Comments on: Mega 2010 NBA Finals Preview: L.A. Lakers vs. Boston Celtics

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:46:26 +0000

That's why I picked Boston in 5 for the TrueHoop contest -- because of the 2-3-2, they were most likely to win in 5 if they win at all. Although, after last night, Celts in 5 (or in anything) looks pretty unlikely.

By: DSMok1

DSMok1 — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:39:34 +0000

I made an error on my previous post--I forgot the 2-3-2 distribution. Corrected:

LAL vs BOS
4 to 0 8.8%
4 to 1 13.6%
4 to 2 22.9%
4 to 3 20.9%
3 to 4 10.1%
2 to 4 9.7%
1 to 4 10.7%
0 to 4 3.3%

Margin
8.17 6.33
LAL BOS
66.2% 33.8%

By: angry smiley

angry smiley — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:01:12 +0000

Lakers are going to win this final! Game 1 has been won and Gasol has surely proven himself. Gooo Lakers! D. angry smiley

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:20:58 +0000

I opted to include games missed as part of the overall minute share, to explain why the Celtics were so mediocre in the regular season.

By: DSMok1

DSMok1 — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:40:41 +0000

Here's the SPM Minutes-adjusted breakdown for this series:
LAL vs BOS
4 to 0 8.8%
4 to 1 20.8%
4 to 2 15.7%
4 to 3 20.9%
3 to 4 10.1%
2 to 4 14.1%
1 to 4 6.2%
0 to 4 3.3%

Margin
8.17 6.33
LAL BOS
66.2% 33.8%

I'm still using Neil's latest SPM here.

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:38:37 +0000

I can probably data-dump series-by-series advanced stats at some point before the Finals.

The tables are sorted by minutes played, but I don't think there's any room to add G and MP to them w/o pushing something else off the edge. I had to abbreviate names just to make room the stats you see now.

By: DSMok1

DSMok1 — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:28:03 +0000

Neil--I'd love to see series-by-series advanced stats (seconding MikeG's request).

Also--could you include minutes played and games played in your tables above for the total season stats?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:57:02 +0000

Joel, did you adjust those regular season minutes for games missed? I don't think you can really consider them available minutes if the player was injured; besides that is a better estimate to compare to the postseason where they have played every game. Then you get
Rajon Rondo 76%
Ray Allen 73%
Paul Pierce 71%
Kevin Garnett 62%
Kendrick Perkins 58%
Is what I get for the regular season, so you can see that Perkins burn has gone down almost as much as Pierce's has gone up, which is what I would expect after the Orlando Series.
I suspect that most of scalabrine's minutes were due to injury (to other players) in regular season, and Nate Robinson has probably impacted the guard positions...This is born out by the lineup data at BasketballValue.com where the Big 5 play 1150 minutes together (or 35% of the potential 69 games they played), the next most used lineup only played 190 minutes...

What is more impressive is if you look at the lineup data at Basketballvalue.com You will see that Rondo, Allen, Pierce, Garnett and Big Baby has been played for 77 min in playoffs, for Ortg - Drtg of 10 (cf starting 5's MP of 360 and OR-DR ~ 4). This lineup only played 20 minutes in regular season! and had negative differential - so Doc seems to have gone with something he didn't really test out / or use successfully in regular season ...

Top 5 units with 'Sheed during the playoffs all have negative points differential ...

The Lakers seem to be limited by Bynum's Injury, particularly it seems they can't play an Odom / Bynum front court as much, nor is either lineup with Bynum as effective in the playoffs as in the regular season. They are harder to analyse as they have a clear best perimeter lineup of Fisher - Kobe - Artest; but use the three big men for the majority of the minutes - those 3 lineups played 1460 minutes for the lakers in the regular season, or 47% of possible minutes

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 05:25:57 +0000

A huge part of the Celtics' disparity between regular season and playoff performance has to do with minutes.

During the regular season:

Rondo played 74.9% of available minutes
Allen played 71.3% of available minutes
Pierce played 60.9% of available minutes
Perkins played 54.4% of available minutes
Garnett played 52.1% of available minutes

During the postseason:

Rondo has played 82.1% of available minutes
Pierce has played 79.3% of available minutes
Allen has played 76.2% of available minutes
Garnett has played 63.9% of available minutes
Perkins has played 51.0% of available mintues.

That's a huge jump for the big four, at the expense of mediocrities like Scalabrine, Williams, and the horrifyingly inconsistent Tony Allen.

Doesn't hurt that Glen Davis and Rasheed Wallace have elevated their game during the playoffs.

By: chibi

chibi — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:07:26 +0000

the celtics were a middling team in the category of DRB% during the regular season. In the playoffs, they are that the top of that category. How much of that can we attribute to Miami, Cleveland, and Orlando being below average performers in the ORB% percentage in the regular season?

Are the Celtics great defensive rebounders, or not?