Bass Becoming a More Attractive Fish

The following article is interesting mainly because it stirs the creative juices in one's thinking about Brandon Bass. No matter what ups and downs have befallen Boston's big men this season, Steady Eddie has always been on hand to fill the gap. Heck, he's already playing better center than Kelly Olynyk has done (or may ever do). And center is obviously not Brandon's position. But he has his own brand of intensity that forces good things to happen no matter the adversity.

In the past week or so, Brad has played both Wallace and (last night) Prince at the power forward position. That constitutes going small with a vengeance. But it also could be a prelude to preparing for life without Brandon. Given that Zeller is playing about as well as any non-intimidator could do for this team, isn't it entirely possible that Danny and Brad are planning to ride out the season going small most of the time, with the "big" positions being manned by Zeller, Sully, (eventually) Kelly, Wallace and Prince? Perhaps Shav even gets into the mix. KDP recently posted the interesting idea of moving Turner to a point forward position so as to have two playmakers (Smart or Pressey being the other one) on the floor simultaneously.

So, in effect, perhaps we could have several players taking one giant step upward on the height-o-meter slots, with Bass being sent to a contender and Danny salivating over the possibilities for converting assets into actual people. (Please don't forget, Danny draft picks are on paper. They can't defend or shoot.)

This notion is far from ideal. The idea of once again forcing relegating Sully to play many minutes at the center position just bugs me. The only worse thing would be giving Kelly expanded minutes at the center position. And even stretching the talents of Turner, Prince and Wallace bothers me. But it does seem to me that the Celtics have played better when going small than when going big this season; so maybe finishing the season on a steadier diet of smallness wouldn't be a disaster if parting with Brandon helps to facilitate Danny's Grand Plan (whatever that is).

Sam

Taken from Boston.com:

CELTICS BLOG
Bass Finally Gets a Chance to Improve Trade Value with Olynyk Sidelined
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Brian Robb
@CelticsHub
Boston.com Correspondent
JANUARY 24, 2015 8:33 PM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Robb has covered the Celtics and the NBA since the 2008-09 season. His work has appeared on NBA.com, CelticsHub.com, ESPN.com, and CBSBoston.com.

The Celtics frontcourt took a bit of a hit Thursday night in Portland when Kelly Olynyk went down with a sprained right ankle. The second-year big man is back in Boston now undergoing tests on the injury, but Brad Stevens told reporters in Denver on Friday night that Olynyk will likely be sidelined until at least the All-Star break next month.

On the surface, the situation would appear to be a bad break for the Celtics. Olynyk has been a reliable scorer of the bench for Stevens, and had been seeing regular minutes every night.

Playing time for the 23-year old has come at the expense of other members of the Celtics roster this season though, particularly Brandon Bass. The veteran power forward had been averaging just 19.4 minutes per game in 2014-15, the lowest mark in his four years as a Celtic.

The steady play of youngsters like Olynyk, as well as Jared Sullinger and Tyler Zeller, has made it tough for Stevens to justify giving the 29-year old Bass more playing time. Bass is in the final year of his contract, earning $6.9 million, and has reportedly been available via trade dating back to last summer.

To this point, Danny Ainge has not received a deal enticing enough to give up the versatile forward, but it’s likely been hard for him to demand much value for a guy who doesn’t see the floor for more than 20 minutes a night on a rebuilding team.

The good news for Ainge is that reality has changed for Bass in the last couple days. Olynyk’s latest injury has provided the Celtics and Bass with a valuable opportunity that will continue in the coming weeks: A chance for Bass to showcase his ability.

The process started Thursday night when Stevens inserted Bass into the starting lineup in place of Zeller. The 6-foot-8 inch forward responded with his first double-double of the season (13 points, 10 rebounds) and a career-high five assists in hard fought win over the Blazers. The solid play continued Friday night in Denver with Bass posting 17 points, nine rebounds and another five assists.

Bass also had two of his highest minute totals of the season (35, 31) in those two contests, an opportunity that surely would not have been available to him if Olynyk were available. Instead, since Shavlik Randolph is now one of the team’s four healthy bigs, Stevens has opted to go with three big men over the past couple games and it has paid dividends for the team in the form of two straight wins.

Overall, Bass has scored in double figures in seven of his last eight games, and his stock is being watched closely by contenders in both conferences looking for a bench boost. Franchises have been hesitant to hand over more than a second-round pick or two for the services of the veteran forward, but if he continues to shine with more playing time, there is a better chance that some GM will be willing to match Ainge’s asking price.

Whatever happens, Bass deserves to be playing in the postseason this spring. If he continues to play like this, the odds of it happening improve, which would be a win for both Bass and the C’s.

I doubt that anyone would claim that Bass is not the better player when compared to Olynyk at this point in Olynyk's career. The only two things that I see that Olynyk is better at is scoring and passing. Bass is by far the better defender and rebounder and is a good offensive player although a little bit more limited. Part of Bass's strengths come from experience of being in the league for much longer than Olynyk.

In a season that was not just the second of probably a four or five year rebuild, I am sure that Bass would have played more minutes per game than Olynyk. But, this is only the second year of this rebuild and it has been very necessary to play the younger, cheaper and much more controllable guy more than Brandon Bass.

These are the things that rebuilding teams have to do to get a much better picture of what their young guys can and can not do. Olynyk (and Sullenger as well) has shown that he does somethings very well, he has shown lots of improvement from his rookie year, and he has also shown that he still has more growing to do.

I like Bass a lot as most do, but playing him more during the regular season was not going to change the fact that this is still a rebuilding year.

I am lost,people in this forum love to justify the bad record of the team saying that...This team is in a rebuilding process ,but in my opinion you don't rebuild using a 6-8 player who is not a center and is not in teams future plan because he is going to be a free agent over the younger players who indeed are on the future plan of the team.The Celtics are now like the Orlando Magic who traded Affalo to give minutes to their young guards but brought Channing Frye to take the minutes of Mo Harkless and Andrew Nickolson,you don't rebuild this way.Some body asked the questions ...Is the center position the one that need to improve the most?And a lot of people said..no ,but what do we have here?A 6-8 center and a 7 footer center Olynyk who according to the majority of the forum members is not a good player?Again if you are going to do a true rebuild of the team you have to give your young players like Olynyk and Smart the minutes to prove if they belong here or not and forget about going small or whatever.Doc Rivers used to be critized here for the use of the small ball and now is the same crap.

In fairness to Stevens Doc went small when he was loaded with bigs like Perk, Garnet etc. Stevens doesn't have much in the way of bigs and in contrast to Rivers (I also hated Doc's penchant for small ball) Brad is getting positive results.

Berlin-T

Berlin-T wrote:In fairness to Stevens Doc went small when he was loaded with bigs like Perk, Garnet etc. Stevens doesn't have much in the way of bigs and in contrast to Rivers (I also hated Doc's penchant for small ball) Brad is getting positive results.

Berlin-T

Berlin,

I agree.  Doc had legit centers in Perk and Raef, he just gravitated towards smallball because his stars were wings with some overlap.  Pierce was a 6'7" SG/SF (better at SF, admittedly) and 'Toine who was getting killed at PF so why not move him to SF if you can find a way to keep Pierce on the floor too?  I'm not knocking Doc but Brad has Zeller and that's about it.  Kelly is more of a stretch 4 than a real 5.

Last, but not least, we just went .500 on a west coast road trip.  Winning will take the wind out of the sails of a lot of critics, including me.

I like my bigs inside, wreaking havoc.  Run, yes, but not small.  But results speak loudly and I can't point to Brad's decision to start Bass at 5 and say "Aha!  See!  I knew it was a mistake!".  

The roster is more balanced than last year but that's not saying much.

1 1/2 years into a 3-5 year rebuild.  We're really, realistically, maybe only a third of the way through it.  Depending upon what happens this summer we may be able to say we're on the back 9 this time next year.  Depending.


bob



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