August 19, 2010
Shaq As “The Big Optical Illusion”

Since he signed his $1.3MM one-year contract with the Celtics, Shaq has once again become a topic of conversation for a team viewed as a potential championship contender.

This is all well and good. I enjoy the fact that Shaq is still in the NBA. Specifically, I enjoy the fact that he is still on a team that will warrant some publicity so that he can spit out fantastic sound bites. Say what you want about whether or not trading for him was the right move, but it’s pretty hard to deny that the man acted like a complete professional while with the Cavs last season. (Windhorst’s own words via his Twitter feed back on August 13th.)

For all those reasons, I wish Shaq well—especially since his potential success means, on some level, Miami’s failure.

That said, the opinions I’m hearing from pundits once again highlight how much their thinking is colored by a complete lack of logic.

Since the Cavs acquired Shaq last June, the overwhelming opinion was that he was too old, washed up, out of shape, and essentially a complete liability.

Since signing with Boston, though, all I hear about is what a valuable asset he is. How he’s exactly what the Celtics need to compete for a ring. How shrewd and wise a GM Danny Ainge is for making this kind of move.

Horse shit.

To take just one golden example, the great sage Bill Simmons spent the entire 2009-10 season making fat jokes about Shaq and talking about how he was just going to “clog the lane”—the chorus that became so viral among NBA analysts that it felt like someone had hired Karl Rove to concoct it.

Now? Simmons is already talking about how much sense this signing makes for his boys in green. He discussed it at length with Steve Kerr in his podcast a few weeks back, in fact. 

To clarify, I’m not saying that there isn’t merit to Boston signing Shaq. What I’m saying is that it can’t be an awful move for the Cavs a year earlier and then a great move for the Celtics now.

For instance, Boston played faster than the Cavs last season, but almost insignificantly so. The Celtics averaged 93.6 possessions / game vs. 93.4 for Cleveland. So if his speed was a liability in one system, it should still be a liability in the other. 

What about the clogging the lane myth? Is driving to the hoop unimportant in the Celtics’ offense?

Rajon Rondo averaged 5.4 shot attempts “at the rim” (i.e. layups) per game in 2009-10, plus another 1.7 attempts per game from within 10’ of the basket. LeBron averaged 6.8 attempts “at the rim” per game, along with another 1.3 attempts from within 10’. Add those two distance categories together, and there’s basically a 1 attempt per game difference between the paint activity of Boston’s main driver and Cleveland’s.

How about money? Yes, Shaq’s much more affordable to Boston since he’s on a veteran minimum contract. But had he not worked out for the Cavs, Shaq was a massive expiring contract that could’ve been a valuable trade chip had things not seemed to be working. As it stood, the Cavs held onto him and cleared $21MM in cap space in the process. So the financial argument doesn’t really hold up either. 

Minutes? Shaq averaged 23.4 per game for the Cavs last season. With Kendrick Perkins out until at least December, Shaq likely projects as the starting Center and will probably play somewhere near that number. It may not last for the whole season, but it seems to me as though part of the reason they got him is to play big minutes during this opening stretch of the season. If he moves to the bench, though, Shaq will essentially replace Rasheed Wallace…who averaged 22.6 minutes per game for Boston.

What about age? Did Shaq age backwards in the past 365 days? Uh, no.

The final analysis here is simple: the Cavs and Celtics were more similar in their style of play than a lot of people chose to recognize. As a result, Shaq’s addition to the Celtics doesn’t realistically mean much different to what it meant for the Cavs. Instead, he stands as just another example of how different the same player can look to pundits when he’s standing by the Charles River rather than the Cuyahoga.

-T

May 9, 2010
Game 3 Bazooka Point

Disclaimer: I’m going to be critical of the Cavs on one point, and then I’m going to defend them. Here are a few stats that are going to feed into the criticism:

Game 4: 4-21 3P (19%) , -6 OREB, -14 TRB, -10 pts in paint

Game 3: 5-12 3P (44%), -3 OREB, +15 TRB, +18 pts in paint

Game 2: 4-21 3P (19%), -1 OREB, -10 TRB, +2 pts in paint

Game 1: 4-12 3P (33%), -1 OREB, even TRB, +2 pts in paint

SERIES: 17-66 3P (25.8%), -11 OREB, -9 TRB, +12 pts in paint

Over the regular season, the Cavs averaged 19.3 three-point attempts per game. For the series, they’re averaging 16.5 three-point attempts per game, or about 3 fewer per game. More importantly, their percentage for the series is a dismal 25.8%.(For reference, the league average over the regular season was about 35%. The Cavs’ average was 38%.) So against Boston, the Cavs are shooting significantly fewer threes and having a significantly lower success rate on those fewer attempts.

Are the Celtics doing something to take away the Cavs’ long-distance shooting? Not as far as I can tell. The team as a whole—with the exception of Anthony Parker, a clause I can’t believe I just wrote—has been getting many of the same open looks they’ve been getting all season. They’re just not connecting.

The reality is that one of the things that has made the Cavs so difficult to beat all season is their ability to stretch the floor by shooting and making a high volume of 3s. If that aspect of their game can’t be depended on in the playoffs (and given the number of attempts it doesn’t even look like they’re trying to depend on it), there’s a ripple effect through the entire offense. I would suggest it’s not a coincidence that the only game in the series where the Cavs shot well from behind the arc was the same game where they dominated points in the paint. Why? The fewer long shots the Cavs take (and make), the more the Celtics can sag back into the paint to make things difficult for drivers, posters, and Cavs rebounders.

You’re going to read a lot about the Cavs’ effort level in this game. Their performance on the glass will be one of the main pieces of evidence writers use to make that point. As noted above, the Cavs have won the rebounding battle only once in the four games.  But instead of just saying the Cavs should try harder, I’m going to at least suggest that a part of their problem is that the Celtics don’t have to fear the stretched floor the way the Cavs need them to. This makes defensive rebounding easier for the Celtics for the reasons I mentioned above. It also ends up resulting in forced passes to the interior, turnovers (LeBron had 7 today, by the way), and lower offensive production in the paint.

So when you get down to it, my overall point is this: effort is important. But some of the raw stats of the game that people construe as “lack of effort” might not be there if the Cavs would hit something in the neighborhood of the same number of threes they hit in the regular season.

This leads me into the part where I defend the team.

Overall, the Cavs did not play as poorly as other people would have you believe. They held the Celtics to 44.7% FG and 7.1% 3P (1-14). They drew four more fouls on the Celtics, shot only one fewer FTA, and had a higher FT% (74.4% CLE vs 70% BOS). They matched the Celtics’ team assist total, and held the Celts under 100 points.

The problem was Rondo was an absolute demon (28 points, 13 assists, 18 rebounds, 2 steals, only 4 TOs, and only 1 minute of rest). He dominated every aspect of the game, single-handedly outrebounded the Cavs in the 4th quarter, and in a straight-up player comparison made LeBron an also-ran (22 points on 7-18 FG, 9 Reb, 8 ast, 2 stl, 1 block, but 7 TOs and 0-5 3P). It should be taken with a grain of salt because of the usual media exaggeration, but before the game was even over, the broadcast team was discussing that Rondo’s game could be one of the greatest playoff performances in Celtic history.

If there’s one thing that Cavs fans should understand by now, it’s that games can be won by great individual performances. Even when the opposing team plays well. That’s what the playoffs are all about some times. In this case, the Cavs’ superstar had a worse game than the opponents’, who had a performance for the ages.

Overall, the Cavs did some things right. But the Celtics—really, Rondo—did more things right, so they won the game. It’s not sorcery, and it’s not completely our guys’ fault. It’s basketball, and some times, it’s life. So let’s all quit acting like the entire thing is just a result of the deficiencies on our own side, and that if the team would’ve just tried harder, they’d be going back to Cleveland 3-1.

-T

October 23, 2009
Two Quick Things

Real quick:

Interesting story about Rajon Rondo that my boy Adlew Druz sent. For the record, if I’m doling out max contracts next season, I’m a lot closer to giving one to Rondo than I am to Chris Bosh. He’ll be restricted, but would look very good in a Cavs uniform playing alongside Bron.

Bobby Valentine sounds like a disaster. Why would the Indians want to hire a (basically) career .500 manager who hates rebuilding and knows nothing about the current state of MLB or its players? I want to see what happens with Don Mattingly and Torey Lovullo, but I’m pretty close to endorsing Manny Acta as the best candidate. His interview with the media, I thought, was very impressive.