Coach Brad Stevens last season was saddled with a poorly constructed team that had too many guards and wing players and not enough bigs. They were consistently out rebounded, the lane appeared to have an “open for business” sign, and any physically superior players seemed to play bully ball on our mismatches. Now I know a roster generally cannot be turned around in one year but now GM Stevens with his transactions has not improved the situation. We have accumulated more NBA talent on this year’s roster versus last year’s roster that included several G-league level players. The NBA is not Alabama that you can sit future #1 draft picks on the bench and tell them wait your turn and it still works out. The young high draft picks Nesmith and Langford are not getting the minutes to develop and thus actually depressing their future trade value.
How did this happen? Well part of it was caused by accidental opportunity. When Schroder became available at an Amazon Cyber Monday sales price it made sense to go for it. Richardson is another talented player that was untouchable at one point by the Heat when they thought he was the next Dwayne Wade; however, at a bargain price as a reclamation project he also made sense. However, at the same time Pritchard was a monster in Summer League, Langford is still the elite athlete we thought and appears to have added a consistent jumper, and Nesmith was basically 6th man the end of last year and is breaking 3 point practice records. How do they develop playing less than 16 minutes a night because of Richardson and Schroder? Ask the 2021 Yankees how accumulating talent works without taking into consideration the little things like positions and defense. They tried playing most of the season without a shortstop or center fielder, 2 second baseman, and 3 DH’s. You might win games which they did but the flaws illuminate against good teams in big games.
I am not good with numbers but figured it was worth mapping out the minutes to see exactly how this might work. We have a total of 156 minutes to play with. That is 48 minutes for the 1-3 positions but add 12 minutes for when Tatum plays the 4. Now divide that up between essentially 8 players. We can start by saying Tatum and Brown are playing 34 minutes a night. A little under last year but lets go with the Spurs model to save them mileage. We can go with 28 for Smart (reasonable for starting point guard), 20 for Schroder (light for a 6th man), and 18 for Richardson (extremely light for 7th man except when your 2 best players are in front of you). That leaves a total of 34 minutes to develop your 3 young players. Do we really think we are developing players with essentially 3 players sharing one position?
Even if we buy in that these are our best players lets talk about the overall lineup. In the history of NBA basketball can you name the last time a championship caliber team had a rotation that included 8 guards and wing players. I’ll wait? No it hasn’t happened. Most championship teams reduce the total rotation to 8 maybe 9 max in the playoffs. We are going in with a plan of 8 wing players before even considering the 3 bigs? I am open minded. Maybe we can learn from other sports such as having a bullpen game or plucking the young college innovator. Could a team just throw out all athletes and make it work in the NCAA? Maybe, but the last time was some of the vintage Pitino teams at Louisville or Kentucky. That is legit 15-25 years ago we are talking about. I think there is probably some very good high school teams that can win with that model. Unfortunately for the Celtics trying to apply this strategy against NBA talent and coaching staffs is not the best long term play.
And as if the Celtics knew I was writing this article they play the Houston Rockets (a bad basketball team) without 2 wing players (Brown and Langford). So take away 44 minutes and what happens. Fascinating, everyone else looked more comfortable with the proper rotation of 8-9 players. Payton hitting 3’s, Nesmith was active even if he didn’t score, and Schroder was attacking all game. Those things will not happen the same way with the larger rotation. It is too easy to abandon a player early in the rotation to try someone else then that player will go through the same acclimation to the game. Unfortunately sitting 1-2 players a game also doesn’t seem like the best strategy to develop continuity. Ask anybody who has ever played basketball how hard it is to come cold off the bench and make an immediate impact.
I think GM Stevens had the right plan of lets remake the roster and call this a “what do we have with our roster year”. and get ready for a big move with the trade market next offseason. Then the accidental opportunity presented itself with the series of moves and made him think a break here, an injury there, Kyrie and Simmons doing Kyrie and Simmons things, further development to make players better from Brown and Tatum and we might have something. And worse case scenario we can still sell off Schroder and Richardson mid-year for some draft capital. That might still happen and we still might even win 50 games but without development of the younger cheaper assets they still will not be further ahead towards the goal of the next championship.
Hoops With Holly 