com. Of course, arguments can be made that they need a better scorer off the bench or a veteran big a.k.a. P.J. Brown, but the bench is certainly not the Achilles heel of this team any more than the starters are, which begs the question, do we the fans have a bone to pick with this team? The Unusual Suspect In an effort to explain why there is ab apparent drop-off in offensive production for this team compared to last year, I looked at the individual performance using the box score stats. The folks that are scoring less than last year (through 10 games) are Garnett and Ray Allen at about 4 pts/g less, and then Pierce, Eddie House and Rondo at 2 pts/g less. Really it comes to poorer shooting across the board for these 2008-09 version of the Celtics – they are shooting a pedestrian 44% from the field versus a sizzling 50% last year through 10 games. However, to get the full impact of the individual on the game, I utilized Dave Berri’s Win Produced (WP) with his simplified Win Score approach to estimate WP (see http://dberri.wordpress.com/2006/05/26/wins-produced-vs-win-score/). Here is a table of the difference between last year and this year.
So clearly the Celtics are winning ugly with their narrower margin of victory. This is born out by the WP of 4.7 being well short of the actual 8 wins through 10 games. Note that last year the 9.8 WP closely approximated the 9 wins the team had. So to account for the change from last year, if culprits are to be named, they are House and Davis. However, the biggest drop off is from our Big Ticket. Sorry Kevin – it hurts to say it – but the stats say something’s amiss and it starts with you. Statistically, he’s doing less of everything even compared to last year, and his absence from the top 50 PER rank is additional evidence of his "sub-par" play. But there is little doubt that his 33 minutes per game, which is 5 minutes per game less than last year, is Doc’s order, because we Celtics fans are now burdened with remembering the fact that the season doesn’t actually start until April. The burdens we bear as New England sports fans! |
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