Ainge correctly evaluated Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in the back-to-back draft when the Celtics were in the lottery. He knew that Fultz was a near consensus #1 pick but rather had Tatum so he found a way to trade down and still got him. At #3, he waited because Simmons and Ball were almost a near lock to go 1-2 and correctly identified Brown. Amazing that both were #3 overall picks and ended up as arguably the best pick of the draft. It takes luck, but it also takes skill to evaluate prospects correctly.
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I thought Hardy should’ve got more run first…he has played well for them this postseason
Luka also the #3 pick and best player in his draft
The Kings Stockholm Syndromed themselves
Luka had leaked he didn’t want to there and Bagley announced he’d be happy to
Also, I don’t know where else to put it, but Hurley’s whole deal strikes me as exactly the sort of style that won’t work in the NBA
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Jrue’s fall off is interesting. His usage and ast rate fell off a cliff while his jump in TS, and decline in TO didn’t make up for it. Also surprised his STL rate didn’t jump a lot w a much lighter load on offense.
Still preferable to Smart tho. And then Williams, I dk, DARKO has always really disliked his game. Loves Time Lord, but his health is what it is.
I laugh whenever I see people saying Tatum hasn’t been good. Tatum impacts the way Dallas defended him and he does a great job of distributing the ball without being selfish. The Celtics have 123.09 ORtg with him on and a 105.94 ORtg with him off which speaks to his impact on the court other than his shooting. I trust that his shooting will fall for him eventually.
Tatum is still the Celtic’s best player with Jaylen at 2nd.
I’ll pat myself on the back for Tatum. Was telling
my Laker fan friends that he was the guy they should take. He was really impressive at Duke.
With Jrue’s dip in the metric there, does it give more credit to volume stats than efficiency?
The story of Jrue is pretty simple. I’ve seen a bunch of people beating up the Bucks saying how could you ever let this guy go. But he gets pretty brutal offensively the more and more you move him up the ladder of role you’re asking him to fill. His decision making at volume gets really volatile. He just takes some awful shots sometimes and goes really cold. He’s more Smart than people think. But Smart has never shown really any ability to scale back usage or shot volume to fit a role. Jrue is a perfect 4th option in that sense while having more skill as well.
Defensively he defends guards better while still giving you the insane ability to throw him on a big and muck up lineups.
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Adjustment wise for Dallas, as long as Luka is on the court they’re gonna get carved on defense. Playing guys like Green and Jones aren’t gonna make any difference. Just go full offense with Hardaway and Hardy. I thought a game script like the last one was what they needed for a win, but they aren’t running on Boston misses because Luka can’t run. And their defense isn’t impacting Boston’s misses, it was just shot variance. They obviously can’t afford to lose another bad shot variance game for Boston. Play all offense and live with the results. They’ll just never win scoring <100 with multiple non threats on the floor offensively. Max Gafford minutes but with a more open offensive game, you probably get better play out of Lively as well.
I believe DARKO is saying that his estimated “true talent” box score stats plus weighted RAPM is worth less this year than last year.
Looking at his stat line, I don’t think that’s unfair. If you’re being asked to carry less of a load on O, you should either become much more efficient or spend a lot more energy on D. Don’t really see evidence of the latter in the box score stats.
The Jrue-Dame trade made sense for the Bucks IMO. But on aggregate it didn’t help them once the Blazers then traded Jrue to the Celtics
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Brad Stevens is a good GM. He understands trade value without the GMs feeling like they’re getting ripped off unlike Ainge who always tries to rip off GMs.
Yes their whole defense shifts when he has the ball. They have 2 players waiting every time he drives. He is the most disrespected star in the league and I don’t know why, the guy had 18,9 & 12 last night while playing great defense.
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I think Tatum is on the next tier after the top tier of top players in the league. He’s great, but not on the same tier as Joker, Luka, etc. He’s still good and commands a lot of defensive attention. Tatum of 2 years ago would’ve forced a lot of stupid shots, but he is staying patient and let the game come to him. He made good passes and playing great defense.
People saying he didn’t have a good game are box score watchers IMO.
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I think an argument could be made that Tatum’s shooting being down is correlated to the effort he expends both in defense and in rebounding. I don’t think you could find 5 better wings in the league in terms of rebounding. Defensively he doesn’t take time off whether on or off ball. And then offensively he uses more possessions than ever on attacking downhill. Tough to do all of that and be a consistent shooter when in reality, he’s really just not an elite level shooter like that and never has been.
The legit complaint one could have is how he goes about his shots at the rim. He definitely seeks to avoid contact rather than initiate it for the foul. It’s just who he is. Honestly he doesn’t gather a ton of steam most times getting in the lane so when he does aggressively attack, he often doesn’t generate enough contact to get fouled anyway.
That’s what still keeps him from being undisputed top 5 but there certainly aren’t 5 guys in the NBA that impact the ball on each side of the court at as a high of a level as Tatum.
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I can see the argument. He’s playing at a high level on defense and they asked him to guard bigger players which is tough on the body but it’s working because he is eliminating alley-oops and corner 3s with his length and athleticism.
It seems like context solves this though right? Holliday didn’t get worse he went to a better team in a drastically different role.
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Yeah I don’t think it’s a mystery, just interesting. Though it does seem like his D impact per DARKO at least changed. I’m not sure how seriously to take that. DARKO’s box score D metric has never really loved him but the pure adjusted plus minus part seems to. And it’s the latter that changed this season. Ofc basketball-reference’s box score D metric liked him a lot better bc even tho his STL rate was the worst in his career, his BLK rate went to a career high.
Just goes to show the perils of trying to evaluate D with a model and then trying to figure out wtf is going on w a black box model.
Anyway, yes, he’s the exact kind of guy that if you move him off ball and give him less usage you’re not going to make him a much more efficient player bc he can’t deliver a ton of value off the catch.
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Also, it’s hard to measure defensive metrics. Jrue is universally hailed by basketball peeps as the best perimeter defender so I’m not sure how you measure it.
Same with how to measure gravity generated by certain players that can’t be captured in the box score.
Personally I think huge sample adjusted plus minus (aka RAPM) works just fine at measuring defensive impact and the limited impact of guards on defense makes sense when you think about it.
But it is true that using box score stats as a proxy for defensive impact doesn’t work especially well. Generally speaking it’s true that dudes who get blocks and steals are good at D but there are a lot of guys who don’t who are also good. And there are guys who are just gambling for steals and are otherwise pretty bad at defense.