Luka and Tatum switch places

[durantbird]

Suppose Luka and Tatum switch places starting from the 2019 season. How well do they do in each of the teams respectively?

[Jaqua92]

Both teams do worse.

[eminence]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

[ShotCreator]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

What end of the court is Tatum better than Luka? And how are you making that determination?

[eminence]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

What end of the court is Tatum better than Luka? And how are you making that determination?

Approx equal on O, lean Luka in most cases, but close enough there are situations I'd prefer Tatum (with Brunson is probably one of those). Luka better with ball in hand, Tatum better off-ball. Defense/transition clearly in Tatum's favor.

Conclusions primarily reached through watching them play (on the order of ~100 games each) with a dash of scoreboard based stats (particularly longer timeframe ones).

[capfan33]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

Luka is literally better at every aspect of offense compared to Tatum, and in many categories it’s not close. I don’t think defense is enough to close the gap. And luka showed last playoffs his defense is perfectly fine when he tries and has someone else to take some of the offensive burden off him (yes the finals was horrific), which he would ofc have on the Celtics. You could put 10+ players in Tatum’s place and the Celtics would win last year.

[eminence]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

Luka is literally better at every aspect of offense compared to Tatum, and in many categories it’s not close. I don’t think defense is enough to close the gap. And luka showed last playoffs his defense is perfectly fine when he tries and has someone else to take some of the offensive burden off him (yes the finals was horrific), which he would ofc have on the Celtics. You could put 10+ players in Tatum’s place and the Celtics would win last year.

Is shooting an aspect of offense?

[capfan33]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

Luka is literally better at every aspect of offense compared to Tatum, and in many categories it’s not close. I don’t think defense is enough to close the gap. And luka showed last playoffs his defense is perfectly fine when he tries and has someone else to take some of the offensive burden off him (yes the finals was horrific), which he would ofc have on the Celtics. You could put 10+ players in Tatum’s place and the Celtics would win last year.

Is shooting an aspect of offense?

Depending on how you define shooting from 3-10 feet it’s not remotely close, midrange is Luka by a small but noticeable margin (admittedly it’s not a big part of eithers game), and from 3 Luka is slightly better statistically and eye test wise his step back is a more reliable shot compared to Tatum’s pull-up and j think the numbers would bear this out. I will admit their 3 point percentages in the playoffs were closer than I thought. But otherwise, ball-handling, passing/playmaking, post-play, etc it’s not remotely close.

And moreover it’s vastly easier for Luka to mimic Tatum off ball then for Tatum to even being to approach what Luka does on ball. It’s not like Tatum is curry off-ball either, like I don’t think he’s doing anything particularly exceptional off-ball; it’s more just a product of being on a team that has many other better ball-handlers than Tatum.

[eminence]

The Celtics have been the best offense in the league the past two seasons with Tatum being their top ballhandler/decision maker. You should call up Mazzulla and tell him they're doing it wrong.

Maybe it is easier, and Luka would be a better player if he put in more off-ball effort from time to time, Brunson/Kyrie were/are better ball in hand guys than anybody Tatum has had with him in prime (since '20 when Kyrie left Boston). But Luka doesn't, he is flat out a lazy player when he doesn't have the ball (which is approximately 80% of his time on court).

[redslastlaugh]

Tatum being the 3rd pick in 2017 and Luka being the 3rd pick in 2018, it always seemed like Tatum was always surrounded with way better casts. I think the Thanksgiving Eve game in 2023, I think Gary Washburn even asked Luka after Celts won by 30, is it frustrating that Tatum has so much better 3-10 on the roster… and Luka looked pissed, lol

But to answer the question, I think Celts get worse for sure with Luka because of defense plus Luka kinda hogs it. Dallas they could be better, worse or the same… harder to say for the Mavs

[capfan33]

The Celtics have been the best offense in the league the past two seasons with Tatum being their top ballhandler/decision maker. You should call up Mazzulla and tell him they're doing it wrong.

Maybe it is easier, and Luka would be a better player if he put in more off-ball effort from time to time, Brunson/Kyrie were/are better ball in hand guys than anybody Tatum has had with him in prime (since '20 when Kyrie left Boston). But Luka doesn't, he is flat out a lazy player when he doesn't have the ball (which is approximately 80% of his time on court).

The Celtics are one of the greatest teams ever, I just don’t think Tatum is an especially big part of that success. The crux of their team is having maybe the best defensive backcourt ever that are also excellent offensively. They’re basically a modern redux of the 04 pistons in that they have an incredible talented lineup without a clear megastar (and I think Wallace might be more of an era relative standout compared to Tatum/brown).

They're perfectly adapted to the modern metagame with a lineup that is long, athletic and can shoot 1-5 along with a unique center whose defense translates well to the playoffs and is a matchup nightmare in the spread pick and roll. And then ofc a phenomenal bench. They’re just a perfect storm of top-20 players that complement each other well, but I don’t think what Tatum’s doing is anything particularly unique or irreplaceable.

The criticisms of Luka are generally valid, but Brunson wasn’t the same player in Dallas that he is now (probably partly because of Luka) and it’s not just about ballhandlers but defense as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that by far the best supporting cast Luka ever had coincided with a finals run and Luka playing the best defense he’s ever played despite being maybe 75% the entire run. Overall, I feel vastly more confident that Luka can learn what Tatum does off ball (which I don’t think is even that exceptional among forwards) than Tatum even beginning to approach what Luka does on ball.

[bigboi]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

Exactly. Finally people are waking up that Tatum is better. Luka is white James harden. Great offensive talent but all time bad defense. Tatum is able to play anywhere on the floor and has multiple times. We’ve even used Tatum as a center on the Celtics.

[bigboi]

Brunson and Tatum are working on a 4 peat in Dallas (okay, actually winning them all is hard). But Celtics are worse and Mavs are better because Tatum is a better player.

Luka is literally better at every aspect of offense compared to Tatum, and in many categories it’s not close. I don’t think defense is enough to close the gap. And luka showed last playoffs his defense is perfectly fine when he tries and has someone else to take some of the offensive burden off him (yes the finals was horrific), which he would ofc have on the Celtics. You could put 10+ players in Tatum’s place and the Celtics would win last year.

No, they wouldn’t. You’re already arguing in bad faith. Porzingis was on the Mavs and Luka ran him off. Derrick white would be considered a scrub if he played with Luka. Horford would’ve retired long time ago if he played on Mavs. Tatum makes players better. Simple as that. Luka can never have an argument over Tatum considering he missed the playoffs with Kyrie. That eliminates him from discussion. Luka isn’t better than Shai either

[tsherkin]

Luka can never have an argument over Tatum considering he missed the playoffs with Kyrie.

You mean in 2023, when Kyrie played 20 games for the Mavs? Dinwiddie played 53, DFS played 40, etc?

THAT'S the argument you're going to advance, really?

[KembaWalker]

Luka is literally better at every aspect of offense compared to Tatum, and in many categories it’s not close. I don’t think defense is enough to close the gap. And luka showed last playoffs his defense is perfectly fine when he tries and has someone else to take some of the offensive burden off him (yes the finals was horrific), which he would ofc have on the Celtics. You could put 10+ players in Tatum’s place and the Celtics would win last year.

Is shooting an aspect of offense?

And moreover it’s vastly easier for Luka to mimic Tatum off ball then for Tatum to even being to approach what Luka does on ball.

or the vastly more likely scenario, Luka would bring his iso ballhog style to the Celtics and mess up the vibe while Tatum slots perfectly into a Mavs team that is now free to play actual basketball

[Pelly24]

TBH this isn't particulary close. The Celtics would've made the finals in 2020 and possibly won, probably not, they win the chip pretty easily in 2021, 2022, get to the finals in 2023, definitely win in 2024. Luka is just a different tier of player. Tatum is better on defense and luka can be a ball-stopper, but he's shown that he's essentially unstoppable in a way that Tatum never has. Tatum has been on loaded teams essentially his entire career. It would've been interesting to see where and how Tatum would be seen if he had ended up on the Pistons or Hornets. Still an All-NBA guy, but he's not some crazy floor-raiser without outlier volume/efficiency scoring.

[TheGOATRises007]

Luka is better than Tatum and I agree with everything Pelly said.

Do people really think if they swap places last season, the Celtics still don't win the title?

[Doctor MJ]

So, some thoughts:

1. I think the "switch places" question, while it makes sense we want to do, is harder than we want to admit because each team context relies on many subtle things that we shouldn't assume someone from another place can just do.

2. I think the Celtic offense at this point are the closest thing we have to "state of the art", and they do so playing a particular style where no one player dominates the ball and every player simply has to work hard to make himself valuable in that vast majority of time he doesn't have the ball.

3. I don't think Luka is a good fit for that offense. I think realistically if he's on the team instead of Tatum, you either watch the offense get worse, or you throw out the current system, let Luka do his thing, and hope it leads to something even better than the state of the art.

4. Of course defensively, Tatum is a far better player than Luka will ever be.

5. All that together, at least for the regular season: Luka on Boston either transforms the team into something so much better on offense that it makes up for the defensive loss, or the team simply gets worse. And that transformation would be easier to imagine if Luka had a history of actually transforming the Mavs' offense into the best thing in the world, but while it appeared that he would be that sort of player in '19-20, nothing we've seen since then indicates that this is realistic.

6. From there the question is simply about whether Luka's outstanding offensive resilience (which I'll readily acknowledge is stronger than Tatum's) in the playoffs would make the difference there. It's possible it would in the right matchup...but coming off the 2024 finals, there's a question of how realistic it is to think of that as what the Celtics would need to get "over the hump". I'm skeptical, and thus wouldn't be looking to do a Luka-Tatum swap were I the Celtics.

Over on the Mavs side:

1. Moving off from Luka means completely changing the team's offense to be something not so helio, and they've been building for years around Luka, so that probably won't work out well.

2. Kyrie is not so dependent on Luka, but Kyrie also completely sabotaged the Celtics rather than recognizing Tatum was the superior player and getting in line around him. Maybe that would be different now, but I don't think Tatum would have any interest in playing with Kyrie again.

3. Defensively of course, things are going to get better whenever you replace Luka with someone who takes defense seriously every possession, and Tatum is really someone who should have already made All-D, so he'll certainly help.

4. For the regular season, it's not hard to top the value Luka provides, because his impact is super-spotty. On particular possessions he's hugely impactful, and then there are others where all he does is whine to the refs while the opponent gets an easy bucket. So yeah, regular season-wise, both teams are probably better with Tatum.

5. In the playoffs, well, the only reason to fear the Mavs is because they have a couple of offensive superstars who when they get their groove on are extremely resilient against good defense. As such, I don't really think a Tatum-led Mavs team would have the same upset-win tendency that the Mavs currently have, and would say that I think such a team would, for example, be less likely to make the finals.

If you add all that up, that's me clearly siding with Tatum over Luka in most circumstances despite Luka being clearly the superior on-ball offensive talent. However I always want to emphasize that judging Luka continues to be a hard thing that we really are going to want to see how it all ends up playing out over his career.

I've made the connection between Luka & Wilt previously. Extreme talents with problematic tendencies who care capable of moments where they seem utterly unstoppable even by the best opponents, but who on average don't end up having the day-in day-out impact we normally get from NBA superstars.

[Johnny Firpo]

I don't see how Luka would be a bad fit for that system. He is a similar shooter to Tatum, and this year Tatum actually averages more touches and they are even similar in time of possession with Luka being slightly higher but not in the top this year. With this improved roster, Luka has lowered his usage and ball-holding further to a point now where it's actually similar to this year's Tatum. So in essence, you would get a huge upgrade in passing and shot creation, which is the only weakness of the Celtics (although you can argue I guess that they did not need it, and you are right so far, but who knows if that would be the case in the future).

The team would get even better looks with Luka, and he would likely get more free throws too, since Luka is generally better at that. Not this year so far, but with an even further improved roster and even further improved complementary shooting, he would have much more space to work with to put even more pressure on the defenses. I think Doncic is the better overall player, pretty consistently has and had better advanced stats including this year, and is just considered the better player by the general public and the fans too (maybe even some Celtics fans). I don't see how he doesn't make the Celtics even better. I think Tatum is very good though, I would rank him probably 5th after Jokic, Shai, Luka and Giannis, now that Embiid is out. If Embiid is back, than still 6th at worst. Great player, just not as good as the international five, and there is nothing wrong with that.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't see how Luka would be a bad fit for that system. He is a similar shooter to Tatum, and this year Tatum actually averages more touches and they are even similar in time of possession with Luka being slightly higher but not in the top this year. With this improved roster, Luka has lowered his usage and ball-holding further to a point now where it's actually similar to this year's Tatum. So in essence, you would get a huge upgrade in passing and shot creation, which is the only weakness of the Celtics (although you can argue I guess that they did not need it, and you are right so far, but who knows if that would be the case in the future).

The team would get even better looks with Luka, and he would likely get more free throws too, since Luka is generally better at that. Not this year so far, but with an even further improved roster and even further improved complementary shooting, he would have much more space to work with to put even more pressure on the defenses. I think Doncic is the better overall player, pretty consistently has and had better advanced stats including this year, and is just considered the better player by the general public and the fans too (maybe even some Celtics fans). I don't see how he doesn't make the Celtics even better. I think Tatum is very good though, I would rank him probably 5th after Jokic, Shai, Luka and Giannis, now that Embiid is out. If Embiid is back, than still 6th at worst. Great player, just not as good as the international five, and there is nothing wrong with that.

So let me say up front that I could be wrong about Luka having offensive fit issues with Boston. Some things would change, but maybe their wouldn't be all that meaningful "issues" due to the advantages Luka brings.

Additionally, it's true that time of possession numbers between the two is smaller than its been in the past, which perhaps is part of Luka's journey to embrace his off-ball potential.

With this absolutely acknowledged: More touches clearly means something very different to the two of us.

To me the way you used it makes it seem like a proxy for on-ball primacy - how much you get to have the ball. Please do refine my understanding of your perspective.

But what I note generally is that leaders of touches and leaders of time of possession are quite different, and particularly so when you compare front court touches, which is relevant here because we're really talking about what happens in the front court when we're talking about concerns about roles in differing offensive schemes.

So then here are the time of possession leaders (GP >= 15, Min >= 24)

1. Cunningham 8.3
2. Young 8.3
3. Lillard 8.2
4. Brunson 8.2
5. Schroeder 7.9
...
10. Doncic 6.5

And here are the front court touch leaders.

1. Jokic 60.9
2. Sabonis 48.5
3. Vucevic 48.0
4. Tatum 47.2
5. Davis 46.0
...


For comparison, here are the front court touch numbers for the time of possession guys:

Cunningham 36.3
Young 32.7
Lillard 32.5
Brunson 30.6
Schroeder 34.5
Doncic 33.2

And the time of possession guys for the front court touch guys:

Jokic 4.9
Sabonis 2.9
Vucevic 1.6
Tatum 5.2
Davis 3.4

What I'd say we're seeing here is a real split in category of play between those who lead in possession and those who lead in touches. Doesn't mean a player couldn't play the other way - which is the part that's relevant to this particular thread prompt - but the fact of it being such an either/or indicates a significant shift in how the player would have to change how he played.

Here we can bring up again your point about the differences between Luka & Tatum perhaps not being as big as they used to be - again this is a good point.

(Funny thing though, I actually think Tatum would be better offensively for the Celtics if he held onto the ball a bit less than he does.)

Re: "huge upgrade in passing". So, I'll acknowledge first that I would consider Luka a significantly more talented passer than Tatu, but then must point out:

The leaderboard for most times has decided to make a pass (per game), along with how often a pass was thrown to them:

1. Jokic 82.1 (75.9)
2. Haliburton 77.0 (76.8)
3. Jalen Johnson 70.4 (47.3)
4. Young 66.3 (66.3)
5. Schroeder 66.0 (72.0)
...
14. Tatum 57.6 (52.7)
...
29. Luka 51.0 (58.7)

So, Tatum actually makes MORE passes right now than Luka, despite being LESS likely to be passed to than Luka.
And the same is true for Tatum's fellow Celtic Derrick White.

And so we're clear, Luka being more likely to receive a pass than give a pass is how it's been every year of his career. This is how Luka's always played, and it's different from how players are expect to play, to play in the Celtic scheme. And therein lies the concern - which as stated before, may prove to be quite minor when all is said and done, but I think we just don't know.

Re: shot creation, Celtics' only weakness. To be clear, when you're saying the offensive scheme that last year had the most effective offense season in history is weak at shot creation, I imagine you're referring to the ability to manufacture a decent shot without relying on the aid of an effective offensive scheme.

I would suggest that that perspective is built on an assumption that scheme's always break down and you'll just need your star to be a boss if you want to win it all...which was a compelling argument before the Celtics won the title in an extremely dominant all year performance playing said scheme.

Re: Luka get more free throws. I'm not sure why you'd assume that.

Re: Luka better advanced stats. Luka has better box score production stats, while Tatum has better scoreboard impact stats.

Re: better overall player. To be clear, my main concern is about Luka's disadvantage on defense more so than the offense.