Hal14 wrote:JHTruth wrote:zoyathedestroya wrote:What's weird is the guys we replaced or had minutes reduced (Teague, Nesmith, Theis, Semi) all have positive oncourt net rating for the season. The guys we replaced them with (Pritchard, Romeo, Timelord, Grant) all have negative oncourt net rating so far this season.
I don't understand numbers anymore.
Or maybe our top guys playing with a slightly different/adjusted supporting cast has a positive effect that isn't really reflected in the numbers. They do seem to have a different bounce, pun-intended, playing with Rob.
Rob has supercharged the starting unit. With him starting the team's net rating has moved into the top 5 from 15th, and they're 8-2. His net rating as a starter is 7.5 vs -4.4 off the bench. Bringing Rob into the starting line-up is the single biggest improvement the Celtics have made in 3 years. The bench simply isn't as important with the new starting 5.
That said Fournicator will def help the bench but he will be most effective if we essentially treat him as the 6th starter..
8-1 if you don't count the New Orleans game. That game was an outlier because:
a) No Brown
b) Fournier shot 0/10 which will never happen again since he's one of the league's best shooters and that was only his first game with the team, he hadn't practiced with the team yet
Agreed about treating Fournier like a 6th starter. I see him being like a Hondo type. Comes in halfway through the first and 3rd quarters and plays pretty much the whole rest of the game. He averaged 29 minutes a game in his first 4 games with us and some of those games were blowouts where the starters sat most of the 4th. I see. him averaging around 30-31 mins a game when he comes back..which is what he was averaging in Orlando..
I'm not dismissing Rob's impact on the team, but let's also not ignore the fact that it coincided with all four of Jays/Smart/Kemba finally being healthy for an extended stretch all season, Langford coming back and having an impact defensively, Ainge cutting the fat from the roster, Smart going back to what makes him special, and Tatum going supernova in the month of April, among other things.
BTW, new starting five net rating is only +2.0 so far. (Replace Timelord w/ Theis, it was +8.6). So it's not like the new starting unit has been killing teams. On the contrary, we've been down early and just kept digging ourselves out of holes in these games.