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This lockout stinks.

I would use stronger language to describe it, but I'm pretty sure that would be against board policy.  As an NBA fan, the ridiculousness of watching my favorite sport try its best to make itself irrelevant again just when the sport was returning to the heights...the stomach-wrenching sense of uncertainty as to whether we'll even see a season this year...and the pit-of-your-gut-no-way-it-could-end-like-this-MAKE-IT-STOP thought that this foolishness could mark the end of a magical Big Three Era that has already had to struggle through injuries and bad luck and everything else...it's enough to put anyone into denial.

The problem is, though, for basketball junkies like me there's just no escaping the NBA.  I might try to get into the NFL season where (shockingly) my Bengals are actually looking good, and I might have gotten a new part-time job because my gig writing about the NBA has dried up for the moment...but I can't escape the itch.  I still spend an absurd amount of time on basketball message boards and blogs, interacting with others like me that are on the verge of NBA withdrawal.  I haven't been posting a lot around here lately, but I've sure been lurking.  And on another site that I frequent, I'm in the midst of a 4 months long (and counting) discussion of the top-100 players in NBA history.  We're up to #56 now, with Alex English as the early leader to win that slot and Sam Jones as our most recent nominee that's up for discussion.  I just can't get enough of this game, so right now I'm savoring whatever NBA action I can get.

But that said...

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Last year, before all of our big series, I would tackle the question of where the Celtics were as a team at the time.  I wrote my first one for the Cavs series last year (then two more before the Magic and Lakers series, respectively), making the fairly odd (at the time) prediction that the 50-win Celtics were about to take down the 61-win Cavs.  And now, as we prepare to again face a LeBron-led team in the second round of the postseason I feel like I've come full-circle.  Once again, we are the underdog in a series against a team many consider to be the best in basketball.  Once again, we are facing a team that could very legitimately beat us in the second round of the playoffs.

Once again, I think we are just the better team.

Yesterday I went pretty in-depth about exactly who the Heat are to us.  Today, it's time for the more important question: who are WE to the Heat.  Without further ado, let's dig into that.

First of all, we are the best defensive team in the NBA.  According to basketball-reference we tied the Bulls for the best defense in the regular season, but in the playoffs we surpass our mid-west brethren for a few reasons.  First, while the Bulls' dominant defensive unit is their second team (which, by definition plays less in the postseason) the Celtics' dominant defensive unit is the starters.  Specifically, the starters led by Kevin Garnett...whose minutes have increased by at least 10% in the postseason with predictably positive results.  Thus, our key unit is actually stronger in the postseason than in the regular season.  Which is vital, because as I pointed out yesterday, the team we're facing has three incredible individual offensive talents that can overwhelm lesser units.  But not us, and that's the key.  Our defense has to hold the Heat as a team down to poor scoring efficiency and high turnovers.  The question is, how?

The first line of defense will be Paul Pierce, because he will be the one matched up with LeBron.  Yes, Wade is almost as good and Bosh is strong as well, but LeBron is the key because no matter what anyone might say, he is the best player on that team.  The Heat can possibly survive a lesser performance by Bosh, maybe even a stinker or two from Wade, but LeBron has to be on point for them to have a chance.  Thankfully, for us, Pierce is really good at slowing down LeBron. 

But a big reason for Pierce's defensive success against LeBron, and as always our defensive key, is the help that he receives from our bigs.  The Pierce/LeBron article I linked calculated that Pierce got help on LeBron about 30% of the time, usually from Kevin Garnett, but I think the article under-counts a bit because they only tallied the times when the help actually comes.  What they don't count are the times when the threat of the help defenders caused LeBron to pull up for contested jumpers instead of challenging the lane.  As Bill Russell once said, "The idea is not to block every shot.   The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."  We need our bigs to be extremely smart about rotations in this series, and not just KG.  KG is the lynchpin, but Baby has to rotate and take a couple of charges that make LeBron and Wade hesitate to go all out into the lane.  And Jermaine has to also block a couple of shots WITHOUT giving in to his propensity to foul, as he is averaging more than 7 fouls per 36 minutes this postseason.  

Rondo is going to be a third important part of the defense, because we need him to be our disruptor.  Pierce and Allen will have the main press-up assignments on LeBron and Wade, KG will have to be the second line against them while also keeping his eye on Bosh (though I'd seriously consider putting KG on the center and letting him play rover, with Jermaine on Bosh.  I don't know if that's in the offing, though).  But Rondo needs to be the energy guy, getting into passing lanes and making it difficult for their 1-on-1 guys to dribble where they want to.  The good thing is, according to Jackie MacMullan, Rondo is back in the groove both physically and mentally.  So he should be ready to play his important defensive role as well. 

If all three units do their jobs, we should be able to really limit what the Heat can do offensively.  As I mentioned yesterday, a roving KG may allow Bosh to get hotter than we would like, but I still think we take that trade-off over letting LeBron and Wade go off (and again, I really hope they're considering letting KG guard Joel Anthony so he can rove with fewer consequences).  And on the whole, our defense should at the very least keep us in every game.  And from there, the onus moves to our offense.

Offensively, the Celtics may need to modify their roles against the Heat.  In the early regular season meetings, the Cs perfected a Division of Labor arrangement in which Rondo did all of the distributing, Pierce and Allen were locked in as scorers, and KG locked the defense and glass.  It would be wonderful if they can pull off something like that this postseason, as it is really beautiful basketball and difficult to stop when clicking.  The problem is, history doesn't suggest that in the postseason it will work like this.  And the reason is LeBron, and the unfortunate fact that while Pierce does great in limiting LeBron on offense, LeBron tends to limit him even more.

The Celtics have played 13 postseason games against LeBron James in their last two in-tact playoff runs.  Here is how Pierce has done in those 13 games:

Pierce in game 7 of the 2008 series: 41 points (57% FG, 11 made FTs at a 92% clip)

Pierce in the other 12 games: 14.8 points (35% FG, 3.4 made FTs at an 82% clip)

The Captain showed that he can step up against LeBron in a given game, but on the whole he tends to really struggle offensively in the postseason against LeBron.  Maybe it's because of all of the energy he expends at the other end, maybe it's because LeBron is a physical mutant from another planet, but for whatever reason he gives Pierce fits defensively.  But the really, really, really good thing is that the Celtics and Doc should know this and plan accordingly, like they did last year.

This year's Heat are actually remarkably similar defensively to the 2010 Cavs.  They give up approximately the same scoring efficiency to opponents, utilizing a similar wing-centric defense that aggressively helps and hides their defensive weaknesses at point guard and big man.  This works against most teams, but the problem for them is that the Celtics were built to exploit their weaknesses.  Just like they did against the Cavs.

The first line of offense, if you will, is Rondo.  Expect the Heat to start with Bibby trying to sag off of him and test the jumper, but eventually Rondo is going to be able to get into the paint.  It's what he does.  And when he gets into the paint, he will find that the Heat have no dominant defensive Big to dissuade him.  Explosion.  Expect Rondo to approach the numbers he put up against last year's Cavs: around 20 points, 11+ assists, maybe a triple-double or two.  He will be an offensive key.  But not the only one.

Because KG will have to be right there with him on offense.  And history tells us that against LeBron/Ilgauskas frontlines in the playoffs, KG tends to get aggressive and shine.  Take a look at last postseason, when (in hindsight) Garnett still wasn't close to fully recovered from his knee injury.  He averaged 12 field goal attempts/game against the Heat, Magic, and Lakers.  But against the Cavs?  KG upped that to 16 shots per game, making 52% of them on the way to a playoffs-best 19 ppg.  In '08 KG also was the primary scorer, averaging 20 points on 57% from the field.  We will need him to display that same aggression and production offensively this year, going at the Heat's soft interior and making his offensive presence felt.

FInally, the third offensive key is Ray.  And while for Pierce, Rondo and KG the best comparisons are to last year's Cavs (starting 2/3 of the same front line, similar soft interior defense, etc.) for Ray it's different.  Because Ray rarely drives, and he's rarely guarded by LeBron.  No, for Ray the best stats to look at are how he did against Wade and the Heat in last year's postseason because Wade likely gets the assignment again this year.  And the good news is that, last year against the Heat in the postseason, Ray averaged about 20 ppg on 52% FG and 52% shooting from downtown.  Numbers that are very similar to what he did against the Heat this year in the regular season.  Numbers that are ALSO very similar to what he did to the Knicks just last week.  Ray can be streaky, but we need for him to be hot-Ray this week.  Because if Rondo is penetrating, KG is finishing in the paint, and Ray is firing from downtown we won't NEED Pierce to score against LeBron.  We'd be golden.  And ironically, that kind of production from elsewhere would likely open things up for Pierce to maybe have another one or two of his hot games as well.

Conclusion: Who are we to the Heat?  We are their worst nightmare.  Or at least, we should be.  You never really know how it's going to go, but on-paper the Celtics should have the better matchups.  We are built to take advantage of the Heat weaknesses and blunt their strengths.  And this is even without planning at all to have Shaq, and who knows...he's been coming back "next week" for about 13 weeks now, so maybe this is our lucky turn?  Either way, Shaq or not, when healthy the Celtics are better than the Heat.  And if no further injuries occur, the Celtics should win.  If I were brave I'd say Celtics in 5, but I'll go with the more conservative call.  Celtics in 6.  The path to #18 continues.

In the NBA, the playoffs are about matchups.  In the regular season the majority of the games are decided by talent disparity and/or energy/focus level, but in the playoffs that all changes.  Especially by the second round, as there are few huge talent disparities and everyone is as focused and energetic as they can be.  And at that point, the dominating factor in wins and losses becomes how one team matches up with the other.  So before I could begin to forecast what I expect from this upcoming tilt with the Heat, I had to take some time and focus on exactly who the Miami Heat are.  And more specifically, who they are to US.

Everyone knows the hype of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh playing on the same team.  They were brought together specifically for this time of year, to win championships.  They were three of the best individual players in the league, and were supposed to form a dynasty ("Not one (championship), not two, not three, not four...).  But forget all of that.  Outside of the hilarity of having a "Yes we did!" championship rally before playing a game together, the hype and expectations are pretty meaningless.  Almost a year in, now...what do the Heat have for us on the court?

1) The dynamic duo.  Well, first of all, in LeBron and Wade the Heat have two of the best iso offensive players in the league.  Perhaps THE two best.  With the ball in their hands, both LeBron and Wade are extremely difficult to stop 1-on-1.  They both pose huge mismatches with their quickness, power, and athleticism around the rim.  Both are magnets at drawing fouls.  And in LeBron's case, he also has the advantage of being built like Karl Malone in addition to having Allen Iverson's speed.  So there's that.

But LeBron and Wade are more than just scorers.  Defensively, they form perhaps the most dynamic wing combo since Jordan and Pippen.  Both use their extreme athleticism to provide more help defense from the wing than most teams can provide.  Both are great at playing the passing lanes, and both are excellent shot-blockers for their positions (Wade had 10 blocked shots in the first round against the 76ers).  In addition, quietly, LeBron is also one of the best 1-on-1 defensive wings in the league when he chooses to be.  Their defensive strengths contribute strongly to the Heat's top-5 team defensive rating this season.

2) The forgotten third.  While the signing day hype was that the Heat now had a Big Three, no one ever believed that the three were created equal.  Bosh was always the lesser partner, and for much of the year he has been forgotten on the court as well.  Bosh's main offensive strength is iso scoring...unfortunately for him, he's not as good at it as his two more talented teammates.  On top of that, because he's not a guard, he is completely reliant on them giving him the ball...which doesn't happen nearly as much as he's used to.  Thus, on offense, for much of the year Bosh was more of a safety valve than a main option.  He spent most of his time floating around the mid-range and taking spot-up jumpers instead of getting the ball on the block, facing up, and drawing fouls as is his preference.  And as such, he hasn't been nearly the offensive force that he was in Toronto.  BUT, and this is important for this series, he shouldn't be forgotten.  Because he is the player that, IMO, has the ability to be an offensive monkey wrench to our defensive schemes (more on that below).

Defensively, Bosh also hasn't been as bad as his reputation.  His on-court/off-court defensive +/- of -4.21 was a close second to LeBron's -4.51 on the Heat, suggesting that he was making a reasonable defensive impact.  And I don't have access to Synergy sports, but I've seen several references through the season of Bosh having a surprisingly low scored-against rate in 1-on-1 situations.  His opponent PER of 14.6 (according to 82games.com) is very solid for a big man, and would support that claim as well.

3) The rest.  Outside of LeBron, Wade and Bosh the Heat really just have a bunch of role players of questionable value.  Most of their other rotation players are primarily shooters...James Jones, Mike Bibby and Mario Chalmers each attempted four or more 3-pointers per game in the first round of the playoffs.  Their main offensive function (along with Mike Miller and Eddie House, if they ever get back into the rotation) is to set up at their spots on the 3-point line and wait for a spot-up shot set up by their talented teammates.  Starting center Zydrunas Ilgauskas is also mainly a spot-up shooter at this point in his career, preferring the 15- to 18-foot jumper.  But back-up Joel Anthony actually gets more playing time than Big Z, as he is expected to be their defensive role-playing big.  Anthony is a good shot-blocker, but at 6-9 he is undersized to be a post defender.

What that means to us.  The Celtics are extremely familiar with LeBron and Wade in the postseason, having faced and defeated their teams three times in the last three years.  Of course, that was with them not on the same team.  The thing is, from what we've seen so far I'm not fully convinced that having LeBron and Wade on one team makes them dramatically more dangerous to the Cs than they were individually.  There are three reasons for that: 

First, the Celtics' defensive scheme is built to hinder iso scorers and limit their strong-side options.  The best ways to attack the Celtics' defense is through ball-movement that frees up weak-side shooting options and/or through post players that can take advantage of the defensive overloads with easy looks at the rim and offensive rebounds.  But the Heat don't do much of that.  Instead, LeBron and Wade essentially take turns running their isos and do a lot of kick-out passes to the strong side.  If the Celtics can force them into that same game-plan over this series, that will go a long ways towards blunting the primary offensive half-court options of the Heat.

Second, LeBron and Dwayne seem to be a Megatron version of the Carmelo Anthony/Amare Stoudemire combo we saw last round.  John Schumann pointed out that the Knicks tended to play better with either Melo OR Amare on the floor than they did when both were there together.  We actually saw that in game 2, as Amare's absence seemed to allow Melo to become the focus of the offense in his much more comfortable role and the team got vicious.  Well, the Heat have a similar dynamic with LeBron and Wade.  They've just never seemed to mesh fully together because they essentially replicate and hinder each other.  Whereas apart they can flourish.  That's a strong reason why, IMO, LeBron's Cavs of the last two years both had better records than this year's Heat team. 

Thus, third, the way that LeBron and Wade have been able to maximize their output is by getting out and running whenever they can.  The same athleticism and skill that makes them excellent iso players also makes them vicious fast-break finishers.  But once again, this is minimized against the Celtics because our defensive schemes are built to minimize opponent fast breaks.  We all lament the lack of offensive rebounding on our team, but the flip side of that coin is that our bigs (Kevin Garnett especially) tend to fall back on defense instead of going for the offensive board.  Which slows down our opponents, and further blunts the way the Heat like to do things.

But, despite those things playing into the Celtics' strengths, there are still areas where the Heat can take advantage of Celtic weaknesses.  And the first way is with Chris Bosh.  Now, I have absolutely no doubt that if KG makes Bosh his defensive focus he can take him out of the game.  But the thing is, against the Heat I doubt that Bosh will be his main assignment.  No, just like in past meetings with LeBron and Wade, KG will be tasked with being the second line of defense that prevents them from being effective in the iso.  Which means that Bosh is likely to get his fair share of open mid-range shots.  I believe that the Celtics are willing to make that trade, to let him get his if it means limiting LeBron and Wade.  And on the whole I would make that trade too.  But Bosh is a player that has averaged more than 25 points in a season, and if he gets enough open looks to get hot it could be problematc.

And secondly, with the shorter playoff rotations the Heat should be able to go the entire game with either LeBron or Wade playing in all 48 minutes.  This means that the Heat should get at least 10 minutes or so each game with a superstar-led unit going up against our second unit.  Our second unit which hasn't been...stellar.  If the Heat are able to go +10 or +15 in those minutes on a nightly basis, that could also hurt.

Conclusions: so, who are the Miami Heat to us?  They are a potentially dangerous opponent, with enough talent to potentially win games even when the Celtics work their strategies well.  BUT, they are also a very beatable opponent.  First, because in-fact the Celtics are built to blunt their primary strengths.  But second, as I'll discuss later, the Celtics are just better.  But better or not, the Celtics need to bring their A-games against the Heat.  Because honestly, they are the only team in this playoffs that gives me pause east of Hollywood.

On the front page there's a reference to Orlando Magic announcer Matt Goukas claiming that Dwight Howard is a greater defender than Bill Russell was.  Outside of the statement being controversial (laughable?) on its surface, the article doesn't really give any logical reasons for why Howard's D might be higher impact than than Russell's outside of not-well-thought-out surface explanations about era or very Magic-centric views...which aren't surprising for someone that is, in fact, paid by the Magic.

Interestingly, there is another article that also came out in the last week that mentions Dwight Howard and Bill Russell.  It also features another player you may have heard of, Kevin Garnett.  The difference is, this article was written by someone that a) isn't a fan of either team and b) compiled a lot of very compelling quantitative evidence to support his point.  The article is entitled, Howard is the DPOY, but he's no Garnett. Here are some of the money shots from the article:

1) In a section called "Garnett, Russell and the horizontal game" the author analogizes Russell's style of defense to Garnett's and Howard's to Wilt Chamberlain's based upon a quote from Bill Russell: a Biography:  "Bill understood that Wilt’s game was more vertical, that is, from the floor to the basket. Wilt’s game was one of strength and power…Bill’s game was built on finesse and speed, what he called a horizontal game, as he moved back and forth across the court blocking shots, running the floor, and playing team defense."  The author relates that quote to the present in this way: "In short, that which gave Russell the edge over Chamberlain is exactly what Garnett has over Howard."

2) Of course, if the author left it at just a stylistic comparison there might not be much to separate this article from the Orlando one.  But the author doesn't leave it at that.  He presents evidence from 3 different multi-year defensive adjusted +/- studies, all of them at least four years long, that between them span the period from the start of the 2003-04 season until the end of 2010-11.  I won't post the chart here (though I urge you to follow the link and check it, and the rest of the article out), but here is how the author describes the results of his comparison:

"analyzing these metric, the first thing you’ll see is that Garnett leads all 3 of them. That’s nice, but there are two more “Holy Crap!” things to consider:

1) On all 3 metrics, the gap between Garnett and the #2 guy in the league is bigger than the gap between the #2 and the #10 by a VERY large margin.

2) Garnett switched teams before ’07-08, and it didn’t change this in the slightest. And in case you’re thinking that all 3 studies include time in Boston, understand that Garnett’s +/- peak was when he was in Minnesota, and that even Ilardi’s study doesn’t cover all of that.

That kind of consistent domination in the metric – how the heck did Garnett pull that off if wasn’t due to him actually having more impact than other defenders?"

Conclusion: Dwight Howard has won three straight Defensive Player of the Year awards, and very few (not even the author of this article) would say that he wasn't deserving.  But even if you look only at the last four years, which one of the cited studies does, the most impactful defender in the NBA by a large margin has been Kevin Garnett.  So before Matt Goukas or anyone else decides to stack Howard up against the greatest defender in league history, they might want to make sure that at the least he's the best defensive player of his own era first.  Because as you'll see if you follow that link, there is some pretty compelling evidence that just like in Russell's time, the greatest defender of this era is wearing Green.

The narrative for the Celtics in 2010 was that they were poor in the regular season, then "flipped a swtich" in the postseason to become contenders.  So, as the 2011 season wound down with the Celtics again losing as often as they won, the question arose as to whether they would be able to flip the same switch again to become playoff contenders this season.  And after their first round sweep of the Knicks, the consensus around here seems to be that the switch indeed has been flipped...even the head honcho in these parts wrote a headline to that effect yesterday.

But did they?  Did they REALLY flip a postseason switch against the Knicks?  Or is there another explanation?

I should preface this by saying that I don't love that term...I think it gets over-used.  Yes, the postseason is different than the regular season in both style and intensity level and that can translate to some teams improving more in the postseason than others.  But that's different...EVERY team changes from "regular season" mode to "postseason mode" once the playoffs role around.  But that doesn't mean that a switch is being flipped.  To me, the "switch" should be reserved for cases like the early 2000s Lakers where Shaq was pretty obviously pacing himself in the regular season and then turning it on to annihilate everyone in the postseason.  I really, really don't think this is the same thing.

The Celtics don't necessarily "flip a switch" in the postseason any more than other teams do.  The difference is that they are BUILT for the postseason to a much larger extent than other teams are, and thus the postseason is much more conducive to them playing at maximized levels than it is for other teams.  Thus, the Celtics tend to improve dramatically in the postseason when compared to other teams...but that is NOT a switch.

I wrote a series of three "Realistic Optimism" posts just before the playoffs where I went into some detail to bring home this exact phenomenon.  Instead of Realistic Optimism, I could have titled my series "why the Celtics are built for the postseason" and had it work just as well.  Allow me, if you will, to bring back the points that I mentioned and relate them directly to what we saw against the Knicks.

Point 1: The Garnett/Pierce combo that killed the league will see more minutes together in the postseason.

The money-shot of that article was that Garnett and Pierce were both among the top 2-3 players in the NBA this season in both on-court +/- and on/off-court +/- differential, and that even when the team "struggled" down the stretch of the season they were still +15 with Garnett on the court and +37 compared to when he was off-the-court.  The big reason why they won only 6 of those 13 games (scoring differential +0.8), I argued, was that Garnett was playing only 28+ minutes per game down the stretch...less than 60% of the Celtics' minutes.  In the postseason, I argued, Garnett would be playing closer to 35 minutes per game so that Celtics unit featuring him would be on the court a lot more often.  Just to put numbers to it, if he played 70% of the minutes instead of 60%, based on that +37 differential you'd expect the Celtics team differential to improve by about 4 points based only on that.

So, how did it work out in the first round?  Garnett played in almost exactly 70% of the team's minutes, and through four games both his on-court +/- (+21.6) and his on/off +/- differential (+41.9) are among the top few marks in the postseason thus far and look eerily similar to the +15 and +37 marks that he posted down the stretch when the team was losing.  And the team scoring differential jumped from +0.8 over those last 13 games to +8.5 against the Knicks...an improvement of almost 8 points.

Now, don't get too caught up in the details of the numbers.  The sample size is WAY too small to be significant (after all, Joel Anthony is among the postseason leaders in  +/- right now), and no one would realistically base quantitative conclusions upon a 13 game stretch against various opponents followed by a 4-game stretch against the same opponent 4 times.  I'm pointing out an interesting correlation, not building a proof.  But when you consider that the numbers work out to look almost exactly like what I predicted 2 weeks ago, before the playoffs even began, I think there is some strength to my conclusion. The Celtics predictably improved noticeably once the postseason began, and about half of that improvement could be tied directly to their best unit playing about 10% more minutes.

Point 2: Outside of the 2nd game of back-to-backs played on the road, the Celtics were much more elite than their record

The money-shot of my 2nd article was that the Celtics won only three of 14 2nd-half-of-back-to-back-road-games this year with a -1.2 scoring differential, but in their other 67 games (to date) they had gone 52 - 15 with a +6.6 scoring differential.   In other words, outside of the very specific case where they had to travel to an away location and play a 2nd game on a consecutive day (which, by the way will never happen in the postseason), the Celtics won at a 64-win pace with a scoring margin as good as the ultra elite in the league.

Also, a natural follow-up from this data is that outside of those 14 game 2s, the Celtics went 20 - 7 on the road this year.  So, based purely upon this factor and no other one could expect that the Celtics would be an elite team and road warriors in the postseason since their weakness (road back-to-backs) would never occur. 

And once again, their scoring margin in the Knicks series looked very similar to their scoring margin in non-road-back-2-backs and they had the best road showing of any first round team in the first round of the postseason.  Still not mathematically rigorous, still looking more at an interesting trend than at a provable phenomenon, but once again the prediction played out almost EXACTLY like the real thing.  WITHOUT FACTORING IN A SWITCH.

Point 3: Rajon Rondo is murderous in the postseason against teams not built to defend him

The money-shot of that article was a chart in which I posted Rondo's averages in March/April, in the early playoff rounds against teams with poor interior defense, and in the later playoff rounds against teams with great interior defense for each of the past 3 years.  My point was that in the postseason, when the Celtics get to game-plan for the same team repeatedly, teams without a dominant interior defense (read Dwight Howard or Andrew Bynum/Pau Gasol) had no chance to slow down Rondo and that his numbers reflect that phenomenon precisely.  Below, I've re-created the chart and added in Rondo's numbers for round 1 this year against a Knicks team that has zero interior defense:

And once again, the actual results look like a carbon-copy of what we could have predicted based solely on match-up and history.  As far as I could tell, "what can we expect from Rondo in the postseason?" was the biggest question that most Celtics supporters had entering the playoffs based on his perceived lack-luster play down the stretch after Perkins was traded and/or he battled with plantar fasciitis.  But as you can see from the chart, Rondo's late-season performance was almost exactly of the level that it always is in March/April.  And while this year it's plantar fasciitis, Rondo has had ouchy injuries to his feet/ankles to end the last two seasons as well.

So again, my point is to de-mystify things.  It is easy to get caught up in the narrative and drama that permeates the way that ESPN or the internet covers the NBA.  They want to sell a story, and "Rondo is mad about the trade of his best friend!" makes a much better story than..."well, he's playing about the way that he always plays late in seasons".  But the latter is much closer to true in this case...and as we saw in the first round, his production was EXTREMELY predictable based purely on history and matchups without having to rely on a mystical switch.

Conclusion: I could have continued with more examples.  Time ran out on me before I could give any more Realistic Optimism posts before the playoffs began, but my fourth such post was going to point out that team-defense of the type we play is VERY transferable to the postseason, which was another reason to expect this team to be elite (as opposed to a team like the Bulls, whose defensive strengths may not translate as well).  I had a fifth one planned to talk about our big men, and how they should also look much better in the playoffs than they did in the regular season. And I probably could have kept going from there, but again, I ran out of time and really...if I haven't made my point with the three examples I did give, another two or three probably wouldn't have made much difference.

I've already given this disclaimer several times in this post, and I'll give it again now: I didn't rigorously prove anything.  You can't prove anything with a 4-game sample.  Also, basketball has extremely unpredictable elements such as injury that can't really be accounted for over very short periods.  We couldn't have predicted, for example, that Amare Stoudemire would wrench his back or that Billups would have to sit the last 3 games.  And we'll never really know how things would have played out had those things not happened.

But the point I'm trying to make is that these days we have a LOT of useful information at our fingertips with which to make analyses and predictions that go much more in-depth than the 30-second drama/narrative blurbs favored in today's media.  And, more relevant to those on this site, one doesn't have to depend on Green-tinted glasses and/or hope in a mystical switch that the Celtics may or may-not be able to flip when they want to play championship caliber ball.  This Celtics team is built for the postseason much more than the regular season, and a reasonable examination of how the postseason differs from the regular season yields very strong evidence to those ends.

Bottom line, we don't have to just cross our fingers and hope that our guys can continue to find some mysterious switch.  The way this team swept the Knicks was extremely predictable based entirely on elements that have little-to-nothing to do with a switch.

Last night Kevin Garnett hit the game-winning shot for the Celtics to win a playoff game.  And the national reaction was...SHOCK.

John Hollinger tweeted: " KG both taking and making the big crunch time shot. NOW I've seen everything."

J.A. Adande tweeted: "Read this Jackie Mac story to understand just how rare it was to see KG score go-ahead points: http://es.pn/fpYVqY "

In fact, I read another article right after the game that also referenced the Jackie MacMullan piece as evidence that Garnett making a clutch postseason shot for the Celtics was a stunner.  So, let's take a look at the money quote from that article:

"There have been nine occasions in the postseason during the Big Three era when a potential go-ahead field goal was needed in the final seconds of regulation or overtime.

They break down this way:

• Pierce: 2-for-4
• Allen: 1-for-1
• Garnett: 0-for-0
• Somebody else: 1-for-4

So in his time with the Celtics, KG has not attempted a single shot in the final 10 seconds of regulation or overtime in a playoff game."

I read that MacMullan piece on the day that ESPN ran it last week, and there's only one thing I'd point out about it:

It's absolutely wrong.

Or, at the very least, it's extremely misleading.  And I say this as someone that has really become a fan of MacMullan's writing in the last few years.  But she really whiffed this one, and it's kind of sad to see that others in the national media are parroting her on it.

Because here's the thing: of the NINE occasions that MacMullan speaks of during the Big Three era when a potential go-ahead field goal was needed in the last 10 seconds...EIGHT of those occasions happened to be during the 2009 playoffs.  You know, the playoffs when the Celtics and Bulls played 7 overtime periods in 7 games?  The playoffs when both teams were taking shot-after-shot in the last 10 seconds of close games?  The playoffs when the Celtics and Magic played to a draw to be broken on a Big Baby buzzer beater?

You know, the playoffs when Kevin Garnett didn't play 1 second of postseason action?

That one niggling detail of Garnett not playing in 2009 changes the entire complexion of MacMullan's premise.  Because entering this season, in the Big Three era there had only been ONE SINGLE time in the playoffs when the Celtics had a shot in the last-10 seconds with the potential to go ahead when all three were actually playing.  Paul Pierce took and made that shot last year against the Heat.  But to imply that the Celtics never go to KG late based on an n of 1 is ridiculous.  It'd be like saying that Pierce didn't take or make a single shot in the last 10 seconds of a playoff game between 2006 and 2008, without noting the detail that the Celtics didn't make the playoffs in 2 of those seasons and the team didn't have any last-10 second opportunities in 2008.  It just invalidates the entire thing.

It's especially bad because it really isn't hard to get the actual info about the Celtics' late game shot distribution in the playoffs.  I wrote a couple of articles this season about the Celtics' clutch performances during the Big Three era, and both of them only took a couple of hours of research through 82games.com or even the ESPN game logs to compile.  In Clutch Celtics part 1 I used the 82games definition of crunch time (last 5 minutes, game within 5 points) and the compilation indicated about what I'd expect...Pierce, KG and Ray Allen all averaged more than 20 points/48 minutes of crunch time, with Pierce slightly in the lead as a scorer, Ray dominating from distance, KG hitting the glass and blocking shots, and Rondo leading the team in assists.

But Clutch Celtics part 2 is more reflective of what Jackie Mac was aiming at: what do the Celtics do in the last possession of 1-possession games.  In my article I looked at the last 30 seconds (not just 10 seconds), and also included the regular season.  So over the total of the Big Three era, at the time of the article (March 11, 2011) Ray had made 6 game-winning shots in the last 30 seconds, Pierce 4, and Garnett 4 in the games that all 3 played in.  But if you want to limit it strictly to the postseason, there are so few games where a game-winning/tying shot in the last even 30 seconds was required during games when all of the Big Three were playing that we can list them all separately:

1. 2008 playoffs, Round 1 game 6 (5/2/08): 13 seconds left, down by 2 points, Ray misses a 3-ptr.  Then, Rondo missed a 3-ptr at the buzzer that would have tied it.
2. 2008 playoffs, Round 2 game 1 (5/6/08): 21 seconds left, tie game, KG makes a driving layup on Joe Smith that proved to be the game-winner.
3. 2010 playoffs, Round 1 game 3 (4/23/2010): tie game, Pierce hits a buzzer-beater jumper to win
4. 2011 playoffs, Round 1 game 1 (4/17/2011): down by 1 with 11 seconds left, Ray makes the 3-ptr that wins it
5. 2011 playoffs, Round 1 game 2 (4/19/2011): down by 1 with 13 seconds left, KG backs his man down and makes the jump hook that wins it

And that's it.  There have been 5 postseason instances when all of the Big 3 were playing in which the team had a shot to tie/win with under 30 seconds left.  In those 5 instances Pierce is 1-for-1 with a game-winner, Ray is 1-for-2 with a game-winner, and KG is 2-for-2 with 2 game-winners.

Now, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen are two of the most clutch players that have ever lived.  I fully endorse and support (and have enjoyed) that.  But seriously, this "KG isn't clutch" garbage is just getting ridiculously over-the-top.  And as much as I love Jackie Mac's work, I had to speak on this one.  The Celtics have a ridiculously good record in ultra close games because they have THREE of the most clutch players in the NBA.  And it'd really be nice if more of the national media ever recognized that.

So, I've gotten some good feedback on my first two "Realistic Optimism" posts, but there has also been an elephant in the room.  While I've been focusing on specific things that should make the team much better REGARDLESS of what else changes (i.e. the KG/Pierce combo that dominated the league this year getting about 25% more on-court time, and the lack of back-to-backs and games-on-same-day-as-travel-on-road)...many of those that comment have focused on a key issue that I haven't yet tackled: the performance of Rajon Rondo.

Rondo is a lightening-rod player for this team, in that there is a sub-population that considers him the best player and key to the team while another subpopulation considers him merely a product of an excellent system/situation and focuses on his shortcomings more than his positives.

I don't fall into either camp with Rondo.  I think he is a very good young player, and would be so regardless of his team situation.  On the other hand, I also believe that he is the member of the Big 4 whose game is most influenced by both his teammates and his opponents.  Rondo has a very specific skill-set that makes him ultra-valuable when he can get to the rim, disrupt defenses, set up his teammates, create turnovers and push the pace.  On the other hand, his lack of shooting ability allows certain defenses (those with strong rim protectors and savvy perimeter defenders) to blunt his main strengths, and if he's not in full synergy with his teammates and/or doesn't have the advantages of his athletic burst his offensive impact can go from hugely valuable to even vague liability.  In other words, I think he's a great young player if the situation is right but he has a large variance in what his output can be.

And in the last couple of months, Rondo's output hasn't been nearly as good as it was earlier in the season.  It's obvious on the court, it's obvious in his numbers, and to many it seems clear even in his body language.  His issues really came to the forefront right after his best friend was traded, so many attribute some of his lesser play to the Perk trade.  Several of the commenters to my other RO posts have said, in essence, that if Rondo can't get it together the team can't win the title.

I'm not sure I would go that far (I actually think they'd have a shot even if he's not balling out of control), but their collective points are well received.  A Rondo at maximum output would make this championship run a lot easier, that's for sure.  So, what are the odds that we get "good Rondo" vs "bad Rondo" in this postseason?  Well, if history is any judge, we're much more likely to see the Rajon we all know and love than his evil alter ego.  Why is that?  I'm glad you asked.

First of all, for a player so young, Rondo has a well established history now of stepping up and carrying a large role for this team in the postseason.  I wrote about it earlier this year, but Rondo has led the Celtics in on-off-court +/- in each of the last two playoff runs.  This is significant, because he's never been a +/- leader in the season.  In both '09 and '10 Rondo trailed Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett in on/off +/- during the year, only to step up hugely in '09 when KG was out and then co-lead with KG in the '10 playoffs.  And even this year, though Rondo far-trails Pierce and KG in the +/- stats on the season, during the weeks when Garnett was injured earlier this season it was Rondo (who stepped up the most with huge +/- stats (+17.8 for Rondo vs +9.8 for Pierce in KG's absence).  Of course, +/- isn't the be-all/end-all, but what it does show is that Rondo has a 3-year history now of stepping up as a leading impact player on the team in key situations.  Based on that, the odds would certainly suggest that he will do so again in the postseason.  But we can go a lot further than this.

Let's look specifically at how Rondo has finished each of the last 3 regular seasons, and how he then performed in the postseason of the first two to see what it suggests for the third:

I put just the basic counting categories on their for simplicity and readability, but the percentages and advanced stats would reflect the same story.  In each of the last two years, Rondo's stats in every major category have gone through the roof to start the postseason.  And while some of that may be due to increased postseason minutes, check out the assist-to-turnover ratios...his assists (and scoring and rebounding) go way up, but his turnovers stay constant.  So he's not only producing more output, he's doing it more efficiently.  So, why the change?

Well, beyond just a nebulous "stepping up" or "flipping a switch", there is a tangible reason for his improvements: the matchups.  Rondo is murder in the postseason against teams that can't defend him (read: lack dominant rim protectors and strong perimeter defenders).  In '09 it was the Bulls that couldn't slow him down.  In '10 it was both the Heat and the Cavs that lacked the manpower.  Of course, in both years the teams in the later rounds with better interior defenders really curtailed his production...but that wasn't until later on.

And this year, again, the Celtics are set up to face a series of teams lacking that interior presence.  The Knicks are a joke defensively in the middle.  And if we look beyond, the '11 Heat look exactly like the '10 Cavs on defense...and Rondo TORCHED the '10 Cavs.

So, in summary.  Rondo has looked shaky of late, but not much different than he usually looks in March and April.  Rondo has ouchy injury issues (which I didn't go into, but I blame for his performance MUCH more than I blame the Perk trade), but he's had similar issues in previous seasons and been able to thrive in the postseason format with more rest between games.  Rondo has a history of stepping up in big situations, AND he has a history of torching postseason teams that can't defend him...and neither of the opponents on the horizon are built to do so.

In other words, once again, there is realistic and quantifiable reason to believe that we will get "good Rondo" starting Sunday night, which is a very tangible reason to expect the Celtics to be very good in the postseason outside of flipping some mystical switch.  Just purely off of player history and match-ups.

Yesterday, I pointed out that there are several very tangible, quantitative reasons to expect the Celtics to do very well in the playoffs this year.  The first reason I gave was that Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, who have been playing at a ridiculous impact-level this year, will be playing a lot more together in the postseason than they did in the regular season (especially recently).  The natural follow-up would be to next talk about Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen, the other two members of the "Big Four", but that's not really my point.  These articles aren't so much to discuss the make-up of our team (though that is, of course, a part of my message), but instead my point is to highlight specific things that will be different in the postseason with respect to the regular season that should make this team noticeably stronger on the way to #18.

So, today let's talk about the schedule.

We all get tired of hearing about the age of this Celtics group and how it means the team is weaker...but in the regular season there is truth in that.  Outside of how that might affect the game-to-game focus and/or motivation and/or strategy (another potential, future post)...it also shows up naturally in recovery time.  I'm sure most of us have either heard or would suspect that this team has trouble with back-to-back games...I surely would have expected it.  But having just crunched some numbers, the effect is maybe more pronounced than you realize.

The Celtics have played 19 sets of back-to-back games this year, for a total of 38 games.

In the 19 front-end games, the Celtics are 15 - 4 with a +8.2 scoring margin.

In the 19 game-2s of the B-to-B, the Celtics are 8 - 11 with a +1.1 scoring margin.

And, in the 43 non-back-to-back games played this year, the Celtics are 32 - 11 with a +5.9 scoring margin.

Put that together, and you'll find that in the 62 non-game-2-of-back-to-backs that the Celtics have played in this year they are 47 - 15, with a +6.6 scoring margin (that win percentage would currently be the best in the NBA).  Meanwhile, in the 19 game-2s the Celtics are a below .500 team on the year.  That's a very stark difference.

But we can go further.

Because not only might the actual exertion of back-to-backs be hard on our older legs...also, the quick turnaround travel of back-to-backs could also be hard on the team.  Last year before game 7 of the Finals, I pointed out that the Celtics seemed to have a Travel Disadvantage in the postseason.  That home/away mattered (team was obviously better at home), but that travel in between games ALSO mattered.  As evidence, I pointed out that for last year's postseason the Celtics were 8 - 2 with a scoring margin of +8.2 in games that were played at the same location as a previous game regardless of whether that location was home or away, whereas they were only 7 - 6 with a margin of -0.9 in the games in which they had to travel before the game (again, regardless of whether the game was in Boston or on the road).  So, how does that relate to this year's B-to-B record?  I'm glad you asked.

This year, the Celtics are 6 - 0 with a scoring margin of +18.3 in their 6 front-end games that were played in Boston (including wins over Miami and Orlando).  It's a small n, but this year with rest at home the Celtics have been dominant.  In fact, even on the back end of back-to-backs, the Celtics are an undefeated 5 - 0 with a margin of +7.6 at home...reflecting that the team is strong at home pretty much regardless of the situation.  But the big difference shows up when the team had to play on the road on the same day they traveled.  If the first game of the b-to-b was on the road, the Celtics were still 9 - 4 in those travel situations which likely included at least a day to acclimate to the new environment.  But in the 14 game 2s of B-to-Bs that the Celtics played on the road?  They were a putrid 3 - 11 with a negative scoring differential.

Quick summary: In 14 game-2-of-back-to-backs-on-the-road, the Celtics were 3 - 11.  In the other 67 games, the Celtics were 52 and 15.  I haven't looked this up for every team, but I think I can safely wager that there aren't many teams with a differential that stark.  This was a definite Achilles heel for the Celtics...IN THE REGULAR SEASON.

So, getting to the very heart of the matter. this year's Celtics have been outstanding as long as they have not had to play 2 games in 2 days AND play on the same day that they travel to an away location.  In the postseason, the Celtics will NEVER have to play back-to-backs and will NEVER have to play on the same day that they travel to an away location.  You cut away those 2 conditions, and this Celtics team has been as good as (if not better) than every other team in the league this year...and that's including things like KG getting rested, the drama after the Perk trade, and playing most of the second half of the season without our top-2 centers.  This gives us a second very tangible, very quantifiable reason for Celtics fans to be very optimistic about this postseason.

Well, this feels familiar.

Last year over the last four months of the season, when the team was losing and not seeming to play very inspired ball, a schism developed on CelticsBlog.  There were the "optimists", those that were sick of all of the negativity about the Cs that they were subjected to every time they came on the site.  And there were the "pessimists", who usually called themselves realists, who were irritated that the optimists wouldn't take off their rose-colored glasses and realize that this team was done.  It got heated, and even after the season played out like it did with the Cs just a few minutes from a title, the "bad blood", if you will, never really went away.  Many of the "realists" still felt that both the Celtics and the "optimists" got lucky, that they caught lightening in a bottle and that no one could have really expected them to be able to (so-called) flip a switch and do so well in the postseason with the way they were playing.

This year, same song different day.  The two most recommended articles on the main board are 1) a plea for the pessimists to stop being so negative, and 2) a note from the blog boss emphatically stating that opinions of all kinds are welcome, both optimistic and pessimistic.  The Celticsblog "Capulets" and "Montagues" are back at it again this year.

But, here's the problem:

Just like last year, there is a third category between blind "don't talk bad about my team!" optimism and "the sky is falling" pessimism: realistic optimism.  I suppose the overall message here will be positive in bent, but it will be backed with both anecdotal and quantitative evidence.  In short: right now, despite the (now outrageously overblown) Perk trade, despite the recent losses, despite the huge (and familiar) shift of the national basketball media/public off the Celtics bandwagon...despite ALL of that, there are very real and very tangible reasons to expect the Celtics to do extremely well in this postseason.  I can think of several, and if life permits I'll post some of them over the next several days.  But for today, let's start at the top.

The first reason to be realistically optimistic about the 2011 Cs winning #18 this year is: Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce are really good.

No.  I mean, they're really, REALLY good.  And for some reason, I don't think many have really noticed it.  Because in all of the "Big 4" hype, and all of the talk that Rajon Rondo might really be the most important player on the team, KG and Pierce have quietly gone about turning in a huge impact season.

Consider: if you mosey on over to basketballvalue.com and, on the home page, click on the "1 Year unadjusted overall rating: on" link, you'll find that out of EVERY player in the NBA, the player whose team played the absolute best in the league with him on the court this year is: (drum roll) Kevin Garnett.  And you won't have to look far to find the next familiar name, because Paul Pierce is third on the list.  So, what does this tell us?  It tells us that in the 2,220 minutes that KG has been on the court this year, the Celtics are a whopping 12.93 points better than their opponents per 48 minutes played.  That is a huge number, especially considering the circumstances: because KG plays only 31 minutes/game and his minutes are heavily concentrated at the beginning and ends of halves, almost every minute that he's been on the court has been against the starters of the opposing team.  So in those 2220 minutes with KG (almost all of which have also featured Pierce), the Celtics have been crushing the starters of their opponents.  Keep this in mind.

Now, while you've already got your basketballvalue link open, under the "1 Year unadjusted overall ranking" heading, now click on "Net".  This will give you a listing for the biggest differentials between how a team performs with and without a certain player on the court for this season.  And, once again, you'll see two very familiar names at the top, with Paul Pierce leading the NBA with an absurd +18.84 per 48 minutes, closely followed by KG in second place with +16.8 per 48 minutes.  So, what does that tell us?  It means that not only are KG and Pierce SUFFICIENT for the team to thrive (which the on-court numbers gave us above), but it also means that they are NECESSARY for the team to thrive (for both KG and Pierce, the Celtics are well into the net negatives when they are off the court). 

Now, before I drive home my punchline, I'm going to pause and allow some of you to speak your mind before you burst.  In fact, I'll say it with you, "YEAH, BUT MOST OF THOSE NUMBERS CAME BEFORE WE TRADED PERK AND GAVE UP OUR IDENTITY AND STARTED GETTING BLOWN OUT SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING DOESN'T MATTER!!!!"  There, doesn't it feel better to get that out?  But here's the thing: KG's and Pierce's on- and on/off-court +/- are still staggering post Perk trade.

I've been keeping track of the weekly +/- for the Cs for most of the year.  Perk was traded after the first game during the week of Feb. 21.  Well, from that week up until yesterday's starter shut-down, Garnett and Pierce were still a cool +10.9 and +8.9 respectively per 48 minutes on-court, and the team is a massive +23.9 and +22.4 respectively with them on the court as opposed to off.  Hmmm.

And if you look at the last few weeks, the numbers are even more stark.  The Celtics have lost 7 of their last 13 games.  Yet, over that 3 week period, they are a whopping +14.6 with KG on the court (+9.7 for Pierce), and an unreal +36.8 points better when KG's on the court than when he's off (+32.7 for Pierce, +35.9 for Ray, and +23.8 for Rondo).  Interesting.

So, if our KG/Pierce led line-ups are so dominating, how is it that the team is losing so much?

I'm glad you asked. 

I've given you a lot of numbers here, so let me now give you the meat of the matter.  The upshot is, when Kevin Garnett is on the court the Celtics have bar-none the best defensive starting unit of any team in the NBA.  It's not even particularly close.  The Bulls make up ground with their 2nd unit being so stingy and our 2nd unit lagging, but strength-to-strength the KG-led Celtics defense is the best.  And it's still our identity.  Likewise, the offense with Pierce and KG on the floor together is still sick as well.  Now, Rondo and Ray are also offensive keys as well, don't get me wrong.  That's not the point.  The point is, when you put Rondo and Ray together with KG and Pierce our offense is still powerful as well.

But.

Where we've had trouble this year has been with the players outside of the core group.  Injuries and chemistry have taken huge tolls on our frontcourt and depth, so when KG and Pierce haven't been on the court to stabilize things, the team has struggled.  It's led to many of these losses that we've seen in recent weeks.  But you know what else happened in the last month or two, besides Perkins getting traded?  Doc has started to rest Garnett more.  Perk got traded at the end of February, and in March/April KG has played less than 30 minutes per game ... only 60% of his team's minutes.  Now, follow me here.  The team trades it's starting center...the two other starting caliber centers are injured for most of this period...even the 3rd center, Krstic, has been in-and-out of the line-up.  And during that period, the all-world big man on the squad has been sitting for 40% of the game action.  You know what that's a recipe for?  A squad getting torched, especially in the paint, for almost half of every game.  Now, go back and notice that the team is +11 with KG on the court and -13 with him off the court in that stretch...and maybe the team's struggles start to make a bit more sense when taken in context.

Now, for the final punchline: KG's minutes go WAY up in the postseason.  While he was around 29 minutes per game during the last couple of months of both the 2008 and 2010 seasons, when the playoffs came around that all changed.  So, even barring any other team improvements (which, realistically, should be forthcoming) and barring any other returns to health (which, realistically should be forthcoming), the Celtics will soon be playing their 2 best players together for 36 minutes/game for the first time since...well, since the playoffs of their last two Finals runs.

In summary, KG and Pierce are really, really good.  When they both play, the Celtics have played the best of any unit in the NBA this year.  And once the playoff start, they'll be playing together a LOT more than they have since the last time the team was in the championship.  Taken together, this is a very realistic, very quantifiable reason for Celtics fans to be very optimistic about this postseason.

There has been a huge spotlight shined on our center position since Perk was traded, and the general narrative either way has been that the Perk/Krstic swap was a defense-for-offense exchange.  I've made similar arguments, suggesting that the swap was a good one because Krstic would open up the offense a bit without the Cs losing much on defense.  Well, so far I've been half-right.

Here are our 5-man units on the season including Rondo, Ray, Pierce, KG + one other big man (from basketballvalue.com). 

Interestingly, it's not the defense in the Krstic unit that is really suffering...in fact, so far the defense looks very similar to the unit with Perk this year and much better than it looked with Semih.  Instead, it is the offense that has been putrid.  A lot of this can be tied into the struggles of Rondo, the other big story around here since the trade. 

In the end, I think the low offensive output is more of a fluke than the reasonable defense.  Almost every defense that we've sported with our Big 4 and a big man over the last several years has been good, and none with legit minutes played have sported offenses this terrible.  I'm still looking forward to the return of the O'Neals, because the line-up of the Big 4 + Shaq has been and will be our best unit overall.  But I'm not ready to completely write off Krstic as a legit starter for us...the team as a whole has been playing poorly, but odds are that their level will include good defense with much better offense than what they've shown to date.

Also of note, the Big 4 + Green unit has been great on offense but lesser on defense.  The minutes are limited, but this matches more with intuition and previous experience.  The Big 4 + Wallace and Big 4 + Posey line-ups in recent years also had trouble defending as well but were solid offensively.  When we go small, that seems to be the way it works for this team.

Outside of Kendrick Perkins, no player has generated more buzz around Celtic nation in the last couple of weeks than Rajon Rondo.  He's obviously playing below par right now, and it seems like everyone is weighing in on it.  There have been multiple articles on this site and others, trying to figure out what is wrong.  Is he angry about the Perk trade?  Is he learning his new teammates?  Is he injured?  Has he been playing too many minutes?  Is his confidence gone?  Can he not get up to play the lesser teams?  What is it?  What is it?  WHAT IS IT?

So, I guess it's my turn to weigh in.  Are you ready for my deep, studied opinion?  OK, here it is:

I'm not worried.

That's it.  I could stop this post right now, and that would capture my feelings nicely.  Of course, as long-winded as I am you know I'm not REALLY going to stop there.  No, I'm gonna take a word or two (or 1000) to let you know just WHY I'm not worried.  And to do that, I have to give you my impression of who exactly Rajon Rondo is.

I remember during the Finals in 2008, David Thorpe wrote "If (Lamar Odom) was 6'5, he'd be selling shoes for a living.  If KG was 6'2, he'd be Rajon Rondo."  Thorpe was obviously talking about the difference between physical talent and desire, but I think his flippant statement held truth about Rondo as well.  If KG was 6'2 he WOULD be Rondo...and if Rondo was 7'1, he'd be KG.  Obviously their personalities are as different as night and day, but when it comes to the fire in the belly, the will, the mindset to be the best...Rondo has that in spades, just like his taller teammate.

And to me, that's crucial.  Because that attitude, when coupled with strong play on the court, can be the engine that moves a team forward.  And Rondo has shown, repeatedly, that when the chips are down and he's needed he can step it up.

In the 2008 championship run, on-off court +/- suggests that KG was the vital component.  The Celtics were +17.8/48 min when KG was on the floor vs when he was off, compared to +9.9 for Allen, +6.4 Pierce and -4.9 for Rondo in essentially his rookie season.

But in the 2009 playoffs, when KG was injured, Rondo showed that he had grown up and was ready to stomp with the big dogs.  This time it was Rondo driving the team, with a huge on/off +/- of +19.9/48 min in the postseason (vs +11.8 for Ray and +8.5 for Pierce).

Similarly, in the 2010 postseason Rondo was again the team leader in on/off +/-, edging KG in the 23 games that all of the Big 4 played in (Rondo +5.6,  KG +4.4, Allen +.3, Pierce -2.8) and then stepping up with Pierce and Allen in the game that KG was suspended (all three were +29 or higher in that game).

Finally, this season, Pierce is currently the leader in on-off +/- for the season (+16.9 through March 5, KG at +15.2, Rondo at +9.8, Ray at +6.3).  KG is the leader in on-off +/- for the season in games in which he's actually played (KG at +20.6 through March 5***, Pierce at +17.3, Allen at +6.0, Rondo at +6.7).  But what about when KG was out?  If you look at the games between December 27 and January 19, covering the entire period that KG was out and recovering, it was again Rondo who stepped up as the necessary ingredient (Rondo +17.8/48, Pierce +9.8, Ray -1.7).

(Unfortunate disclaimers required: I know that +/- isn't perfect, I know that it is noisy over short stretches, and no I'm not saying that these numbers necessarily mean that Rondo is better than Pierce.  I don't want my point to be obscured because of anyone's distaste for +/-, for stats in general, or for anything that might disparage the Captain.  Not what I'm aiming at here, at all).

So, what IS my point with this historical +/- look?  My point is that when the team really needs him, Rondo is there.  He always shows up, and always has a big impact on what the team is doing. 

I've watched Rondo figuratively grow up on the basketball court in these last four years.  I saw him and Perk doing their best to grow on the fly under pressure in '08.  I saw him show the willingness and ability to take the team reigns when called upon in 2009.  And I've seen him step up even more in each of the last two years as his game has made him an All Star.  Yes, there have been growing pains along the way.  I remember Doc having to tell him that guys hated playing with him in order to get him to play the right way.  I remember rumors of a Rondo-led mutiny in the locker room of young players vs old.  And I know that he has not played well at all in these last few weeks.  Anyone that knows my post history knows that I'm definitely not a Pollyanna when it comes to Rondo, his strengths and his weaknesses.

But that said, I think we've seen enough of Rondo in his five years as a Celtic to know that if he is having any kind of mental or emotional issue right now, he'll have his mind right when it counts.  And maybe he really is hurt...KG says he is, though Doc says he's fine.  Either way, as far as I can tell he's hurt and not injured.  He can still play on it now, which means that if it were the playoffs he'd be playing and likely much better with more rest between outings.  And for the first time ever, the Celtics actually have 2 strong back-ups to give him more rest as well.  Injuries happen, and on this team obviously they are a concern.  But other than that, which no one can really control anyway, I am confident that when the chips are down in the postseason Rondo will be right there, playing excellent ball, and helping the Celtics win.  How do I know?

Because he always has been.

(***The on-court off-court +/- numbers for this year are something I've been keeping up with over the course of most of the season.  The values from 12/27 - 1/19 are from 82games.com's 1/19 update.  They include 76 minutes that KG actually played in his recovery but he generated a +/- of 0 in those minutes, and it was that near-month stretch that I used for the +/- with and without KG numbers in the post above).

(**For those interested, I do a weekly basketball interview on XM 147/Sirius 211 every Friday at 1 pm EST.  Also, you can follow me on Twitter at ProfessorDrz**)

In late January I took a look at how Rajon Rondo compared with the other elite point guards in the league, according to 5 different advanced stats (PER, Win Shares, Wins Produced, Roland Rating from 82games.com, and Adjusted +/-).  Late last month I compared Paul Pierce and Ray Allen with the best wings in the NBA using the same measures.  Now I'm back to do the same thing with Kevin Garnett, to see how he compares with the best big men in the NBA according to the advanced stats.

I think KG is a very interesting test case for these advanced stats, because according to the traditional box score stats KG is arguably the least accomplished among the Big 4 this year.  Rondo leads the league in assists and steals, two point guard staple categories.  Pierce and Allen are both among the most efficient shooter/scorers in the league, within range of the famous 40/50/90 standard.  But KG, at 15 points and 9 boards, just looks...regular.  There's little in the traditional box scores to separate him from the Andray Blatche and DeMarcus Cousins of the world, let alone putting him among the big man elite in the league. 

Yet, I know that Garnett is among the best bigs in the league.  Or at least, I thought I knew that...but then again I'm a big fan, so maybe I was just biased?  Or maybe, as many fans and analysts have taken to saying, Garnett's contributions are more intangible than tangible at this stage in his career.  Maybe his emotional leadership and communication skills are the only things that separate him from the pack, but the actual numbers that people use to quantify the game are no longer his friend in his current role and career stage.  Especially since defense, where he is still unquestionably one of the best, isn't really directly measured in most common stats.

Maybe. 

But, just in case, let's take a look.  The following is a snap-shot of 25 of the best big men (power forwards and centers, both) in the NBA, according to the 5 advanced stats mentioned previously.  And like before, though I have the category values recorded for all 25 players in all 5 stats, for the sake of brevity I'll only make charts for the top-15 in each category before putting all 25 into the final rankings.  Without further ado...

PER: Hollinger's stat, probably the most popular of the "advanced stats", favorable (compared to other advanced stats) to volume scorers and players that generate a lot of free throws; generally ranks those considered "great" by the general public well, though also will tend to have role players with good scoring-per-minute very highly.

Win Shares: From Basketball-reference.com, emphasizes shooting/scoring efficiency; loves points per shot (thus values FTs drawn).  To account for different minutes played, we're going to look at Win Shares per 48 minutes played.

Wins Produced: Dave Berri's controversial stat (most likely to be trashed on an APBRmetric board) is also the one seemingly growing fastest in popular usage; wins produced values what he defines as possessions, so loves rebounds, steals, and blocks and doesn't like TOs; doesn't value shot creation, but does value assists.  We'll look at Wins Produced per 48 minutes.

Roland Rating: 82games.com's Roland Rating is based upon a combination of PER and +/- stats.  It looks at the individual PER of each player, the PER of their primary defensive assignment, and subtracts the 2 for a 1-on-1 value then they combine that 1-on-1 value with a team-impact based on-court/off-court +/- stat to get the rating.  Tends to produce fewest "what???" rankings, because players that rank out highly in both the 1-on-1 and team stats are almost universally who we consider to be among the best in the game...though the order at the top isn't always what you'd expect. (Note: 82games last updated on March 5, so these results are only current to that date)

1-year Adjusted +/-: This is Basketballvalue.com's APM calculation.  For the point guards I used 1-year APM, which I don't love because APM is so incredibly noisy that a single year (or less) doesn't give conclusive answers.  For the wings I used 2-year APM (which still may be too short for an APM calculation and also includes data from last season, which I really don't like) because at the time there were too many "no freaking way" values in the 1-year APMs that didn't match either the 2-year average or any stretch of common sense.  I actually like longer APM calculations, 4 years or more, to really clean up the noise and give a robust effect.  Nevertheless, we're talking about this year specifically and the 1-year values seem to have been cleaned up since I did the wings, so I'm back to using the 1-year APM here (with associated standard error):

Overall Rank orders: Giving each of our 25 guys a '1' through '25' ranking based on where they ranked in each stat, here is a summary of how each guy did.  I'll add an average across the 5 stats (with standard error) to give us a better idea how our seat-of-the-pants-advanced-stat-cross-section-view ranks KG with respect to 25 of the best big men in the NBA:

Conclusions:

As we saw with both the point guards (Chris Paul) and the wings (LeBron James), one big man stood out as clearly the best according to the advanced stats.  Dwight Howard was alone at the top among bigs, ranking first in three of the five measures looked at and top-3 in all five.  Call this the stats MVP-tier.

Next, there is a group of five or six big men that all have a statistical argument for second-best big man in the league: Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Garnett, Love, Bynum, and maybe Horford.  Finding KG on this level, which I'll call the top-shelf, shows that KG is still among the best bigs in the game on a tangible, quantifiable level.  It's not all intangibles and mind games, he's actually still packing a statistical punch as well.

There was a lot more variation across the stats for the bigs than for the point guards or wings, which led to larger standard errors.  Thus, Horford could either be grouped with the top-shelf bigs above or the second-tier bigs because his standard error would place him in either set.  The other second tier bigs, by the numbers, include Tim Duncan, Aldridge, Griffin, Nene, Odom and maybe Randolph (like Horford, his standard error would get him into either this level or the next).

Interestingly, the two Kevins with Timberwolves ties seem to be opposite sides of the coin from each other.  Kevin Love would be challenging Dwight Howard for the top big in the league honors, if you looked only at the three box score-based stats used here.  But in the two stats that factor in +/- impact, Love is down among the lower third of bigs.  On the other hand, KG would be solid among the box score based advanced stats (eighth among bigs), but in the two categories that factor in +/- (which would include defensive impact) he's among the top few in the game.  Zach Randolph is another like Love that looked great in the box scores and struggled in the +/- categories, while Aldridge is another like KG that looked outstanding in +/- but not as strong in the boxes.  Just some food for thought.

These rankings illustrate what it is that makes the Lakers so strong and dangerous: they have THREE big men among the top two tiers, including two on tier-1.  No other team in the league has even two bigs in the top-2 tiers, let along 3.  If the Celtics ever get healthy they can use quality big depth around KG to take the battle to LA, and the Bulls and Hawks are no slouches themselves, but in terms of quantity and quality the Lakers bigs are extremely strong.

Rookie wonder Griffin measures out well here, among the better bigs in the league, though he's still behind old-man Duncan, which many casual observers probably wouldn't suspect just based on the Sportscenter highlights and box scores.

The player that finished surprisingly low in the rankings is Amare Stoudemire, who was actually getting MVP buzz just a month or two ago.  Now, according to the stats I looked at here, Amare would rank 18th among big men alone.  His PER looks great, but he is among the lowest rankings in each of the other 4 stats that I looked at.  Stat may have helped revive Madison Square Garden and helped bring the spotlight back to the Knicks, but the stats suggest that what he's producing on the court may not be quite as special as the buzz he was able to create off the court.

All in all, this has been an interesting study.  The Celtics didn't have anyone on the "stats MVP level" at any position, but they had four guys measure out as "top-tier" in the league at their position.  Like the Lakers' bigs, that's a unique finding in the league.  True, the Big-4 may be sacrificing a bit in stats and attention for the sake of the team.  But if you put on your nerd hat, it's clear that all four are tangibly, quantifiably performing at elite levels this year.  Which is a big reason why #18 is on the horizon.

Earlier this week I wrote about how our Big 4 performs in crunch time as defined by 82games.com (last 5 minutes of games within 5 points), and that is important information to have.  But "clutch" can have many definitions, and 82games' definition is only one of them.  Last month I posted about how the team had performed against the best competition this season, and that could be someone else's definition of "clutch performance"...how players play in the biggest games.

But another of the more popular definitions of "clutch" is the childhood playground scenario...you've got the ball, end of the game, chance to win it...how do you do?

Every so often 82games.com takes a look at what they call game-winning shots (they define it as 24 seconds left, down 1 - 2 points).  Their last update was about 2 years ago, and among other interesting tidbits we saw that in Ray, Pierce and KG we had three players that had hit a lot of these shots between them, and that the league average on these kinds of shots is very low (29.8% at the time).

Well, in the wake of all of the attention that the Heat have been getting for failing in these situations, I thought to look more precisely at how the Celtics have done as a team since they came together in 2007.  First, I wanted to look at just how often these "game winning"/close game situations actually come up, and how the Celtics do in these games.  And I wanted to get into a bit more detail as well...how many of the shots actually won games?  How many were assisted?  Who was getting the assists?  Essentially, how does the team play as a unit in those situations.  Also, I wanted to look beyond offense a bit and keep track of some clutch defensive plays as well.  Finally, I chose to look at the last 30 seconds of games within 1 possession...slightly different from 82games.com's definition, but as good as any.  The 30 seconds was an arbitrary round number, and by looking at 1-possession (as opposed to 1-2 points) I was able to include some huge shots from Ray (who, as I re-confirm below, is absolutely ridiculous at making monster 3-pointers).

Anyway, without further ado, here are my findings.  I'll discuss some of them in more depth after the chart.

• The Celtics have played 372 games (308 regular season, 64 postseason) since Fall of 2007.  Of those 372 games, 102 of them have been within one possession with under 30 seconds left in regulation (this includes all overtime games).  Overall, the Celtics are 66 - 36 in those games for a 65% win percentage (54 - 30 regular season, 12 - 6 postseason).
• Of the 66 "close" wins, the Celtics had the lead entering the last 5 minutes and held it in 19 of the games.  Someone hit a shot within the last 5 minutes (but before our 30 second "crunch" definition) that gave them the lead, and they held it, in 26 of the games.  And someone hit a game-winning shot in the last 30 seconds of 21 of the games.
• Of the Big 4, only Kevin Garnett has missed enough games/crunch times to be worth mentioning here (79 missed total, including 24 of the crunch times).  It's worth noting, because the team plays differently late when Garnett is there as opposed to when he isn't.  So, I'll chart the numbers for the games the Big 4 were in the clutch together, then a separate chart with Glen Davis replacing KG for the other times.

Here is the chart for when all four of Pierce, Garnett, Allen and Rondo have been available.  The Cs are 44 - 23 (66% win %) in close games in the regular season, and 8 - 3 (73% win %) in the postseason in these games.

And here is the chart for when KG has been out.  The Cs are 10 - 7 (59%) in close games in the regular season, and 4 - 3 (57%) in the postseason in these games.

Here are some of the things that jump out at me:

• The Celtics as a team are excellent in these extremely close games.  I don't know what the league average is, but a winning percentage in the 65% - 70% range has to be among the league leaders.
• When all of the Big 4 are available the roles are still pretty well defined, though it's not quite as equal-opportunity as the rest of the game (or even the regular crunch time situations) as Pierce becomes more-so the primary ball-handler in place of Rondo for obvious (FT) reasons. 
• Ray (6), Pierce (4), and Garnett (4) all have similar numbers of game-winning scores in those games.
  
• Pierce is the initiator (lot of assists, relatively few assisted shots).  He also shares the free throw responsibilities almost evenly with Allen (this data includes opponent intentional fouls late).  And he's made a fair number of big defensive plays as well.
• Ray is absolutely, positively NAILS from downtown late.  If you add it up, he has made 15 of his 24 late-superclutch 3-pt attempts in a Celtic uniform.  That's 58%, people.  In fact, despite 28 of his 40 super-clutch shot attempts being treys, he still by-far leads the Cs in these situations with a 50% FG clip.  Most of his shots are assisted, but if you set that pick and get Ray the ball behind the arc he knocks it down.
• KG has made his share of the game-winners, but he doesn't handle the ball that much (0 assists) in those situations outside of the shot itself.  Half of his made shots, including both of his buzzer-beaters, were assisted.  Meanwhile, he makes his mark on the defensive end with more super-clutch combined steals/blocks than any Celtic has game-winning shots in those games.
• When KG has been out, Rondo has taken a bigger role late.  In those games he actually leads the team in late assists, and has almost as many field goal attempts as Allen and Pierce.
• In his limited opportunities, Baby has played very well in super-clutch situations.  With the caveat that he tends to be wide-open because the opponent keys on Pierce and Ray, Baby still has to make the shot...and he's done so by making 2 of his 3 shots (including a playoff buzzer-beater) as well as both free throws.

OK, that's enough from me.  Anything else, I'll let you make of this what you will.

(**For those interested, I do a weekly basketball interview on XM 147/Sirius 211 every Friday at 1 pm EST.  Also, you can follow me on Twitter at ProfessorDrz**)

There has been a big emphasis in the basketball public lately upon what happens in crunch time.  There was a buzz last month about Kobe Bryant's crunch time myth, started by Henry Abbot at TrueHoop.  Essentially, he pointed out the numbers in the clutch in recent years, showing that Kobe's "late game assassin" reputation may be overstated.  Now, this week, everyone is all over LeBron James and the Miami Heat for how they have failed to produce in crunch time of late.  The interesting thing is that LeBron's clutch numbers actually look relatively good this year, but he's failed very visibly in some very marquis games and the 1-for-19 (or whatever the exact number is) that the Heat are shooting in the last 10-seconds of one possession games looks pretty terrible. 

Anyway, those are Lakers and Heat issues.  In the words of Rajon Rondo, I can't relate.

But all of this talk has got me thinking again about how the Celtics perform in the crunch.  With Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, the Celtics have two players historically known as great closers.  Kevin Garnett's clutch reputation is a bit shakier, though those that have followed his career closely know that he's actually been one of the better crunch time bigs in the league, very comparable to rival Tim Duncan late in games.  And Rajon Rondo is a lightening rod, even among Celtics fans.  He has his supporters and his detractors, but one of the main criticisms he faces is that his poor free throw and jump shooting make him a crunch time liability.

So, I decided to take a look at how the Pierce, Allen, Garnett and Rondo have performed in crunch time during the almost 4 years that this Celtic squad has been together.  For today, I'll focus on the clutch numbers from 82games.com (defined as the last 5 minutes of a game within 5 points).  Here are the totals since October of 2007, per 48 minutes played:

Now, here are the per-48 minute clutch stats for the 2010-11 season thus far:

Here are some of the things I take away from these numbers:

First, just like over the rest of the game, in crunch time the Celtics still preach Ubuntu.  Unlike the Heat or the Lakers, the Celtics' crunch time offense doesn't consist of giving one player the ball and getting out of the way.  Instead, our main players maintain roughly the same roles as they always have.  The scoring is relatively equal opportunity, with Pierce and Allen scoring a bit more than Garnett and even Rondo getting his shots as well.  Pierce draws the fouls best, Ray is nails from downtown.  Rondo is the main distributor, though Pierce and even Garnett get their fair share of crunch time assists.  Garnett is the rebounder and help defender, though Rondo, Pierce and Allen all do a good job crashing the board for their positions.  All in all, in crunch time like the rest of the game, this Celtics team knows their roles and performs them at a high level.

Looking at this year, it's remarkable how similar most of the numbers are when compared to the previous four years.  This team is essentially locked in...in the clutch, they know what to do.  Pierce and Allen are shooting a bit better this year, KG maybe crashing the boards harder, but really...they are who they are at this point.  I was most interested in Rondo, though, as my impression would be that he's taken a larger role on the team this year than in years past.  Interestingly, while he's getting a similar number of shots he seems to be really struggling from the field in the clutch this year as opposed to in years past.  On the other hand, he's taken a much larger role as a clutch distributor this year, with over 14 assists/48 min (almost twice his average over the past four years).

Anyway, this was just a quick snapshot.  Make of these numbers what you will, but they suggest to me that this Celtics squad isn't about any one late-game assassin.  There's no one "closer" on this team.  Instead, we've got 4 high-caliber options that specialize in what they do best.  In closing time we don't have to put the burden on any one person's shoulders...instead, we've got a clutch TEAM.  On the whole, seems like that's a much better position to be in.

Promoted from FanPosts...

In light of Jeff Clark's recent 2008 Reboot post, I decided to compare this 2011 team with their 2008 counterparts based on some of their stats.  This was just for fun, but you can clearly see some similarities and also a few stylistic changes for the main players since 2008.  Instead of looking at composite stats like PER or Win Shares that attempt to measure a player in one number, instead I went through the individual category percentage stats from BasketballReference and also added on-court/off-court +/- from 82games.com.  Without further ado, here is the 2008 Reboot, by the numbers:

Continue reading this post »

Let's change the pace a bit from all of the talk about Perk, Troy Murphy, and the trades and talk a bit about what we already have in Truth and Ray.  About a month ago I did a comparison of Rajon Rondo vs 9 other great point guards in the league according to five different advanced stats (PER, win shares/48 minutes, wins produced/48 minutes, Roland Rating and 1-year adjusted +/-).  I showed the raw values for each player in each stat, then at the end rank-ordered how each player ranked in each stat versus the other point guards under consideration.  The end result gave several different viewpoints on how Rondo compared to his contemporaries, gave a very rough ranking system that (by-the-numbers) put him somewhere in the top 3-6 point guards in the NBA, and sparked some good conversation on both the forum and the blog site. 

So, a month later, I'm back for more.  This time I'll be looking at how Paul Pierce and Ray Allen compare with the other top wings in the league, again by the numbers.  I expanded it a bit this time, so I'll be looking at 25 other wings in addition to Truth and Ray (instead of only 10 PGs like last time).  Also, the more I look at it, adjusted +/- is just not very reliable for less than a year of data so I'm going to use the 2-year APM data for this study.  Also, though I have values for all 27 wings for each measure, for the sake of brevity I'll only show the top-15 in each category before putting all 27 into the final rankings.  Without further ado, this is what I found:

PER: Hollinger's stat, probably the most popular of the "advanced stats", favorable (compared to other advanced stats) to volume scorers and players that generate a lot of free throws; generally ranks those considered "great" by the general public well, though also will tend to have role players with good scoring-per-minute very highly.

Win Shares: From Basketball-reference.com, emphasizes shooting/scoring efficiency; loves points per shot (thus values FTs drawn).  To account for different minutes played, we're going to look at Win Shares per 48 minutes played.

Wins Produced: Dave Berri's controversial stat (most likely to be trashed on an APBRmetric board) is also the one seemingly growing fastest in popular usage; wins produced values what he defines as possessions, so loves rebounds, steals, and blocks and doesn't like TOs; doesn't value shot creation, but does value assists.  We'll look at Wins Produced per 48 minutes.

Roland Rating: 82games.com's Roland Rating is based upon a combination of PER and +/- stats.  It looks at the individual PER of each player, the PER of their primary defensive assignment, and subtracts the 2 for a 1-on-1 value then they combine that 1-on-1 value with a team-impact based on-court/off-court +/- stat to get the rating.  Tends to produce fewest "what???" rankings, because players that rank out highly in both the 1-on-1 and team stats are almost universally who we consider to be among the best in the game...though the order at the top isn't always what you'd expect. (Note: 82games hasn't updated this since Jan. 19, so these results are only current to that date)

2-year Adjusted +/-: This is Basketballvalue.com's APM calculation.  As I mentioned above APM is so incredibly noisy that a single year (or less) doesn't give conclusive answers (and too often the answers are nonsensical for my tastes).  Even 2 years may be too short for an APM calculation.  I like longer APM calculations, 4 years or more, to really clean up the noise and give a robust effect.  Nevertheless, we're talking about this year so we'll have to make due on both issues with the 2-year compromise.

Overall Rank orders: Giving each of our 27 guys a '1' through '27' ranking based on where they ranked in each stat, here is a summary of how each guy did.  I'll add an average across the 5 stats (with standard error) to give us a better idea how our seat-of-the-pants-advanced-stat-cross-section-view ranks Pierce and Allen with respect to 25 of the best wings in the NBA:

Conclusions:

Every stat, no matter how it was measured, agreed that LeBron James has been the best wing in the NBA this year.  In fact, LeBron and Dwyane Wade measured out 1-2 overall among wings across the body of stats examined here.  Good for them, though no real surprises there.

Behind the Miami boys is a group of 4 guys on the next tier: Durant, Ginobili, Pierce and Kobe.  While Kobe and Durant are super-duper stars and Ginobili has gotten some quiet acclaim as a dark horse MVP candidate, it's interesting that the Captain measures right with them this year without nearly the fan fair.

Ray is right behind Kobe, and highlights the next Tier that features eight guys (down to Luol Deng on the list).  This tier is an interesting mix of big names and guys that may be having a bigger impact than their names would suggest.  New Knick Carmelo Anthony is on this tier with Ray, along with several young scorers and a couple of glue/defensive type players (Deng and Fields).

I'm not going to spend much time with the rest, though it is interesting that guys like Joe Johnson and Monta Ellis are maybe further down the list than you might expect.  The take-away for me is that while Miami (obviously) is built around 2 super-wings, the Celtics (and I guess, now, the Knicks) are the only other teams with two wings from among the top 3 tiers.  This continues what I would suspect will be a common theme for the Celtics in these statistical measurements...quality and quantity combining to form a potent whole. 

Pierce and Allen may not be quite as good as the Miami boys, but they're right there with Durant, Kobe, Manu, Melo and the other wings with an argument for top 5 in the league.  Sounds about right to me.

(Side note: I actually did this analysis and the entire write-up on Thursday of last week.  It was trade deadline day, but I didn't think anything much would happen so I figured this analysis would give us something to talk about.  When I finished, before I hit 'publish', I happened to check the main page and saw all craziness breaking loose because Perk had been traded.  That trumped this analysis, so I decided to hold off on publishing for a few days.  Hopefully now is a better time for it.)

That title is controversial.  Yesterday, immediately after the trade, I was very confident that it was also true.  Today my feelings are more nuanced, and being long-winded I'm going to explore them here, but in the end I still think the trades put the Celtics in a better place...with caveats.  But enough hemming and hawing, lets get into this.

Every analyst that I've seen review this trade almost universally says that the Celtics lost their edge with Perk.  Last night Kenny Smith said that the Celtics were built on defense and intimidation, but that without Perkins they no longer have that.  Danny Ainge has been publicly spinning this deal as a move made for the future since the team wasn't sure they could keep Perk.  Roy Hobbs has a well-written article on the main page comparing this trade to trading an older Larry Bird or Kevin Mchale, thus completely changing the face of the franchise by trading fading icons.  I only have one problem with this narrative...

I think it's wrong.

And I say that with utmost respect and care, because there is some kernel of truth there (and obviously Danny is the one that made the trade, so presumbably he knows his real motives better than me).  Yes, Perkins contributed to the edge the Cs play with.  More importantly, he is part of the FAMILY.  He's been there through this whole ride, even before 2007.  This was his home, and his teammates loved him like a brother.  Losing that HURTS, and I do worry about how the real-life players (not mindless basketball automotons) will deal with this.  That, along with the very real question of the health of the O'Neals are the two biggest worries that I have about the deal.

But, all of that said, as far as actual on-court production...for want of a better way to say it, Perkins just isn't as crucial as he has been made out to be.  I do believe that if Perk were healthy we'd have won #18 last year, but I believe that if ANY replacement-caliber NBA 7-footer were there in his place the team would have won it as well.  Perkins is not, was not, and never was going to be the key to the defense.  Or even A key to the defense.  He was a solid role player, but ultimately that's what he was...a role player.  He was tall and big, and despite his other intangibles this was the biggest contribution from him.  We now have reams and reams of evidence over the past 4 years...if you put Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo on the court, if you put ANY big with them they were going to have an elite defense.  Whether that fifth player was Kendrick Perkins or some combo of Glen Davis, Shaquille O'Neal, Semih Erden, Leon Powe and/or Jermaine O'Neal...hasn't mattered in the slightest.  Over sample sizes of thousands of minutes...Perkins just doesn't make a big difference in the level of defense that the Celtics put on the floor.

Now, this is a powerful result.  It can't really be overstated.  Because on the court, the one thing that Perkins could hang his hat on was his defensive impact.  But if the team is just as strong defensively without him...and every reasonable shred of evidence says that they are...then suddenly his presence isn't necessary.  Again, this is purely "Perkins the basketball player, on the court" that I'm judging here.  Perkins the man was a key part of the team, and will be missed.  But Perkins the basketball player...frankly, he was replaceable.  And thus, expendable.

Entering yesterday, the Celtics had some clear weaknesses for this season.  The biggest in my mind was the lack of a backup small forward.  It wasn't a prohibitive worry, but it was a clear team need and put an undue stress on Pierce staying healthy and playing big minutes.  The team also had a short-term shortage of bigs, with both O'Neals and Perk out for the interim with Semih hobbling as well.  Presumably the bigs would eventually get healthy and become a strength again, but in the short term it was another weakness. 

Now, fast-forward to after the moves.  Our forward position is solidified now in a way that it hasn't been since Posey, and may be even stronger yet.  In my opinion Jeff Green is a starting caliber small forward, one that can be an impact player as a 6th man that could make an even bigger impact in case of injury.  He is the piece of the puzzle that, to me, has received shortest shrift around here.  I know that Perk is a known quantity, but I think Green could make a bigger impact on this team for this year than Perk.  He is a better basketball player, and also fits a team need.

I am not a huge fan of Nenad Krstic, but in the scheme of things I don't think he is replacing Perk.  I think he is replacing Semih.  Either way, though, Krstic is an NBA-tested center that is 7-feet tall and can move.  Again, refer to what I mentioned above...our defense has been just as strong on the whole with players like Davis as it was with Perk (I didn't post the numbers, but I could if anyone is curious).  Krstic is not a good defender, but he is as good as the Baby's and Powe's of the world with the additional benefit of actually being 7-foot. 

Then, there is the Danny Ainge factor.  I have to take it on faith that Ainge isn't a complete idiot, and that he has access to more information than I do.  Because for him to trade both Perk AND Semih (and even Luke), that would make absolutely no sense if he weren't very confident that we would have sufficient big men moving forward.  Right now our big men are Garnett, Baby, Krstic, Shaq, Jermaine and the 10-day guy.  I am uncomfortable with Shaq and Jermaine because they are currently injured, and I can't know what to expect from them moving forward.  But Danny has access to their whole stories, so he should have a better idea.  Plus, the trades yesterday opened up 3 full roster spots for the Celtics.  Like everyone I hear the Troy Murphy and Rasheed Wallace rumors, but I frankly have no clue as to their validity...but again, Danny does.  Maybe I'm giving Danny too much credit, but I simply can't believe that he would plan to go through the rest of this season with only Krstic, Baby, Garnett and 10-day contract guys as bigs.  To me, that would be asinine on a level that I'm going to credit that Danny isn't. 

So ultimately, that's where I am.  I ache for Perk the person, I worry about how the trade of their brother might affect the rest of the Celtics' mindsets, and I recognize that at my level of knowledge the remaining bigs look thin.  But I also recognize that Perkins' actual on-court contributions are not as impactful as the narrative would suggest, that in-fact his contributions were very replaceable.  I recognize that the 2 players that the Cs got back, purely on the basketball court, should make the team better this year than they would have been with just Perk.  And I'm making the perhaps dangerous assumption that Danny Ainge isn't Lenny from Of Mice and Men (i.e. that he's not open-mouthed stupid), so to his level of knowledge we must have enough big bodies either getting healthy or on the way that size isn't an issue.  With Shaquille O'Neal and Troy Murphy, for example, my headline is true.  With some semblance of Jermaine O'Neal and Rasheed Wallace, my story is still true. 

In other words, if there are 2 more NBA-caliber big men available to the Celtics moving forward in addition to KG/Baby/Krstic then we are a better basketball team moving forward than we would have been keeping Perk.  And that's better this year, not just in the future.  There are no guarantees, but from the things that I do know I'm pretty comfortable that this trade wasn't just folly or a misguided attempt at building for the future.  And that #18 is very much still squarely in our sites.

Last week I wrote an  article about Kevin Garnett, and in it I tried to describe a nebulous concept...something that KG brings to the game that Kobe Bryant and LeBron James don't, something that defines "good basketball" in a way that goes beyond stats and titles.  In the comments to the article I got into a debate with someone that protested me including LeBron among the players that don't have that mysterious "it" that I was trying to describe...as the poster pointed out, LeBron is a great player and a great passer.  But my response was that LeBron could be the best player in the game and average assists left and right and still not have "it"..."it" is about how a player approaches the game..."it" is about not having to be told that the team always comes first..."it" is about realizing that no matter how gifted a player is physically, what goes on from the neck-up is just as important in defining their game as what goes on from the neck-down.  In short, "it" is the Celtics Way.

And the Celtics Way is defined by Bill Russell. 

The same Bill Russell that, at 1:30 pm EST today, stood on a platform with the President of the United States and received the HIGHEST award that the U.S.A. can give a civilian: The Presidential Medal of Freedom.  This award recognizes people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."  Russell received this award alongside, among others, a former president of the United States, a leader from the Civil Rights movement, a billionaire, an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, and some of the foremost artists of this era.

Think about that for a minute.

But why?  Out of all of the great players that have played professional basketball, why is Russell the only one that has even won this award?  Why did the NBA decide to rename the Finals MVP award after Russell?  OK, that one is easy, because he won 11 championships...but why did he win all of those championships?  How did he win all of the time, when it is pretty universally agreed to that his competition at that time included perhaps the most physically gifted basketball player of all time?  Just what was it about Bill Russell that made him so special?  I got my first answers to some of those questions last summer.

Last summer I participated in a project that went back and looked at every season in NBA history back to the dawn of the shot clock era in the 1950s, examining in depth the greatest players of each season.  When the project began there were more than 30 of us gathering facts and debating on who the best players have been in the 2000s, but by the time we got back to the 50s there were only about 10 or 12 of us still hanging on to learn about NBA history.  And because I was one of those that stuck around, I was able to  learn more about Bill Russell in those weeks than I had ever known in my life.  Russell had retired from the NBA almost a decade before I was even born.  I'd never seen him play outside of a few grainy highlights, and just about all that I knew about him was that he won an absurd number of championship rings and that he has been historically styled as Wilt Chamberlain's foil.  But in participating in this project, I finally started to get a hint at what all of the fuss about Russell was really about.

First of all, Russell is a champion.  I know that's remedial knowledge for most Celtics fans, but it still bears mentioning.  Russell won the league championship in high school.  He then went on to the University of San Francisco (the only school to offer him a scholarship), and won two National Championships.  He captained the U.S.A. National Team in the 1956 Olympics, leading the team in SCORING and bringing home the Gold Medal.  And as we all know, Russell joined the Celtics in 1956 and led them to 11 NBA titles in the next 13 years.
OK, we get it.  Russell won all of the time, everywhere he went.  But there had to be a reason for that, right?  I mean, nobody is THAT lucky, right?  What on earth was Russell doing that he won ALL of the time?

Well, let's start with the fact that Russell changed the entire way that basketball was played.  You see, before Russell, it was considered awful fundamentals to jump on defense.  A "good" defender was supposed to stay flat footed so that they could react quickly as opposed to jumping and getting out of position.  Russell had different ideas.  He had the height of a center but was slender and athletic, in fact a world class high jumper.  So instead, he developed a unique concept called help defense, in which he would defend not only his own man but would also make quick rotations to help out his defensive teammates when their man got by them.  And when anyone challenged the rim, Russell would use his athleticism to jump up and block or alter just about every shot taken.  It was a radical concept at the time, and it was so far ahead of its time that the rest of the basketball world couldn't keep up.  How far advanced?  Well,  ElGee, one of the project participators, came up with a unique way to estimate team offense and defense from back in those days before all of the stats kept today were in rotation.  Take a look at the Celtics defensive ratings in the Russell years:

       Drtg   Rank   Diff from League Avg.    Diff from 2nd place
1956   90.4   6/8   -1.5                      -
--------------------------------------------------------
1957   82.4   1/8   4.8                         2.5
1958   82.0   1/8   5.2                         3.9
1959   83.0   1/8   5.8                         4.4
1960   83.9   1/8   6.2                         1.8
1961   83.0   1/8   8.2                         4.6
1962   84.3   1/8   8.7                         6.3
1963   86.6   1/9   9.0                         6.1
1964   82.7   1/9   11.5                        5.6
1965   83.1   1/9   9.9                         8.1
1966   87.3   1/9   7.1                         4.0
1967   90.8   1/10  4.9                         1.7
1968   92.0   2/12  4.6                         -
1969   88.4   1/14  6.8                         2.8
------------------------------------------------------------
1970   98.5   7/16  0.6                         -

For those keeping track at home, the Celtics were one of the worst defenses in the league in 1956 before Russell got there, once he got there the Cs led the league in defense in 12 of 13 years, including by ridiculous margins for most of the 60s, and then after he left the defense once again fell to average.  That, folks, is dominance.

So, Russell defined one part of the Celtic Way as "defense", when he changed the game.  No surprise there, because defense has become his calling card.  But to win every year at every level for two decades takes more than just defense, no matter how great.  It takes more.  It takes a mind, a mental approach, that goes above and beyond just knowing how to score.  And when it comes to the mental part of basketball, Russell is a genius.  Have you ever listened to him talk about basketball?  It's like Stephen Hawking breaking down a physics problem, only with the laid back manner and laughing wisdom of a grandfather.  Take a gander at a few Russell quotes, and see if you aren't smarter about roundball than you were a few seconds earlier.

On why the game is about so much more than scoring: "There are 48 minutes in a game. It takes a second -- a second-and-a-half, maybe two seconds -- for a three point shot. And if you add up all the shots taken in a game -- free throws don't count because the clock stops -- but if you take all the seconds added up shooting and rebounding it comes to about three minutes. Now out of a 48-minute game three minutes are concerned with shooting and rebounding. What is going on the other 45 minutes?"

On the importance of understanding your team: "I had one coach, he lost a bunch of playoff games and he said, "I can't stand it. We can't beat anybody in the playoffs, but I always hear you've got to make adjustments." I said, "You have to make adjustments, but you can only make adjustments that your particular team can make." You can't say, "We've got to do a great job defensively," if you don't have anybody that can play defense. You can't say, "We have to do a better job rebounding," if you don't have any good rebounders. So what you may have to adjust is tempo -- up tempo or maybe slow down, so that you can make a better rebound team. You can play the game so the rebounds become less important to the outcome. Those are the kind of adjustments that your team can make. But you have to know your team."

On why you should learn everyone's position, not just your own: "And the key was that Chet Walker had been killing us. And I knew that I could guard him. And the reason I knew I could guard him is his moves were very deliberate. As part of my teaching myself, I learned -- we had six plays and nowadays they number those positions. One is point guard, two is shooting guard, three is a small forward, four is a power forward, five is a center. Well, I made a point to learn how to play all those positions on all six plays. Now not that I ever wanted to or hoped to play in those other positions, but in knowing those positions I know the problems that go with that position. So that if my teammate needed help I can help. And on defense I watched these guys, how they play defense, and I know how to guard almost any position. And I physically took over Chet."

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/rus0int-1

And there's so, so much more.  If you have a minute, click on that link and read the entire 9-page interview.  It's like a dissertation on good basketball.  Especially the part where he talks about the difference between himself and Wilt Chamberlain, even couched as it is in oblique references.  Russell says that he and Wilt were never rivals, they were actually competitors that happened to play the same position.  But not rivals, because "rival" suggests that there were winners and losers, whereas he and Wilt both won because they had different agendas.  He hints that while Wilt defined success by the stats he could amass (sound familiar, LeBron?), Russell learned in college that he could put up great stats and still be passed up for awards so instead he decided that he would define success by winning.  It was a team sport, so the best measure for success was how well your team did.  Team before me.  Ubuntu.  The Celtic way.

So Russell was a physical, defensive monster.  He was also a basketball savant with the perfect, team-first mental approach to the game.  But there was another very important part to Bill Russell, the part that took him beyond a sports legend and into the realm of true heroism that is worthy of presidential awards: Russell faced some of the biggest social ills of his society and didn't just overcome them...he conquered them.

You see, Bill Russell was born as an African American at a time in our history when that was a crime worthy of punishment...worthy of being treated as less than human.  There are stories out there about Russell's childhood...how his father reportedly had a shotgun pointed at him by a white gas station attendant and was threatened with death if he didn't stay in the station and allow all of the white patrons to be served before getting his gas, or how his mother was accosted by a police offer for wearing what he deemed to be a "white woman's dress".  Even once he was grown and a professional basketball player,  he faced bigotry and racism in Boston.  While establishing the foundation of the Celtics' basketball dynasty, Russell wasn't even allowed to stay in the same hotel with some of his teammates.  On a daily basis Russell faced hardships that dwarf most of the issues faced by the premature millionaire athletes of today.

But instead of bowing to the pressure or the strain of a rough situation, Russell faced it with defiance and quiet dignity.  Unlike many athletes today, he was active in social issues and made civil rights an important part of his legacy.  Russell had a front-row seat for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech.  So now, 50 years later, does it mean more to Russell to receive such a prestigious honor from the first African-American president in U.S.A. history?  I'll let him answer that: "I told him (President Obama) that it was great that he was the first black president but that's not what I liked most about him — not that he was a black president but that he was president and that he reached the top of his field on intelligence, ingenuity and hard work."

Intelligence, ingenuity and hard work.  That was how Bill Russell overcame adversity and made himself a national hero.  He let the crucible shape him, strengthen him, and then he went out and proved himself its master.  He performed his craft at a level that had never before been seen, and may not have been seen since.  He went on to become the first African American coach in a major American professional sport, and he won a title doing that as well.  In all he won 18 championships in 21 years of organized basketball.  And along the way, he laid the groundwork for the greatest dynasty in the history of sports, a legacy that extends until today. 

So, congratulations to William Felton Russell, American hero, on your prestigious award.  It is very, very well deserved. And thank you for giving us the Celtic way that even a transplanted Celtic fan like me can recognize and appreciate, 60 years later.

Promoted FanPost

I wrote an article last week on how the "Big 4" of KG, Rondo, Pierce and Allen have performed against the best teams in the league this year, and in the comments section one poster called me out for not mentioning Perk.  My response at the time was that Perk had only played a handful of games, and that since he was only one out of four centers that had started for the Cs this year it was impossible to do a legit stat breakdown on any one of the centers like I did on the other starters.  And that's still true.

But, after last night's loss to the Lakers, I thought this a good time to point out exactly what a healthy Kendrick Perkins, Shaquille O'Neal, Jermaine O'Neal and/or Semih Erden gives us: our linemen (be prepared...a LOT of football analogy ahead).

Continue reading this post »

By popular request, this is being added to the front page from the FanPosts section. Enjoy! - Jeff

...and why I think some Celtics fans are missing what they are witnessing.  First off, I'll tell you from jump that this is going to be long.  And personal.  And perhaps even insulting to some who may read this.  That's not my intent, but it is what it is.  You can only say "I'm right and you're wrong" so politely, and when it comes to Kevin Garnett I'm right.  And if his being a "jerk", as our blog chief eloquently but incorrectly deemed him yesterday, is in any way part of KG's "story" to you...you're wrong.

Continue reading this post »

The Celtics are about to embark on a series of huge games against the best teams in the league.  In the next nine days we'll be facing the Mavericks, the Magic, the Lakers, AND the Heat...you know, just the cupcake teams of the league.  Anyway, I decided that this would be a good time to check out how the Celtics tend to do against the best teams in the league.  As I suspected, the results were pretty interesting.

The Celtics have gone 11 - 5 against the top 11 teams in the NBA this year by record.  But three of those losses came with KG and/or Rondo out of the line-up, a fourth came when the team let down against the Thunder when Durant was hurt, and the fifth loss was the 2-point squeaker against the Mavericks that they'll be looking to avenge tonight.  When you look at how the Lakers and Heat have struggled against the best competition, that's pretty impressive.  But let's take it a step further and examine how the best players on our team perform against the best competition, as opposed to how they normally play.

Continue reading this post »

There was a thread this morning asking why Rondo doesn't measure out as well in John Hollinger's PER stat as we might think he is...that Rondo ranked 47th in PER, so what is it about his game that doesn't translate to that advanced stat?  Well, that got me thinking.  I'm really into the APBR-metric stats in basketball, as I think they give us a LOT of information that either isn't apparent or else just flat out isn't in the box scores.  But in order for them to be effective, IMO, you need to a) understand a bit about how they work, b) understand a bit about their strengths and weaknesses, and c) look at a large enough cross-section of the "advanced stats" to get a full picture of a player.

So I wondered: how do our players measure out vs their peers, according to the nerd stats?  We have a lot of internal debates around here as far as how good our guys are, and because of the way the Cs play their impact isn't readily obvious in the traditional points/rebounds/assists summary/Sportscenter blurbs.  So, what do the advanced stats say about our guys?

I'm going to look into all 4 of our All Star caliber starters, but I'll start it off today with Rondo since he was the subject of the post that got me on this.  I'll compare him against 9 other newsworthy point guards (7 that I thought of by name, then the best point guards out of each of the last 2 draft classes by reputation).  I'm going to look at 5 different stats: Hollinger's PER, Basketball-reference's win shares, Dave Berri's Wins Produced, 82games.com's Roland Rating, and BasketballValue's 1-year adjusted +/-.  I'll give a brief blurb about each stat based on my experience with them, and then at the end we'll look and see how those stats would rank our guy vs the other bests at his position.

Today we're looking at Rondo vs Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Steve Nash, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Tony Parker, Ray Felton, Steph Curry and John Wall.

PER: Hollinger's stat, probably the most popular of the "advanced stats", favorable (compared to other advanced stats) to volume scorers and players that generate a lot of free throws; generally ranks those considered "great" by the general public well, though also will tend to have role players with good scoring-per-minute very highly.  Here is how each of our PGs ranks in PER:

Win Shares: From Basketball-reference.com, shooting/scoring efficiency; loves points per shot (thus values FTs drawn).  To account for different minutes played, we're going to look at Win Shares per 48 minutes played.  

Wins Produced: Dave Berri's controversial stat (most likely to be trashed on an APBRmetric board) is also the one seemingly growing fastest in popular usage; wins produced values what he defines as possessions, so loves rebounds, steals, and blocks and doesn't like TOs; doesn't value shot creation, but does value assists.  We'll look at Wins Produced per 48 minutes.

Roland Rating: 82games.com's Roland Rating is based upon a combination of PER and +/- stats.  It looks at the individual PER of each player, the PER of their primary defensive assignment, and subtracts the 2 for a 1-on-1 value then they combine that 1-on-1 value with a team-impact based on-court/off-court +/- stat to get the rating.  Tends to produce fewest "what???" rankings, because players that rank out highly in both the 1-on-1 and team stats are almost universally who we consider to be among the best in the game...though the order at the top isn't always what you'd expect.

1-year Adjusted +/-: This is Basketballvalue.com's APM calculation.  I don't love it because APM is so incredibly noisy that a single year (or less) doesn't give conclusive answers.  Even 2 years may be too short for an APM calculation.  I like longer APM calculations, 4 years or more, to really clean up the noise and give a robust effect.  Nevertheless, we're talking about this year so this is both the 1-year APM as well as the (huge) standard errors for each guy:

Overall Rank orders: Giving each of our 10 guys a '1' through '10' ranking based on where they ranked in each stat, here is a summary of how each guy did.  I'll add an average across the 5 stats (with standard error) to give us a better idea how our seat-of-the-pants-advanced-stat-cross-section-view ranks Rondo with respect to 9 of the best point guards in the NBA:

Conclusions:

Just about every advanced stat, no matter how calculated, agreed that Chris Paul and Steve Nash have been the 2 best point guards in the NBA this year.  Likewise, just about every stat concurs that John Wall and Ray Felton have been clearly the worst of this top-10.

Rondo is smack-dab in the middle of the rest of those vying for a top-spot.  With standard error considered Rose, Deron Williams and Rondo all overlap with each other for the 3 - 5 slots.  Likewise Westbrook, Parker and Curry all overlap each other for the 6 - 8 slots.  But Rondo is so well clustered that his ranking would overlap with everyone from Rose (nominally 3rd) to Parker (nominally 7th).

On the whole, I'm satisfied with that ranking for Rondo.  He's not quite as good on the whole as Paul or Nash, but he's right there with Rose, Williams and the rest with a strong argument for top-5 PG in the NBA this year.  Sounds about right to me.

Back for day 2 of the "daily links", missing FLCeltsFan more than ever.

Boston Herald:

Celtics Eke out another one

No Pats on back for Celtics

Winning streak not exactly hearts, flowers

Boston Globe

Answering Service

Video: Celtics-76ers Game Highlights

O'Neal able to step up to the plate

They Keep a healthy outlook

Celtics Life

Winning Close Games is the sign of a true champion

Today's video: Celtics/Magic preview

Comments from the other side: Sixers 12/22

Celtics 84, Sixers 80 highlights

Celtics/Sixers post-game videos

Celtics beat Sixers, refs 84 - 80, extend streak to 14

Celtics Town

Kevin Garnett Congratulates himself after a nice pick

Green Street

Ray Allen: We can't get caught up in Christmas distractions

Irish Coffee: Top 10 last-minute Celtics gifts

Shaq has presidential ambitions for 2010-11 season

Glen Davis doesn't really care about the Magic

Even in winning, Paul Pierce admits refs got the better of him

Fast break: Celtics capture 14th straight

Rajon Rondo moving a lot better

Irish Coffee: Rajon Rondo recovery

ESPN

It's all about 1825

Celtics pulling out wins as good teams do

Daily Dime: on the grind

J. O'Neal's return to Celtics delayed by illness

Celtics postgame sound

Allen, Celtics close out 76ers for 14th straight win

Shaq in crunch time

I really miss the Daily Links when FLCeltsFan is away, to the point that I started going back through old Daily Links articles to check the sites that always are in the Links.  So today, with apologies to FLCeltsFan if it offends (it was meant as flattery) and the Blog admins (I didn't actually ask for permission, so I hope it's ok), I am going to post some of the links from those sites in a poor imitation of what they usually so generously provide.

Boston Herald:

Kendrick Perkins on fast track

Jermaine O'Neal Practices, may go tonight

Delonte West Hopes for January Return

Boston Globe

Perking Up

Perk Practices; Jermaine O'Neal Close to returning

76ers Thumbnails

Shaq's Sleigh makes Rounds

The Big Maestro

Overlooked Marquis Daniels

Davis's Game Growing

Celtics Life

Streaking Celtics Host Divisional Foe Sixers

Ray Allen "Remember the Name" Mix

Perkins and J.O. Check in after Tuesday's Practice

Shaq Conducts the Boston Pops

Paul Pierce and the Cs get their Bowl on

Pierce named Eastern Conference Player of the Week

Celtics Town

Morning Walkthrough: Newborn daughter helps mature Glen Davis

Perk Compares his recovery to KG's

Kendrick Perkins could return in late January

Green Street

Preview: Philadelphia at Boston, Game 27

Jermaine O'Neal 50-50 to play against Philadelphia

The Latest on Kendrick Perkins' return

Irish Coffee: The Celtics' bench struggles

Gino's Jungle

The Only Thing Worrying me right now

ESPN

Celtics vs Magic preview

Nah, Humbug.  Doc OK with Christmas game

We are now 20 games into our 82-game schedule, marking the 1/4 mark.  We knew coming in that this was a huge season...after last season's heartrendingly close Finals loss, and the impending "free agency" of Doc, Truth and Ray, this summer was a turning point.  Danny decided to re-load instead of re-build, bringing everyone back plus adding twin O'Neals to the mix.  But there were big question marks as well...age, injury, chemistry, last season's regular season fade, "Super Teams" in LA and Miami...what were we to expect coming into the year?  Well, 1/4 of the way in, we have at least preliminary answers to some of the questions.

1) The team looks great.  I mean really, really great.  As Jeff points out on the front page, we've been spoiled by ridiculous starts for 4 straight years now.  Essentially, at the 20-game mark this team always is on an 80% win pace with huge scoring differentials.  But this one just feels a little different...in '07 I think everyone was just overwhelmed, enjoying the ride.  In '08 there was a bit of a post-championship sense of been-there/done-that.  In '09, after the injuries killed the previous year, there was a sense of breath-holding as we waited to see if a certain knee held up.  But this year?  This year feels more like '07, if anything...it feels like the team could easily be undefeated if that were the priority, because we're just clearly and distinctly better than everyone else.  Plus, there's a bit of the magical feel again, as the players are consistently outperforming expectations and re-proving to us what maybe we had forgotten: this team is REALLY special, and if all goes well should be remembered as one of the all-time greats.

2) We have the best defense in the league again. The backbone of our championship squad in '08 was the defense.  That defense was one for the record books, swarming and holding down opponents to a degree that in some ways had never been done.  The 98.9 defensive rating was so far beyond the second-best defense that it looked like an outlier, and it was the main reason we were able to overwhelm the Lakers, Cavs and Pistons on the way to the ring.  Over the last 2 seasons the defense has been good, especially early on, but injuries and effort and whatever other factors had combined to drop that DRating to 102.3 (2nd) and 103.8 (5th) in those years.  And with the architect (Thibs) and enforcer (Perk) of the defenses absent and the anchor (KG) supposedly declining, the defense was a major question mark entering the season.  Instead, through 20 games, the Celtics defensive rating of 99.7 is once again the best in the NBA.  Of course we'll have to see if it is maintained (especially through the January doldrums that Jeff pointed out), but right now we aren't defending like we have the last 2 years with Thibs and Perk around...we are defending much BETTER than we have since 2008.

3) Rajon Rondo is arguably the best distributor in the NBA. I'm not going to get into the "who's the best point guard?" debate, because there are so many different ways to be a great PG these days that such a discussion could derail this.  What I WILL say, though, is that there are very few players in the NBA that could distribute the ball around this line-up with the volume, accuracy and game-generalship that Rondo has shown through 20 games.  He's gotten attention for the possible assists record, and rightly so, but to me it's more about "how" than "how many".  And the "how" is that Rondo is consistently making the right decision in every situation.  He waits for the play to develop, then hits the cutter at the rim (it's amazing how many of his assists are layups).  He gets the defense off balance, then hits the right shooter for an in-rhythm feet-set jumper.  He flies down the floor on the break, then rewards the big man for running with him.  Yeah, you could look at the numbers (14.1 assists/game, about 4 more than the Paul/Williams/Nash trio at second; 53.1% assist rate edging out that same trio), but from watching the games you don't even need the numbers.  Rondo has clearly come of age as a distributor this season, and may just be the best one in the league.

4) Paul Pierce is quietly having a huge year. Much has been made of how KG/Pierce/Allen had to sacrifice individual numbers in '07 for this team to work.  But not much has been made about how they had to RE-Reinvent themselves after 2008 once Rondo began to take a larger role.  For Rondo to be optimized, he had to have the ball.  That meant that the others had to move off-of-the-ball.  While also huge transitions for KG and Ray, it completely changed how Pierce plays.  Instead of initiating many of the sets, Pierce is now more of a finisher.  And to his credit, he is finishing at an incredible rate right now.  His current 51.7% FG and 62.1% true shooting percentages would both be career highs, and the FG% would OBLITERATE his previous high of 47.2%, which he set last year.  Pierce's game looks so easy and smooth right now, almost like he's floating through the game until we need to score, then he's right there with a big bucket.  It's not surprising to me at all that through 20 games the team is a whopping +19.6 points/48 minutes when Pierce is on the court as opposed to when he's off.  He also had one of the best on-court/off-court +/-s in the league in the 07-08 season, but this year he is doing it in a slightly different way.

5) Allen and Pierce are merging. Ray and Pierce had a lot of similarities to their game before combining onto one squad.  Both were 25/5/5 guys that were big offense initiators for their teams.  But for 07-08, with Pierce already in place here, Ray moved more off the ball into a shooter/finisher roll.  But this year, with Pierce also embracing that role, Ray has actually moved back the other way towards a slightly more complete game.  For the first time as teammates, Allen has caught and even slightly surpassed Pierce in assist percentage.  Ray is doing more driving now and coming off curls inside the 3-point line in a decision-making capacity than he has been.  He's still Sugar Ray from downtown (current 41.7% 3-point percentage would be highest since 2001-02 for Ray), but he's doing more things for the team as well.  He and Pierce are becoming more and more alike, again.

6) Shaq has been a breath of fresh air.  As KG once analogized (as only he could), Shaq's presence has brought a fresh aroma to this team.  Center was a huge question mark for us entering the year...nobody knew when Perk would be back or how healthy he'd be, Sheed retired, Jermaine was signed but admitted he'd been playing injured...and then there was Shaq.  Shaq, who had played on 3 teams in the last 3 years and was credited as a divisive force for each of them.  Shaq, who at age 39 no longer could move enough to play defense, even if he wanted to.  Shaq, who was so detrimental to the Cavs last year that Doc actively wanted him on the court when we played them.  Shaq...who through 20 games, has been outstanding on AND off the court.  As I pointed out above, even with Shaq starting at center, we are currently sporting the best defense in the NBA, better than we've been in years.  So his defense hasn't been an issue.  But on offense?  Offensively, Shaq is shooting 68.4% from the field.  No, that's not a misprint.  The only reason he's not dwarfing the NBA for league lead (Nene leads at 62.4%) is because he doesn't have enough attempts to qualify, but he is absolutely killing it.  Rondo and Garnett, especially, but really the whole squad make it a point to spoon-feed Shaq for easy layups/dunks all game.  The trick is, he never has to post up anywmore...all he has to do is stand near the rim and be ready, and with his soft hands/huge size/still lethal touch within 3 feet he can dunk all game.  And his presence absolutely opens things up for everyone else, which shows up in our team offense being a whopping +16.7 points/48 minutes with him on the court as opposed to when he's off (according to 82games.com's last update).  And that's not even getting into the positive effect his levity has had on the locker room, or the on-court enforcer persona he has embraced with the no layup rule.  Through 20 games, Shaq is completing Voltron in a way that I don't think many foresaw.

7) Kevin Garnett.  I don't really know what to put for KG's bullet point.  For one thing, he's currently healthy.  Which leads to everything else.  From there I guess I could go to the defense.  Before the season I had a pretty spirited debate with a few posters about whether or not KG was still the best defensive power forward in the NBA.  20 games in, we need to re-frame the argument...KG is back to being arguably the best defensive PLAYER in the NBA.  With all due respect to Superman in Orlando, the last Defensive Player of the Year is healthy again and back for another challenge.  The Celtics and Magic are 1-2 in the NBA in defense, Howard and Garnett are 1-2 in Basketball-Reference's estimated Defensive Rating (clearly separated from everyone else), and are also 1-2 in B-R's Defensive Win Shares.  But those are all team based and/or box score based estimates.  If you cruise over to 82games.com, you'll find that Garnett's actual Defensive Rating (99 pts/100 possession) is really better than Howard's (102 pts/100 possessions).  Not only that, but when Howard leaves the court the Magic's defense doesn't really suffer that much (1.2 pts/100 possessions better off court)...but when KG leaves the court Boston's defense falls off (8.4 pts/100 possessions worse off court).  Now, it's early in the year, these numbers could change, back-up situations are different, all of that.  I'm not here to prove positive that KG is the best defensive player in the league again.  But what I AM saying is that once again it's a debate...which is HUGE for this team.

But really, defense is only part of it.  KG is crashing the boards again at a rate that we haven't seen since his Minnesota days, something very few if anyone expected to see again.  On his shoulders, the Celtics as a team are 3rd in team defensive rebounding percentage, up from 14th a year ago.  Also, Garnett is back to finishing alley-oops and operating in the post, 2 much missed aspects of our offense.  He is passing well of late.  There are a lot of things about KG's game combining to have him at a team high +21.4/48 minutes with him on the court as opposed to off of it.

8 ) This team has a chip on it's shoulders.  Whether it's Rondo's thirst to prove himself the best PG in the league, Shaq's desire to go out on top, KG's hit list of those that took advantage of his weakness, or maybe it's "just" the searing agony of coming so close to the goal only to fall a smidgeon short to their ARCH ENEMIES on that enemy's home court, having to listen to the crowd celebrate and watching Kobe frickin Bryant jump on tables to celebrate...whatever it is driving this team, it is obvious that SOMETHING is driving them.  They are playing with an attitude.  They are slapping down anyone that dares challenge them.  In fact, so far the only way to beat this team seems to be to let them overlook you then try to sneak attack at the end.  Other than that, this squad is kicking tail and taking names.  And it's been a joy to watch.

So, that's what I've seen through the first quarter of the season.  As Jeff pointed out, the second/third quarters have traditionally been the most challenging one for this squad, and the team is still old with definite injury question marks.  This is by no means a done deal.  But right now, 20 games into the year, I frankly couldn't be more happy with how things have gone or more excited about what could potentially be coming.  If we stay healthy, #18 is a reality.  Point-blank period.  And like the vets on the squad, I'm just enjoying the ride as I know that this type of team isn't something that we get to witness and enjoy just every year.

In 2007 when I followed Kevin Garnett to the Celtics, there were several reasons why I fully expected a championship right off the bat.  One of those reasons is that Garnett, Pierce and Allen did not all do the same thing.  There was some redundancy with Pierce and Allen, but there were also enough differences (Ray's ability to play off the ball, Pierce's ability to drive and draw fouls) for them to coexist at a high level...and Garnett's game was so unique and diverse that he could be the best player on the floor on a given night without ever even having to encroach on the wings' scoring ground.

That's a completely overlooked aspect of the new "Big 3" craze that's sweeping the NBA.  This isn't fantasy basketball...you don't just add 3 great players and stir for a title.  They actually have to fit.  Kobe, Gasol and Odom (or Bynum) fit, with minimal overlap...they're essentially an inverted form of KG/Pierce/Allen.  But LeBron, Wade and Bosh never did...they're all scorers first, LeBron and Wade score in the same ways, and Bosh isn't good at the other things that a team needs to be elite so if he's not volume-scoring he can't be used maximally.  I was willing to consider that maybe LeBron could adapt his game Magic-style and maybe Bosh would concentrate more on crashing the glass and playing defense, but so far that just doesn't look like it's in them. 

There are rumors that Melo and Chris Paul want to join Amare Stoudemire in New York.  If that happens, let me save you some time...they'll have even bigger issues than Miami, because there just isn't enough division of labor.

Now, let's bring it back to the Celtics.  What I Witnessed last night wasn't a Chosen One...it was the Celtics division of labor working to absolute optimal form.  Consider:

Rondo was THE distributor.  He had 16 assists to only 8 shot attempts and 3 TOs.  He didn't worry about scoring, he only distributed and helped out on defense.

KG was THE defense and interior presence.  He outrebounded the rest of the Celtics starters combined, was standing in Wade's face every time he tried to come off a pick and drive, and just generally closed off the paint.

Allen and Pierce were THE scorers.  They combined for 60 points on only 39 shot attempts.  The almost outscored the entire Heat starting line-up by themselves (60 to 62).  Now they only combined for 1 rebound, 1 assist, and 1 steal between them, but that was irrelevant.  [i]That wasn't their responsibility.[/i]  The were asked to score.  They scored.

See, the way this team is structured, Garnett, Rondo, Pierce and Allen could all have their best games of the year on a single night without stepping on each others' toes.  They just about did that last night.  That will NEVER happen in Miami.  The Heat may learn to coexist, and with their talents they will likely be formidable come playoff time.  But with all of the overlap, LeBron and Wade and Bosh will NEVER all have their best games on the same night.  They can't, because their bests require the same space.

But on this team, the division of labor can be almost perfect.  Everyone has their jobs, and they can all do them to perfection without overlap.  It makes for beautiful basketball.  It makes for Celtics basketball. 

OK, I'll be the one to say it.

I know Shaq and KG will be a combined 74 years old before the season ends.  I know both have shown wear-and-tear in recent years.  I know Shaq has had arguably a negative impact on his last few teams.  And I know that we don't want to rely upon two grumpy old men to play 38 minutes per game for 100 games...because they can't.

I know this.

That said.

On any given night, Garnett and Shaq will be the point-blank best big-man combo in the NBA.

And I don't mean best in a "well, they can compete with Bynum/Gasol" kind of way.  No, I mean that there will be nights when they are by FAR the best big-man combo in the NBA.  Throw in Jermaine O'Neal and maybe Perk to round out the crew, and there will be entire games that our frontcourt win just by being dominant.

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The Celtics were blown out in game 3 against the Cavs, only to come back and win game 4 (both games in Boston).  We were also blown out in game 5 against the Magic in Orlando, only to come back and win game 6 back home.  Finally, we were semi-blown out in game 1 against the Lakers, only to come back and win game 2 (both games in LA). 

Those that are familiar with my posts know that I like looking for patterns, but really, what is the pattern here?  It's not home vs away, as all three were different situations.  But I read in passing earlier today that one of the commonalities for our two biggest blowouts was travel...and that set off alarms.

If you go through this year's playoffs, you'll see that in the first game played in a new location the Celtics are only 7 - 6 with a margin of -0.9.  On the other hand, when one game is played in the same location as the previous game (be it home or away), the Celtics are 8 - 2 with a margin of +7.8. 

Against the Lakers in this series, it is even more extreme.  The Celtics are 0 - 3 with a margin of -14 in the three travel games, and 3 - 0 with a margin of +7.3 in the three "stay" games.

And this is a case where statistics really do make logical sense.  Everyone talks about how the Cs are an older, veteran team full of aches and pains.  Well, as anyone who has ever traveled with a sore limb can attend to, it is HARD.  The injured area hurts more, stiffens up more, and just basically doesn't work the way you want it to for awhile.  And LA is by far the furthest the Celtics have had to fly this postseason (in both directions), so if the travel is bothering them you would expect it to show up in the first game after the travel.

:Shrugs: By tomorrow night analysis like this will be made moot as the team will just have to go get it.  But for an interminable off-day, I thought this was an interesting finding with possible relevance for what we might expect on the morrow.

I wrote a post right before the Finals began, detailing how Kevin Garnett had shut out every power forward that he had faced in the playoffs this season.  At the time there was some uncertainty about whether KG would get the full-time call on Pau Gasol, and if so whether he could replicate his huge defense against arguably the best offensive big man in the NBA (and a legit 7-footer, instead of the tweeners he saw in the East).  Five games into the Finals, we can start to answer that question.

Overall, Gasol has a very nice stat line through 5 games: 18.8 points, 52% FG, 10 reb, 2.6 assists, 42 minutes

This is slightly better than Garnett's overall stat line of: 15.6 points, 51% FG, 6 reb, 3.2 assists, 31 minutes

But when we look at the times when Garnett and Gasol have been matched up 1-on-1, we get a slightly different view.  This is the view I want to look at today, as it reflects a lot on what we need to see in Los Angeles to ensure that the Cs come home with #18.  Garnett defends Gasol as his primary assignment when Gasol and Bynum are on the floor together, then switches to Lamar Odom when Odom and Gasol are on the court together (1 exception: end of game 3, when KG switched back onto Gasol in the last 2 minutes of the 4th quarter after Gasol toasted Baby on the block).  Because the pattern is so constant, it makes it easy to go back through Popcornmachine.net and the game logs to detail how Gasol does against KG, vs against everyone else.  Let's look at it by game (will be lots of numbers.  If too many, just skip to my conclusion below):

Game 1: Garnett defended Gasol for 23 minutes:

Gasol (KG on him): 16 points (6-for-9 FG), 8 rebounds (5 offensive), 1 ast, 2 TOs, +15

KG (in those minutes): 12 points (5-for-9 FG), 0 rebounds, 1 ast, 1 TO, -15

(Gasol in 23 minutes without KG on him: 7 points (2-for-5 FG), 6 reb (3 off), 2 ast, 1 TO)

Game 2: Garnett defended Gasol for 17 minutes (this was the foul trouble game):

Gasol (KG on him): 4 points (2-for-2 FG), 6 reb (2 off), 2 ast, 0 TO, -2

KG (in those minutes): 4 points (2-for-4 FG), 3 reb (0 off), 4 ast, 0 TO, +2

(Gasol in 25 minutes without KG on him: 21 points (5-for-8 FG), 2 reb (1 off), 1 ast, 1 TO)

Game 3: Garnett defended Gasol for 22 minutes:

Gasol (KG on him): 4 points (2-for-6 FG), 6 reb (2 off), 2 ast, 1 TO, -4

KG (in those minutes): 17 points (7-for-9 FG), 4 reb (1 off), 2 ast, 3 TO, +4

(Gasol in 17 minutes without KG on him: 9 points (3-for-5 FG), 4 reb (0 off), 2 ast, 0 TO)

Game 4: Garnett defended Gasol for 9 minutes (this was the Bynum injured game):

Gasol (KG on him): 6 points (3-for-5 FG), 2 reb (1 off), 0 ast, 2 TO, -0

KG (in those minutes): 2 points (1-for-4 FG), 2 reb (1 off), 1 ast, 0 TO, +0

(Gasol in 36 minutes without KG on him: 15 points (3-for-8 FG), 4 reb (0 off), 3 ast, 2 TO)

Game 5: Garnett defended Gasol for 23 minutes:

Gasol (KG on him): 0 points (0-for-3 FG), 3 reb (1 off), 0 ast, 0 TO, -10

KG (in those minutes): 15 points (5-for-6 FG), 9 reb (1 off), 3 ast, 1 TO, +10)

(Gasol in 15 minutes without KG on him: 12 points (5-for-9 FG), 9 reb (6 off), 0 ast, 1 TO)

Overall: Garnett has defended Gasol for 94 minutes:

Gasol (KG on him): 30 points, 52% FG, 25 reb (11 off), 5 ast, 5 TOs, -1

KG (in those minutes): 50 points, 63% FG, 18 reb (3 off), 11 ast, 5 TOs, +1

(Gasol in 115 minutes without KG on him: 64 points, 51% FG, 25 reb (10 off), 8 ast, 5 TOs)

Conclusions: Now, that's a lot of numbers to digest.  I put them out there for credibility sake, because otherwise I don't know if you would really believe the final numbers that I'm about to post.  Because in game 1, Gasol came out and smacked Garnett right in the mouth.  There's no other way to put it, and I don't even know if the numbers I posted above accurately convey Gasol's dominance (thought the 8 boards, 5 offensive for Gasol vs 0 boards for Garnett might just do it).  But since then?  These are Gasol's per-36 minute averages when defended by Garnett in games 2 - 5:

Gasol (KG on him): 7.1 points, 44% FG, 8.6 reb (3 off), 2.0 ast, 1.5 TO per 36 min

KG (in those minutes): 19.3 points, 65% FG, 9.1 reb (1.5 off), 5.1 ast, 2.0 TO per 36 min

In other words, since Gasol dominated the opener Garnett has absolutely cleaned his clock head-to-head in the next 4 games.  It's not coincidence that the Lakers won game 1 easily, but the Celtics have been the best team in each of the 4 games since (even the Laker's 2nd win, which was a very winnable game for the Cs).  Gasol obviously gets his numbers overall, but the key seems to be WHEN he gets those numbers.  Garnett tends to defend Gasol at the beginning and end of each half, which are the times when the teams are establishing their rhythm and closing things out.  In other words, he often defends Gasol at the key points of the game.  After the Lakers were +15 during the head-to-head portion of game 1, the Celtics have been a collective +16 during the head-to-head portions of the last 4 games.  This particular pattern suggests that when Garnett removes the 2nd best player on the Lakers during the key points in the game, the Celtics are able to win those periods and thus the game.  That Gasol can put up huge numbers during the middle portion of the halves when the first unit rests doesn't seem to be enough to overcome the Celtics winning the battles of the main units.

So, let's bring that back to finishing this series.  Garnett HAS to continue to win his 1-on-1 battle with Gasol.  As Game 1 showed us, when Gasol is clicking the Lakers are extremely difficult to beat.  The rest of this series will be in LA, where Gasol is more comfortable and will be looking to re-prove that he isn't Ga-soft.  That will make him a dangerous, tough match-up.  But Garnett has to win their 1-on-1, because if he does the Lakers don't seem to have enough other arrows in their quiver to match the rest of the Cs.  This match-up is the key.  If Garnett has one more shut-out in him, the Celtics should again be the world champions.

. . . and why #18 is a reality

(We promoted drza44's previews against Cleveland and Orlando, and it seemed like things worked out okay.  Let's hope he can bring us luck one last time. -RH)

This feels like déjà vu all over again.  "The Celtics are strong, but not good enough against a transcendent superstar".  "Kobe is playing the best ball of his career, and will ‘will’ his team to victory."  "If Kobe (not the Lakers…Kobe) wins another title, can we re-open the Jordan comparisons?"  I could swear these are story-lines from 2008, but no, they’re the majority of what I’ve seen written for the upcoming 2010 NBA Finals.  These are what many media outlets seem to believe are the main things you need to know about the championship series.  Me, I focus on the game itself.  And when I think about the upcoming Celtics vs Lakers Finals, the first thing that comes to my mind is "chess vs checkers" with a dabble of baseball analogy sprinkled in.  Let me explain.

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