Seahawks seemed to miss him.

Everybody already knew it from the start of the season, but Festus Ezeli is officially full BUM and out for the year with knee surgery.

lol

earl WATSON

he was trying hard not to get hired but then Dolan agreed to all of his demands

Oakley as head coach 1time

It was actually biased but I didn't expect Geoffras to know the my team like I do.

I will take back everything I said about Minnesota and Wiggins if they can just win their next game, we might need it after that performance tonight

Im not saying IT isnt one of the worst defensive PGs in the league, but hes getting underrated by DRPM and on/off splits this year because of 3 point % defense which isn't something the defenders have much control over.

Coming into this season when Thomas has been on the court for Boston the opponent has only shot 32.2% on 3s with him on the court. During those same seasons the Celtics opponents have shot 34.4% when he wasnt playing.

This season when hes on the court the other team shoots 35.3% from 3 as opposed to 30.1% from 3 when he sits. It accounts for about a 1.45/100 swing in defensive rating.

Well isn't it easier to shoot over a midget ?

Tyler Ullis a midget himself would say so. Figuring he had a career night last night on IT2. Also with the game winner in his face.

I think you have to be careful here to not just assume randomness. Really, you need to know a lot more than we do (publicly, at least) about shot location and openness of those shots. That's generally what affects shooting percentage, and we don't have those on/off numbers afaik. It could be that the Celtics are running bad with him on the floor, but it could just as easily be a product of the types of shots that the Celtics are giving up when he's on the floor.

I tried to pull up some corner 3 numbers via nbawowy, but the numbers don't match up at all to a bunch of other data, so I'm not comfortable using those.

Tyler Ulis is shooting 31.3% at the rim this season. With a 350+ minute sample has anyone seen lower than that?

Looked at basically every white PG and mediocre small PG.

Rubio was close in one of his injury plagued seasons with 33.3%. Napier did it last year with 26% and 600 minutes last year lol.

Pulling this from the game thread because I think it could make for an interesting discussion:

I get what you guys are saying here, but I tend to think the opposite is true. Iverson and Rose could get away with playing bad defense because they had a good defense around them and their bad defense wasn't a hindrance.

With Isaiah, it's just not the case. It's not necessarily his fault that he doesn't have a better defense around him, but it's a reality. And, because of it, his bad defense hurts more and more negatively affects his value.

Looking at some other guys, Brevin Knight was at 28% his last year in the league. A lot of the very bad finishers(like if you look at unathletic small shooters, Damon Jones types) basically never shoot at the rim except in fast break situations, it takes real moxie to keep going to the hole when you can't finish.

Smart, Bradley, and Crowder are all good defenders, though. Amir Johnson isn't a shotblocker but he's not bad, either. Horford and Olynyk are soft, and their only real rim protector type is Zeller who is like a 10th man, but IT2 is clearly a big part of why the Celtics aren't good at defense when they have a fair number of positive individual defenders.

man, I remember when the cavs binked the no1 pick in that draft and also had the 4 and I was dreaming of scenarios to land irving and dwill. like trading some combo of future picks, vareajao, and whoever else had value. I really really really wanted williams. pretty crazy that hes now on the cavs.

he had a pretty sick run in the ncaa tourney. nailing 3s and dunking all over the place.

Something about DWill2 that makes me cautiously optimistic about sustaining his good play:

He has only taken 4 shots between 3 feet and the three point line since coming to the Cavs, and half of his threes are from the corner. He's become, or has been forced to become, an extremely smart offensive player

His defense is a bit sloppy but once there's more consistency and fluidity with the team I'd imagine it improves a little. The other dwill otoh just sucks

As usual, lol gameday threads.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what we're arguing. The original point seemed to be that a ton of players (someone said Jamal ****ing Crawford) could do what IT2 is doing, which seems ridiculous to me. How much better can we expect the Celtics to be? Like I said before, they're obviously deep with role players who are willing to play within the system and extremely well coached, but at the end of the day they're a top ~7 team in the league and their top 7 minutes getters aside from IT2 are Avery Bradley, Al Horford, Marcus Smart, Jae Crowder, Amir Johnson, Kelly Olynyk, and Terry Rozier.

I know Boston fans love to hype up their role players but that team has no business contending for a 1 seed. To me that says two things, Brad Stevens is a great coach getting the most out of his players, and IT2 has been terrific this year.

IT2 is the beneficiary of amazing fit is my point. If an offense wasn't centered around him, his defensive limitations make his value more dubious.

Your ceiling with him as your point guard is pretty defined, if they had more of a rim protecting 5 then it would just about be ideal - like what Iverson had with Dikembe and other defensive pieces like Eric Snow, Aaron McKie, George Lynch, Ty Hill, etc where he got to just gun a way.

That's not a Finals winner though. You're better off playing Smart and Bradley with an offensive 2 or 3 with size, like a Butler or George.

It's almost like having a giant free flowing tz thread actually jump starts good discussion and stimulates good conversations about basketball instead of arguing over the same 3 topics over and over.

Seems like pretty epic fit for them
They're so deep these roll players can all go max max effort on defense and switch em around constantly

Killing TZ is what killed 2+2

The real Black Friday