Celtics Would Be Wise To Emulate Warriors' Rebuild Process

http://www.csnne.com/boston-celtics/cs-would-be-wise-emulate-warriors-rebuild-process?p=ya5nbcs&ocid=yahoo



C's would be wise to emulate Warriors' rebuild process
May 4, 2015, 1:45 pm







BOSTON – The Bay Area has every reason to be giddy with Stephen Curry being named this year’s league MVP.

For a fan base that has been among the best in the NBA even when the Golden State Warriors were horrible, their patience has been rewarded.

But as much as the Warriors brass should be praised for the job they have done cultivating their own lottery picks, a big part of the Warriors’ success has been what they’ve been to do via trades and free agency.

Andrew Bogut is a former No. 1 overall pick by the Milwaukee Bucks (2005) and was a good but not great player for them.

He gets traded to Golden State in the middle of the 2012 season and year and a half later, he establishes himself as the best defensive center in the NBA.

When you look closer to home at the Boston Celtics, they too seem to be operating from a similar playbook.

Their ascension into the playoffs this year was also aided by a highly-regarded draft pick, Evan Turner, that didn't work out elsewhere.

Turner, a former No. 2 overall pick by Philadelphia in 2010, has never looked more comfortable in the NBA than he did this past season with the Celtics who signed him to a two-year, $6.7 million deal this past summer when he was a free agent.

Although his numbers near the end of his time in Philadelphia were impressive due to him taking a higher volume of shots, the Sixers weren’t a very good team.

And with a reduced role after being traded to Indiana, Turner was seen by some as a player who couldn’t help a playoff team.

With the Celtics, he became more of a facilitator, playing more off the skills that made him such a highly-regarded prospect coming out of Ohio State.

And it worked both for him and the Celtics who became a playoff squad in part because of his play.

But now comes the challenge for Boston of taking their success to the next level.

Looking at the Warriors’ rise to elite status, one of the most important moves they made came in July of 2013 when they signed then-free agent Andre Iguodala to a four-year, $48 million deal as part of a sign-and-trade from Denver.

A standout in Philadelphia, Iguodala gave the Warriors a much-needed presence defensively as well as a good finisher in transition.

Like the Celtics now, the Warriors back then had plenty of needs and the addition of Iguodala met one of the more important ones in establishing a team identity that was about more than scoring points but rather, getting stops defensively.

In some form or another, Boston has to address their interior defense whether it’s banking on one of their young bigs (Kelly Olynyk or Jared Sullinger) continuing to improve in that particular area, or going out and signing a rim-protector this summer.

And unlike past years, the Celtics will have the financial flexibility to go out and sign players with what should be more than $20 million in salary cap space.

But with most teams, success often comes down to drafting a player who outperforms their draft position.

You look at the Warriors’ roster and it’s full of players who have done just that.

Klay Thompson.

Draymond Green.

Harrison Barnes.

And of course, newly crowned league MVP Stephen Curry along with his aforementioned teammates have all outplayed most of the players selected ahead of them in their respective draft classes.

It’s too soon to say if that’s the case with Boston’s young players, although rookie Marcus Smart has shown the kind of promise and growth that more than justifies why Boston chose him with the sixth-overall pick in last June’s NBA draft.

Smart is going to be in Boston most of the summer and will spend a considerable amount of time working with Celtics assistant coach Darren Erman, a former Golden State assistant who has been credited with helping Klay Thompson develop into one of the league’s best two-way players after coming into the league as a shoot-first, defensively-challenged swingman.

The Warriors will enjoy their time in the sun with Curry as the league’s MVP, just six years after selecting him with the seventh overall pick when Minnesota – owners of the No. 5 and 6 pick – passed Curry over for Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn (who is not even in the NBA now).

And there are plenty of other players drafted by the Warriors that have panned out.

But their ability to mesh good drafts with strong free agent signings and trades, is why they’re so good – the kind of blueprint all NBA teams, Celtics included, would be wise to follow.



bob
MY NOTE:  Pretty good, for Blakely.  Agreeing with him is rarely a problem, since he almost invariably merely parrots the abundantly obvious, but this premise takes us in a good direction for a discussion (set aside the title of the piece for a while.  OF COURSE we should emulate rise of the best team in the league).

Let's see if we can draw a few comparisons:

Draymond Green = Jae Crowder (Green really didn't bloom until last year's playoffs.  Now it's Crowder's turn)
Steph Curry = Isaiah Thomas (Thomas isn't the best shooter in the league, like Curry is, but he is offensively explosive)
Andrew Bogut = Tyler Zeller (Bogut is a better shot blocker but not a great one.  Zeller is more versatile)
Harrison Barnes = Evan Turner (Barnes is a better shooter but not a better floor general or rebounder)

We don't have an Iggy (or, as he prefers to be called "Dre", short for Andre) and a few other pieces but if we get the major ones up to speed the rest will come.  If you build it, they will come.  Everybody wanted to play with the first Big 3 (Walton, Wedman) and with the 3 Amigos (Posey, House, Brown) and with Miami's 3 (Battier, Anderson, Allen).

GSW has an excellent defense but Bogut only plays 24mpg and only averaged 1.7 blocks/game last season.  Maurice Speights is not a great defender and Festus Ezeli has remarkable shot blocking instincts but is extremely raw in every other part of his game and only played 11mpg anyway.  My point is that they are not a BIG team, they don't have that defensive funnel, they just play defense extraordinarily well, especially at the perimeter with their wings 6'7" Klay Thompson, 6'8" Draymond Green, 6'6" Andre Iguoadala and 6'8" Harrison Barnes.

What they have are assassins, in abundance.  You cannot leave Curry even the smallest sliver of daylight.  You cannot leave Klay Thompson.  You cannot leave Green or give him an opening to the rim.  They are a back court and wing oriented team, NOT a bruising front court team, but their back court and wings are stupendous.  Being down with almost any time left on the clock means nothing to them, they score by the buckets full and can close the gap with long, quick runs so fast it will make your heads spin (as we saw ourselves earlier this season.  That was NOT a fluke nor just us being a weak team).

No, I don't expect us to be like GSW next year, we are missing some key pieces they have (including veterans that get playing time like Iggy.  Our veteran is Wallace, who does not play) but we're moving in the right direction and we do have a few of the pieces already.

Lastly, it is my fervent hope that Darren Erman can improve Smart's shooting mechanics this summer. That, to me, is the difference between Smart being a good player and a possible future all-star. It might take a few seasons, it will take time for the new way to burn itself in and become natural motion to him (he needs to work on his catch-and-shoot, his shooting-off-the-dribble and his floater. That's a lot to work on in just one summer) but if he starts on it now...


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Good rundown, Bob.  Perhaps a bit of a stretch (no pun intended) to equate Zeller with a healthy Bogut, but it all makes sense.  My own hope is that, in looking for more offensive help, they not compromise the defense even 1% with the player(s) they import.  I don't see players like Turner, Isaih, Zeller, Sully and Kelly stepping up their defensive games dramatically, and that's potentially a lot of minutes representing defensive vulnerability.

Sam

One of the keys to the Warriors' success defensively has been the steady accumulation of long-armed, versatile defenders. Green, Thompson, Barnes, Iguodala, and Shaun Livingston are all 6'6" to 6'8" relatively interchangeable defensive pieces that allow them to switch everything, which helps them avoid mismatches from screens. Even Curry and Barbosa (both 6'3") are relatively long and switch a lot.

Their ability to switch aggressively, combined with Bogut's presence, gives them a huge advantage on defense. When they go small, often with Green at center, they usually force the opponent to go small, thereby allowing Bogut to be effective in the minutes he plays and not miss him in the minutes he doesn't.

It's versatility based on a foundation of having a rim protector and a fleet of long-armed, like-sized defenders. Even if you don't commit to the switching philosophy on defense (it's rare in the NBA), having that rim protector surrounded by defensive versatility makes any scheme more effective.

Interesting that this and the 2013-14 season have each produced very workable and successful—but different— models for consideration.  The upcoming season could very well define the system to be used by the Celtics for years to come.  

Sam