IT: Dead Last in DRPM

[mdemers938]

Let me preface by acknowledging IT has been other-worldly offensively for this team (inspiring even) - he is unquestionably our best player (should be starting in the all star game) and our defensive problems are more than him, but it's hard to acknowledge that he is LITERALLY dead last in Real Defensive Plus-Minus in the league.

Dead Last:

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/page/11/sort/DRPM

It doesn't matter how fast your boat goes if it has a hole in it, it's gonna sink eventually.

So you guys tell me:
- Should we overlook his defensive deficiencies because of his offensive output (he is top 10 ORPM)
- IT really worth a max?
- IT really be starting? Would his defensive liabilities be better covered up as a 6th man?
- How much does this correlate to our rebounding and defensive big woes?

[grindtime22]

When someone can give me all the inputs, I will answer the question.

[Green89]

- IT really be starting? Would his defensive liabilities be better covered up as a 6th man?

[Iguodaladon]

Unless you want to create one of the ugliest offenses of all time, we can't really even be thinking about bringing IT off the bench when him and Bradley are the only ones that can score. Our main concerns are lack of size and rebounding

[truth18]

To your points:

Yes we should overlook his deficiencies (this season).

No he is not worth the max.

Yes he should be starting.

Not as much correlation as you would think.

That said, damn, dead last. Didn't expect that.

[ConstableGeneva]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

[mwhis21]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

I don't think it's lazy at all. It's lazy to say it's lazy and not explain why.

IT gets all the glory for the offense and the heroics, and rightfully so. It's been amazing.

But in turn he should get highlighted for being literally one of the WORST defenders in the league. It's putting an incredible strain on the defense having to cover up for him.

Yes our team defense has been brutal and we lack a rim protector but we play 4 on 5 every time up the floor. And guys are cheating off their man to help IT. It's a BIG TIME liability.

Not a lazy argument.

[jrob23]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

but it's not. Not only is he incapable of defending his man but when players break him down it forces everyone else to compensate and when you are undersized across the board, it ends in easy buckets, giving up offensive rebounds, or fouls. It's lazy to call it a lazy narrative. There's no escaping his liability on defense. Why do you think bad teams weren't sorry to see him go?

Yes being a 6th man on the second unit would hide his defense even better as our 2nd unit actually has better size though might not be better defenders because of the drop off from Amir and Horford. No, he wouldn't accept that even if it did make us better and he was only losing out on 5 minutes a game and still playing most of the fourth. No he doesn't deserve the max. Yes we are stuck in this situation until Danny trades him or lets him walk via FA. We might compete for a championship with IT but I doubt we ever win one. Yes there have been worse PGs to lead teams to championships but they were mostly much better defenders with size and they had superstars around them which we do not. Fun story for sure, fun to watch too, lots of defensive fanboys, lots of regular season victories, but if your goal is to win a championship you have to know the odds are greatly stacked against you because of his league worst maybe all time worst defense.

[Green89]

Good or bad defending guards (we have both) we have no defensive bigs to back them up. That's why coaches go right at us, they know there's no help behind our guards.

People are acting like IT doesn't try on defense. Like he's not growing 5 more inches on game nights for us. He's incapable and we have to bring in real defenders in the paint to solve our problems. Knocking IT and calling for him to come off the bench is ludicrous. This is the worst thread here in a long, long time.

[Parliament10]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

I don't think it's lazy at all. It's lazy to say it's lazy and not explain why.

IT gets all the glory for the offense and the heroics, and rightfully so. It's been amazing.

But in turn he should get highlighted for being literally one of the WORST defenders in the league. It's putting an incredible strain on the defense having to cover up for him.

Yes our team defense has been brutal and we lack a rim protector but we play 4 on 5 every time up the floor. And guys are cheating off their man to help IT. It's a BIG TIME liability.

Not a lazy argument.

A Moot Argument.

Who cares if one player is bad at something? That's why you have a Team; that's the Nature of this sport, Teamwork.

That's the Nature of Life, in fact.:
To be better, that the sum of our parts.

[Banks2Pierce]

Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Yeah, this is the part people have to explain away and they're not. You can't get much worse than IT was on defense last season and we made it work overall on that end.

Our defensive free fall is down to about 25 different things adding up to a big issue. The defensive rebounding got slightly worse, everyone's steal rates are slightly down or neutral(except Crowder's halving), and other things that probably need to be studied to be understood. Jaylen's DRPM is the exact same as Turner's was. Also think Horford is a square peg in a round hole on the defensive side considering our 4s.

[ConstableGeneva]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

I don't think it's lazy at all. It's lazy to say it's lazy and not explain why.

IT gets all the glory for the offense and the heroics, and rightfully so. It's been amazing.

But in turn he should get highlighted for being literally one of the WORST defenders in the league. It's putting an incredible strain on the defense having to cover up for him.

Yes our team defense has been brutal and we lack a rim protector but we play 4 on 5 every time up the floor. And guys are cheating off their man to help IT. It's a BIG TIME liability.

Not a lazy argument.

It's lazy when he's the only one being mentioned when topic of bad defense comes up. How about AB and Jae's defense dropping off whether due to injury or wanting to become more offense-oriented? How about the frontcourt's inability to hold their position down low to defend/rebound? It's not often mentioned but we apparently underrated Sully and ET's ability to play tough, physical D, unlike their replacements. Did we change our scheme/coverages? Is the effort level down? Is everyone just content on putting up points? When I say it's lazy, it's only because there's more to our cratering D than just IT being a terrible onball defender.

Again, they have made it work last season. So what's different now?

[165bows]

When someone can give me all the inputs, I will answer the question.

Agree, anyone expecting ESPN to have useful proprietary statistics is being naive.

The point is to correct for the quality of replacements, I doubt their ability to accurately do so in a lot of circumstances.

[mwhis21]

Good or bad defending guards (we have both) we have no defensive bigs to back them up. That's why coaches go right at us, they know there's no help behind our guards.

People are acting like IT doesn't try on defense. Like he's not growing 5 more inches on game nights for us. He's incapable and we have to bring in real defenders in the paint to solve our problems. Knocking IT and calling for him to come off the bench is ludicrous. This is the worst thread here in a long, long time.

C'mon you're better than this: "We have to bring in real defenders in the paint to solve our problems". We had a top 5 defense last season without a superior big man protecting the rim. And that's because our perimeter defense was really solid: Bradley, Crowder and Smart were tough as nails. Even Thomas rated better last year.

This year, the team identity is gone. It's not longer a scrappy, tough defending team. It's an "up-temp", ball movement valuing scoring team.

IT is literally one of the worst defenders in the league. It's asking a lot of Smart, Bradley, and Crowder to not only cover up IT on defense for 35 MPG but also pick up their offense and tempo. It's no surprise Smart, Bradley and Crowder have all dipped defensively while taking on a much larger scoring role.

It's not their games but it's being forced to be.

[mwhis21]

IT hurts the team on defense, that's a given and undeniable. But Celtics defensive woes this season go beyond him. Team had a top 4 defense all of last season with him starting and playing the most total minutes and carried that over into the postseason with a barely playable Sully and depleted roster. The blame will be put on IT first though 'cos it's the easiest and laziest narrative.

Having said that, he's not worth the max imo. The market should dictate that.

I don't think it's lazy at all. It's lazy to say it's lazy and not explain why.

IT gets all the glory for the offense and the heroics, and rightfully so. It's been amazing.

But in turn he should get highlighted for being literally one of the WORST defenders in the league. It's putting an incredible strain on the defense having to cover up for him.

Yes our team defense has been brutal and we lack a rim protector but we play 4 on 5 every time up the floor. And guys are cheating off their man to help IT. It's a BIG TIME liability.

Not a lazy argument.

It's lazy when he's the only one being mentioned when topic of bad defense comes up. How about AB and Jae's defense dropping off whether due to injury or wanting to become more offense-oriented? How about the frontcourt's inability to hold their position down low to defend/rebound? It's not often mentioned but we apparently underrated Sully and ET's ability to play tough, physical D, unlike their replacements. Did we change our scheme/coverages? Is the effort level down? Is everyone just content on putting up points? When I say it's lazy, it's only because there's more to our cratering D than just IT being a terrible onball defender.

Again, they have made it work last season. So what's different now?

Honestly, haven't seen anyone not say Smart, Crowder, Bradley haven't slipped. They have. But mostly due to catering our team more to IT.

The difference now is that not only are Smart, Crowder and Bradley being asked to make up for IT's defensive efficiencies they are now tasked with taking on an increased scoring role, and in Bradley's case a rebounding role.

Yes, the scheme 100% changed. The identify of the team has gone from a defense first, tough, scrappy team to a new up-tempo, high scoring team. That fits the strengths of IT. Those are not the strengths of Crowder/Bradley/IT.

The effort level is all over the place for a number of reasons: Bradley's game was 3pt line to 3pt line. He was able to max out because he was really just covering a small portion of the court. This year, he's baseline to baseline. With having to play up-tempo, more ball movement and off ball movement for increased scoring something has to sacrifice. And that sacrifice was on ball defense.

[mdemers938]

When someone can give me all the inputs, I will answer the question.

Agree, anyone expecting ESPN to have useful proprietary statistics is being naive.

The point is to correct for the quality of replacements, I doubt their ability to accurately do so in a lot of circumstances.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2017_advanced.html

Basketball-reference has the same thing bro. When you actually filter out players who haven't played more than 100 mins (totally reasonable filter) you'll get the same result... Even when you don't he's still 439 out of 454.

[Dave_From_NB]

Certainly the team has some warts right now. Lack of a rim protector is an issue. Lack of secondary scoring is an issue. Resolution of both of those things could make IT more effective. I'm definitely concerned right now, there is no doubt teams can go at him on the defensive end and it's a disaster. And not only can they cue on IT on offense particularly at games end, I think IT and the rest of the team have bought FAR too much into this idea that IT is super closer, and he's forcing up a lot of junk in the 4'th and just playing right into the oppositions game plan. Things go off the rail quickly when the miracle hero shots stop falling and defenses get focused.

I don't know if Ainge can resolve the Rim Protection/Secondary Scoring issue this year, but I feel strongly that although we can't score enough points in the regular season with IT and the current team, we also can't win with the current team and IT in the playoffs.

[_UnderScore]

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[mdemers938]

Also, again - I prefaced this by saying IT is an incredible player and has been our best player. This is not some hidden agenda where I'm calling to trade IT. But after last nights game / recent streak of atrocious defense and our efforts to single out the issue, why is it not reasonable to check DRPM (along with eye test/box score refs) and point this out?

I want to keep IT, love the guy - but as others have mentioned: why does he only get glorified for offense? Should also be fairly assessed on defensive end which statistics show has not been good.

If this thread was about any other player on our teams defense performance we'd all be totally cool calling it like it is.

[jfs1000d]

Let me preface by acknowledging IT has been other-worldly offensively for this team (inspiring even) - he is unquestionably our best player (should be starting in the all star game) and our defensive problems are more than him, but it's hard to acknowledge that he is LITERALLY dead last in Real Defensive Plus-Minus in the league.

DEAD LAST

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/page/11/sort/DRPM

It doesn't matter how fast your boat goes if it has a hole in it, it's gonna sink eventually.

So you guys tell me:
- Should we overlook his defensive deficiencies because of his offensive output (he is top 10 ORPM)
- IT really worth a max?
- IT really be starting? Would his defensive liabilities be better covered up as a 6th man?
- How much does this correlate to our rebounding and defensive big woes?

they take height into account from what I understand. Anyhow, what's the input? He isn't a poor defender by my eyes, effort is thee. He is limited because of his height.