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April 6, 2008
Have the Celtics Achieved Balance?
There was an article I wrote before I started writing for CelticsCentral for the Connecticut Post. It was at the very beginning of the season. September 12th, 2007, actually.
It was called Celtics: A Question of Balance. It was, by far, my most popular article (and most heavily read) on that site, though I'm not really sure why. I guess sports readers love statistical interpretations in their reading.
It dealt with the question that everyone was asking, "Would those three stars be enough?"
Here is the link
Here is a portion of it...
"This 2007-08 Celtics will have one of the league’s premier big men coupled with two of its top swingmen. All of them could score 20-25 points every single night, even under great duress.
The fact that Garnett, Allen, and Pierce are so equally good is exceptional in recent memory. Defending two great scorers is a difficult task. Guarding all three will be a huge challenge for opposing defenses.
I see these three averaging about 60-65 percent of the team’s points this year. If it’s five percent less than that, it means Doc has devised a good system to get other players in the flow. "
That question has been answered.
As it has turned out they are averaging 56.8 points of the team's 100.5 each game. That is .565% of the team's scoring. Hence, by my opinion, based on looking at where the team was at the time, Doc has done a great job of getting supportive scoring from the rest of the team. This is in comparison to the Celtics first Big Three and other top three scoring units as measured in the article
Rajon Rondo has managed the 10 points a game that I thought he must, and Perkins is close to the 8 points I thought he must average to help keep the dogs off the three stars.
House and Posey have also done as well as anyone could expect. I did have Posey going for a career year in scoring (14 points per), similar to his best year in Memphis. It hasn't happened obviously. But that's because it hasn't had to happen. Posey is defending the power forwards more this year than ever before in his career. He still scores when they need it, and his stats are tracking the last few years pretty closely
The surprise contributions, (or preseason unknowns) have come from Glen Davis and Leon Powe. Both bring positives to the court most every time they play. Both can score, rebound, and play defense, though they do all of those things very differently from each other.
In fact, Leon Powe is the golden boy at the moment. He just keeps getting it done every time he goes out there. He is looking more and more comfortable out there. If he keeps this up, he is the Ryan Gomes pick of his draft, and Danny has struck gold late in the 2nd round twice (Powe was the 49th pick obtained from Denver in a trade).
There are almost no disappointments with the entire roster this season. Pollard and Scalabrine qualify, but that is about it. That is really rare and a credit to Doc for working everyone in, in a productive way.
Going forward, his job will be to get Sam Cassell and PJ Brown woven into the fabric of what they are doing in the final 6 games. I think he will be able to, as they are both very experienced vets.
This team has been hard to defend and that is because the support players have stepped enough to cause great damage when Paul, Kevin and Ray are double teamed. It is also worth mentioning that 2/5ths of the starting 5 are the remaining 2 young holdovers from the massive trade exoduses and doing quite well, thank you.
The recent win by the team over the Bobcats without all three stars, speaks well of the entire team and the coaching staff.
Posted by Tom on April 6, 2008 9:29 PM
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