Celtics attempting gambit not accomplished in decades

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/celtics-attempting-gambit-not-accomplished-142257866.html



Celtics attempting gambit not accomplished in decades



Dan Feldman,NBC Sports



1 hour 44 minutes ago




The Celtics were the youngest team to win a playoff series last season.

They apparently weren’t young enough for their own taste.

Boston’s trade for Kyrie Irving was the most dramatic step in a youth movement by a team that won 53 games and reached the conference finals a year go.

The Celtics lost four of their top six in playoff minutes (Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas and Kelly Olynyk) and replaced them with – top four newcomers by value – Irving, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward and Guerschon Yabusele. Average age of the outgoing players right now? 27.2. Average age of the incoming players? 23.5.

Most teams with seasons like Celtics keep the core together, meaning everyone gets a year older. That doesn’t apply in Boston, which shed 11 of 15 players.

Marcus Morris (27) and Aaron Baynes (30) are in line for rotation roles. Al Horford is 31. They’ll hedge against the team’s average age freefalling. But returners Marcus Smart (23), Terry Rozier (23) and Jaylen Brown (20) should receive larger roles previously held by much older veterans.

The Celtics had an average age – using players’ ages Feb. 1 and weighted by playing time, the same method used in this post’s first sentence – of 25.9 in the 2017 postseason. Just three teams had an average age below 26 during a postseason in which they won a playoff series then got even younger while still winning a playoff series the following year:

1956 Syracuse Nationals
1959 Minneapolis Lakers
1960 Los Angeles Lakers

The Celtics will try to become the fourth. They’re not only expected to advance again, but return to the conference finals – and once again face the Cavaliers.

LeBron James looms over all this, his seven-year stranglehold over the East causing many to believe last year’s Celtics had hit their ceiling. If Boston somehow got past him, the all-time-great Warriors loom in the Finals.

It’s logical for the Celtics to delay their window.

Boston has between four and six first-round picks the next two years, and the two uncertain ones will eventually convey. The Celtics possess the tools to keep getting even younger.

But, as punctuated by trading the Nets’ unprotected 2018 first-rounder for Irving, this isn’t a complete teardown.

The Celtics are attempting the rare feat of rebuilding on the fly. They’re even doing it with an added degree of difficulty – starting the process already young.



bob
MY NOTE:  Danny has gone for broke this off-season.  He picked Jayson Tatum over the consensus #1 pick Markelle Fultz.  As this article enumerates he has turned over his roster from last year in numbers

Here are the top 10 players, total minutes played, from the 2012-2013 team and the 2013-2014 team:

2012-2013.............................................2013-2014
Rondo....................................................Green
Pierce....................................................Bass
KG.........................................................Sully
AB.........................................................AB
Green....................................................Wallace
Bass......................................................Kelly
Terry.....................................................Hump
Lee........................................................Crawford
Sully......................................................Pressey
Wilcox...................................................Bayless

4 returning players from the previous season that were in the top 10 in minutes played.  We don't know how many minutes players will get this year yet, but here's the list of last year's top 10 and, what I consider, a reasonable projection of who this year's top 10 will be:

2016-2017............................................2017-2018 (Top 10 total minutes Projected, but not necessarily in order since I'm not Brad)
IT.........................................................Irving
Smart...................................................Hayward
Crowder...............................................Smart
Horford................................................Horford
AB........................................................Morris
Amir.....................................................Brown
Kelly.....................................................Rozier
Brown..................................................Tatum
Rozier...................................................Baynes
Jerebko................................................Theis

4 returning players from last year's roster, just like from the 2012/2013 - 2013/2014 season.  The difference, of course, is that 2012-2013 was the last year before Danny completely overturned the core and started a complete rebuild and the 2016-2017 team won the EC and made it to the EC Finals.  For Danny to be doing this is remarkable (which is why I am remarking on it).  It's not just the age, like Dan Feldman is pointing out, it's the almost dismissive nod to chemistry built over time.  There are rumors that the reason why Danny didn't go after Butler is because they were committed to getting Hayward and they had questions about Butler/Hayward's chemistry together but past that?

I am forever intrigued watching Danny learning process.  Danny loses Tony Allen and Ray Allen for nothing and he doesn't let that happen again with Rondo.  One could make the argument that, since he wasn't going to/able to offer IT a max contract he moved him up on the "trade bait list" just so he wouldn't lose him for nothing either.  Danny got bit once or twice and now doesn't let himself be put in a position where he will get bit again (he let Kelly go for nothing, but before Kelly's solid playoff performance he probably couldn't have gotten much for him and there was no way he was going to pay Kelly the kind of money he actually got).  What else am I seeing Danny learn, correctly or not?  I'm seeing him learning that players don't need to be together for a long time to create chemistry, if he gets the right players.  He learned that when Pierce/KG/Allen joined up and were the best team in the league in their first year together.  He learned how to accumulate players and draft picks that he can turn into elite players like Garnett and Allen too, and that is what he has done since trading The Three Amigos in June of 2013.

Drafting Tatum instead of Fultz and trading or releasing most of a successful team by most franchises' expectations, Danny is swinging for the fences on his legacy.  Lightning will strike the same place twice or it will strike him.   Our Danny's a gambler.



.

Bob

All this does not work if the yoyo master was still coaching.

The biggest win for Danny and the Celtics was hiring Brad Stevens and giving him a long term contract right out of the box. Brad is the ultimate do more with less coach. Danny now wants more with more.

dboss

thanks Bob,

I had read the article before so I didn't read your post here. my mistake!!

what YOU wrote is much deeper than the the article, which just touched the surface.

I think you are spot on with the "replacement Value" in minutes from players last year and shows our likely rotation as we stand.


2016-2017............................................2017-2018 (Top 10 total minutes Projected, but not necessarily in order since I'm not Brad)
IT.........................................................Irving
Smart...................................................Hayward
Crowder...............................................Smart
Horford................................................Horford
AB........................................................Morris
Amir.....................................................Brown
Kelly.....................................................Rozier
Brown..................................................Tatum
Rozier...................................................Baynes
Jerebko................................................Theis


one thing I noted was that last year we had 4 guards out of our top 10 players. This year we have 3 guards in our top 10. Of course Brown will be expected to play more at guard than last year.

so much for being a smaller team this year. While we don't have a behemoth 7' on the roster, I don't think we will watch games where we are undersized at all positions, like I saw many times last year.

I think our likely starters will be
6-10
6-9
6-8
6-4
6-3

last years:
6-10
6-9
6-6
6-2
5-9

I wouldn't under estimate how much this helps us, of course the players still need to be good. But they are.

Weak sauce math muddling

They lost 5 major contributors in IT (28), AB (27), Jae (27), Oly (26) and Amir (30). Those are the ages they turned in the 2017 calendar year. An average age of 27.6.

They were replaced in the rotation by Irving (25), Tatum (19), Hayward (27), Morris (28) and Baynes (31). An average age of 26. The age difference is not THAT noticeable. Take out the #3 pick and give more minutes to the almost 23 year old Ojeleye and it becomes less than 1 year in difference.

Happy birthday Marcus Morris! You are 28 years old TODAY. Not sure why the author who wrote this article in the last few days still called you 27 entering a season you'll be 28 for all of.

This team is younger than last year, but not by much. Smart, Rozier, Brown and Horford are all a year older. Larkin, Nader and Yabu are 25-24-22 when Jackson, Young and Mickey were 21-21-22. The C's are also looking for a 15th man who will be in the Zeller-Gerald Green age range (Robinson) or older (Bogut/Allen).

Even though the reality is this team barely got younger and the author did some serious cherry picking, the Celtics have done more of an NFL/MLB type move than one typically seen in the NBA.

In those two more parity driven leagues with rosters of 25 and 50 guys instead of 15 you can see a title contending team intentionally take a step back with their eyes on keeping a skeleton crew from the roster that competed but getting younger and deeper around them before taking 2 steps forward later.

We in Boston have seen this with the 2006, 2009 and now 2014-15 Red Sox and the 2002 and 2008-09 Patriots overhauling 60-70% of winning rosters while remaining competitive but with a front office that internally has its eyes on winning it all a few season down the line.