CELTICS POWER RANKINGS: ‘BAE’ CROWDER CLIMBS CHART

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CELTICS POWER RANKINGS: ‘BAE’ CROWDER CLIMBS CHART
01.21.15 at 12:16 pm ET
By Sam Packard


Every two weeks I rank the Celtics based on their recent performance and my personal feelings on the player.


14. Shavlik Randolph

During his last stint with the team in 2012, Yung Lik, as his friends call him, averaged 4.2 points a game. Fans can only hope for the same level of contribution this time around.


13. Gerald Wallace

Team leader and fun party trick.
12. Tayshaun Prince

He may not get much playing time, but this play made a large impression on Brad Stevens, so that’s cool.




11. James Young

With the departure of Jeff Green, I expected Young to get more playing time, yet he remains on the bench. Let’s take this time to remember his greatest moment while he wastes away on the bench of the fourth-worst team in the league.




10. Phil Pressey

Pressey actually made some shots against the Bulls the other night, including some POINTS IN THE PAINT. I still think he is too short to really make a consistent impact, but I love his energy and court vision.

9. Marcus Thornton

“Lil Buckets” continues to shoot the ball well, averaging 11.5 points over his last four games. I will be very dissapointed when Danny Ainge turns him into a second-round pick in 2020.


8. Kelly Olynyk

Jelly Man Kelly has been OK off the bench but continues to struggle defensively. I don’t trust him on the floor against any decent big. And to think we could have drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo. I found this tweet about Kelly O quite interesting.



Jay O @MrTrpleDouble10
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FWIW, Kelly Olynyk is currently ranked second in Win Shares amongst all rookies from the 2013 draft class:
3:46 PM - 21 Jan 2015
6 RETWEETS  7 FAVORITE


As GIF king Jay O also noted, Win shares are a bogus stat, the 2013 draft class is pretty bad, and Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player ever to put on a jersey. He may not have said that last part, but it doesn’t make it any less true.


7. Brandon Bass

Since the Jeff Green trade, Bass, playing around 20 minutes a game, has done an excellent job showcasing himself for Western Conference contenders. If I were the Trail Blazers or Clippers I would have traded for him yesterday.


6. Avery Bradley

Good Avery Bradley made an appearance for about four games. Then the Celtics played the Bulls and Clippers and AB went 4-for-14 from the field. His defense is still great, but with Marcus Smart on the roster, I don’t see what role he fills moving forward.


5. Marcus Smart


Jay King @ByJayKing
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Marcus Smart now up to 36.5% from deep this season. Incredible how quickly he's become a reliable shooter.
9:24 PM - 20 Jan 2015


Since returning from injury, Smart has shot 40 percent from 3, which is exactly what Smart needs to be doing. If he continues to improve his shooting while playing great physical defense, he may actually emerge into a building block. In addition to his shooting, I would like to see Smart attack the basket more regularly. Currently, Smart is the only untouchable piece on the roster.


4. Bae Crowder

I really goofed on my last rankings when I listed Bae Crowder at No. 12. I was quickly rebuked by my fellow Celtics bloggers and I have seen the error of my ways. Quite simply, Bae is the best thing to happen to the Celtics this season. He hustles, plays great defense, and has an oh-so-sweet sneaky mid-range game.  Crowder does a great job of moving without the basketball, and when the Celtics are playing well he has no problem getting easy baskets at the rim.  I hope Ainge does everything to sign him next summer. You can never go wrong with a Marquette grad.


3. Tyler Zeller

I apologize #GodZeller for cursing you. I never should have ranked you the best player on the team, you weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility. Zeller and his tremendously soft hands still have their moments, but they haven’t been as dominant as they were earlier in the season. Zeller has yet to be completely exposed defensively, but this trip out west may do exactly that. If Zeller even had an ounce more personality, this  incredibly frustrating team would be a thousand time more fun to watch. Tito, I need cellies after every made basket!


2. Evan Turner

I like Evan Turner. There, I said it and I am not ashamed. Since taking over as the starting point guard, he has averaged six assists and six rebounds a game. He still needs to limit his turnovers, but his presence on the court is generally productive. He has positional versatility and would be a perfectly cromulent bench piece on a halfway decent team.


1. Jared Sullinger

The fact that Sullinger has been the best player on the Celtics is indicative of the low level of talent on the roster. He is a solid NBA player who can rebound and score the ball a little bit, but by no means is he a top-15 power forward. This is a gratuitous sentence about his gratuitous hind parts. I always forget that he is only 22 years old and thus still has tremendous upside, but I would not be the least bit upset if Ainge shipped him out of town.
Early ’90s rap song that illustrates my current feelings about the Celtics:




bob
MY NOTE: Can anyone explain "win shares"?


.

OK, I was the first to post Crowder's efforts and production on the forum, but now I am wondering what has happened to him in the last week to ten days.

Is he hurt/injured? I am not too worried if he is not scoring 22 each game, but his minutes are down as are all of his other stats.

Clyde,

As for Crowder, I believe he functions best when the team functions best.  For example, when they're spreading the floor, executing the motion offense, and moving the ball, that's where opportunities are created; and Crowder is an opportunist.  He's not the type of iso player who can create opportunities himself.  The more chemistry the team develops, the better Crowder will perform.

The team doesn't function well when it's a constant victim of (1) discontinuity and (2) talent drain.  I haven't been able to see games for more than a week, but I'm willing to bet that they're at a season's low ebb right now in terms of chemistry.

I would be interested in whether those who have watched recent games feel there has been a dropoff in Crowder's defensive performance or energy output.  My guess is that those categories are better indicators of Jae's ongoing impact than offense (because he's so dependent on the team's offensive performance).

Sam

Bob,

I’m taking a stab at explaining win shares despite the fact that I think it’s about as definitive as PER—meaning hardly at all. One advantage win shares has over PER is that win shares incorporates both offensive and defensive components. But my major gripes with both stats are that (1) they claim to be all-encompassing, but they’re still based only on available stats and omit many factors (e.g. intangibles) that can’t be quantified and (2) they both include stats that are carved out by the team or a given combination but are credited to an individual player for calculation purposes. An example of the biases that can occur in Win Shares is that opponent misses and non-assigned turnovers are attributed equally to all players and cannot be distinguished between players.

The basic underlying theory of Win Shares is based on the number of wins a team has. Win shares allegedly determine what portion of a given team win is attributable to the impact of a given player. The more wins the team has, the greater chance a given player has to increase his win shares.

The following is somewhat of an over-simplification, but I’m trying to keep this on a non-complex level where even I can understand it:

There are Offensive Win Shares and Defensive Win Shares. In each case, the total of the calculated stats for a given player is divided into the total of the calculated stats for the player’s team to get the player’s “Win Share.”

The stats involved in calculating offensive win shares are: field goals, assists, free throws, and offensive rebounds that lead to point production.

The stats involved in calculating defensive win shares are: possessions on which a player’s TEAM prevents a score plus possessions on which the player, himself, prevents a score via steals, blocks, and defensive rebounds. (I’m not a fan of giving each player equal credit for possessions on which the team prevents a score.)

Even the allegedly easy-to-comprehend article I used for this summary lapses into jargon when it says, “The magic of Win Shares is that the final computation tempers these counting stats by contextual factors that are generally beyond a player’s control….” Riiiiiight, and please pass the Stoli.

Win Shares does make efforts to recognize the interactive elements of the game. For example, a field goal counts for less than two points if it is assumed that a teammate made the field goal possible with an assist. And Win Shares includes calculations that adjust results according to the pace at which a given player’s team plays. League averages are also considered.

The critical calculation in Win Shares involves dividing a player’s total “Win Share” stats by his team’s total wins. This distributes a team’s Win Shares among team players in a way that their individual Win Shares add up to their team’s total number of wins.

The fact that Kevin Love, David Lee and Carlos Boozer are among the league’s top 20 players in Defensive Win Shares reveals how much excellence in one component of the formula (in their case defensive rebounding) can “mask” weaknesses in other components of the formula. Thus, what may appear to be all-around defensive excellence of a given player can be unduly biased by excellence in one facet of defense.

I used this article in developing this summary: http://www.thescore.com/nba/news/430681

Sam

By the way, perhaps the writer of this article needs to learn is Jae's first name.

Sam

Sam,

All very good points relating to Crowder's possible slippage, but if the team's chemistry is down I think that I am more concerned with Crowder (and Smart) than I am about his drop in minutes and stats.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to think that a player with somewhat of a limited talent base could emerge as the team leader, but I would hope that Crowder could be this guy.  In my opinion, he was doing this when he first arrived from Dallas and seemingly Smart jumped on the bandwagon quickly as well.

I have thought and written all season about how important this "leader" type guy is for any team so maybe I am expecting too much from Crowder.  Of course, if Rondo had performed as I thought he should have/could have relating to leading the Celtics, we would not even know Crowder in any way.

Quick hits...

Crowder has simply returned to earth.  The spike we saw wasn't so unusual for a player inserted into the lineup of a team badly needing to find someone to feed for some offense.  He's a good end-of-bench type guy to have around, however.  Not dissing him, I like him, but he's a borderline NBA talent.  I rank him with Pressey as guys I cheer for because they work hard and deserve a shot, but know will be playing overseas in the next year or two.  

Win shares, PER and +/- fall into the following category; useless, unless you're in the company of a hoops fan, the snacks and beer have run out, you've run out of small-talk topics, and your car is out of gas.  With all these ridiculous stats that keep creeping into the pro and college game, I'm reminded of a former coach who shared with me the only stat that matters at all...team winning percentage.

Clyde and NYCelt,

I'll stick with my assessment of Crowder as a guy who plays his best offense on a team with good chemistry because he feasts on created opportunities rather than creating most of them himself; and, when he's feasting on opportunities, he can be an impact player on offense. I believe he is already an impact player on defense. As for his performance upside, see me in April.

I'm willing to wager that Scal was one of the team leaders during the years of the Three Amigos. Consequently, I rest my case about Crowder's leadership potential. It's not necessarily dependent on superior performance or big minutes.

Jae's averaging more rebounds, assists, steals and blocks per minute than Jeff Green did. Therefore, I believe measuring his contributions primarily on point production is ill-advised. I have read a lot on this board about how important it is for a player who's having difficulty with one aspect of his game to contribute in other ways. Is that true only for players not named "Crowder?"

As for Crowder's reduced minutes, could it possibly be that Brad feels the same way I do about Crowder's performance curve? Who knows? One thing this team has had to adjust to has been parceling out the shots previously taken by Green and Rondo. There are players on this team who are more shot-hungry than Crowder, who (in my estimation) considers himself a lower-echelon option on offense.

Of course, I haven't seen a game for ten days, so I'm itching to count the number of offensive touches Jae gets during his minutes on the floor. I believe he rose to the occasion when guys were coming and going and the entire system was pretty much in disarray. Rising to the occasion is what a leadership guy does. He's a fitter-inner...a glue guy like Scal (but with more talent and more potential) who looks for cracks in the team's performance and tries his best to fill them.

Sam

sam wrote:Bob,

I’m taking a stab at explaining win shares despite the fact that I think it’s about as definitive as PER—meaning hardly at all.  One advantage win shares has over PER is that win shares incorporates both offensive and defensive components.  But my major gripes with both stats are that (1) they claim to be all-encompassing, but they’re still based only on available stats and omit many factors (e.g. intangibles) that can’t be quantified and (2) they both include stats that are carved out by the team or a given combination but are credited to an individual player for calculation purposes.  An example of the biases that can occur in Win Shares is that opponent misses and non-assigned turnovers are attributed equally to all players and cannot be distinguished between players.

The basic underlying theory of Win Shares is based on the number of wins a team has.  Win shares allegedly determine what portion of a given team win is attributable to the impact of a given player.  The more wins the team has, the greater chance a given player has to increase his win shares.

The following is somewhat of an over-simplification, but I’m trying to keep this on a non-complex level where even I can understand it:

There are Offensive Win Shares and Defensive Win Shares.  In each case, the total of the calculated stats for a given player is divided into the total of the calculated stats for the player’s team to get the player’s “Win Share.”

The stats involved in calculating offensive win shares are: field goals, assists, free throws, and offensive rebounds that lead to point production.

The stats involved in calculating defensive win shares are: possessions on which a player’s TEAM prevents a score plus possessions on which the player, himself, prevents a score via steals, blocks, and defensive rebounds.  (I’m not a fan of giving each player equal credit for possessions on which the team prevents a score.)

Even the allegedly easy-to-comprehend article I used for this summary lapses into jargon when it says, “The magic of Win Shares is that the final computation tempers these counting stats by contextual factors that are generally beyond a player’s control….”  Riiiiiight, and please pass the Stoli.

Win Shares does make efforts to recognize the interactive elements of the game.  For example, a field goal counts for less than two points if it is assumed that a teammate made the field goal possible with an assist.  And Win Shares includes calculations that adjust results according to the pace at which a given player’s team plays.  League averages are also considered.

The critical calculation in Win Shares involves dividing a player’s total “Win Share” stats by his team’s total wins.  This distributes a team’s Win Shares among team players in a way that their individual Win Shares add up to their team’s total number of wins.

The fact that Kevin Love, David Lee and Carlos Boozer are among the league’s top 20 players in Defensive Win Shares reveals how much excellence in one component of the formula (in their case defensive rebounding) can “mask” weaknesses in other components of the formula.  Thus, what may appear to be all-around defensive excellence of a given player can be unduly biased by excellence in one facet of defense.

I used this article in developing this summary: http://www.thescore.com/nba/news/430681

Sam

Sam,


Hmmph. Sounds better than PER at least. Maybe a netting g of PER and Win Shares to filter out the defensive impact might help?

I think he knows how to spell Crowder's name, that is why he had it in quotes in the title. I don'the get the joke, though.

If you think you are itchy because you haven'the watched a game in 10 days imagine how I'm feeling! Having an amazing trip but I miss the Celtics and cheese (not together).


bob

.

Bob,

I thought it was a joke too, but I think I'm not smart enough to "get" it.

I can imagine how tough it must be to go Celtic-less for as long as you've been away. Glad you're having what must be an incredible adventure. There's absolutely nothing quite like experiencing new people and cultures. I like to think of each country as a laboratory that is plying its unique scheme to make it through life. Discard the things you don't like and experience personal growth by embracing the rest.

Safe travels.

Sam