The Official BOSTON CELTICS thread

WhiteyTheCelticsFan · Mar 11, 2013

GarnettFan4Life said:

His shot looks so much different while his practicing than in a game.

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 14, 2013

KG into 15th on all time scoring list, Pierce moves to 20th after today's game

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 24, 2013

4th loss in a row today. Must be aiming for 6th or 7th seed

ozballer23 · Mar 24, 2013

Nice game from Crawford, great pick up by the c's!

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 24, 2013

They were down 98-77 then a run by Crawford, TWill and Green brought it back to 102-98!

Looks like nobody wants the 4th or 5th spot haha

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 28, 2013

http://nba.si.com/2013/03/22/paul-pierce-athleticism/

By Rob Mahoney
Paul Pierce is a savvy veteran, which is a not-so-subtly coded way of noting that he’s productive despite being well past his physical prime. He isn’t a leaper at this age and didn’t even display impressive vertical potential at his athletic peak. No one could describe Pierce’s game as “explosive,” without their tongue planted firmly in their cheek, and opponents won’t soon fear the physical gifts of a 35-year-old wing with a notorious “old-man game.”
But according to two very different quantitative measures of athleticism, Pierce bafflingly rates as one of the more athletic players in the league. At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference earlier this month, NYU-Polytechnic Institute professor Philip Maymin presented a research paper on the magnitude at which individual NBA players accelerate over the course of a game, as measured by SportVU’s amazing optical tracking cameras. In tabulating how often and how much players accelerate around the court, Maymin is essentially measuring a player’s athleticism, as the propulsion and speed of a player’s movements provide the primary variable for his analysis. Maymin draws all kinds of conclusions from the data collected, but most relevant were his findings regarding Pierce. In the data from the 2011-12 season (the extent of Maymin’s set), Pierce rated as one of the league’s most frequent accelerators, comparing favorably to the likes of Kevin Durant and Dwyane Wade.
On a different note, ESPN.com’s Bradford Doolittle introduced a new metric — ATH — on Wednesday(Insider only), designed to evaluate a player’s applied athleticism as it relates to his box score contributions. In his piece, Doolittle explains his general methodology for calculating ATH:

[ATH] compares each player’s percentage in rebounding, foul-drawing, blocked shots and steals to the league norms for a player of his height. The ratios are regressed for playing time and averaged together to create ATH, which is expressed as a number extended to three decimal points. The league average is 1.000, so if a player has an ATH of 1.167, that’s to say his rating is 16.7 percent better than the league average. Again, the team rating is determined by the ATH scores of the players on its roster, weighted by minutes played.

It’s hardly a conclusive measure of a player’s natural athleticism, as Doolittle freely admits. But ATH does a sound job of accounting for the basic ways in which athleticism manifests itself most readily in the box score, save perhaps the impact it has on shot creation and scoring. Nevertheless, the leaders in ATH (Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Derrick Favors, etc.) more or less line up with conventional interpretations of athleticism … until we get to Pierce, who is rather curiously at No. 25. Pierce’s actual ATH rating is 1.187, making him 18.7 percent better than league average in this measure of athleticism, and “more athletic” than Josh Smith, Andre Iguodala, Paul George, Rajon Rondo, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Larry Sanders, among so many others.
That’s a strange turn of the numbers, but perhaps there’s more to Pierce’s athleticism than some statistical coincidence. Pierce may not be able to whirl around defenders or explode to the rim, but one of the reasons why he rates among the NBA’s biggest accelerators is because he uses quick, controlled bursts to take advantage of a very different kind of athleticism: the ability to stop at a moment’s notice. There’s no cool-down with Pierce, no stretch of deceleration. He simply starts and stops on a whim, and challenges his opponents to keep up
The ease with which Pierce changes directions and speeds is in itself a physical ability, albeit one maximized by his guile. There’s no question that Pierce understands the value of varied movement, perhaps to a deeper extent than any player in the league. But he is only so successful as a stutter-step player because he’s able to shift gears constantly while maintaining perfect balance. That’s an incredible physical talent, albeit one not captured by a traditional conception of athleticism that favors sprinting speed and aerial acrobatics above the more restrained flares of a player like Pierce.
Yet in practical terms, Pierce’s brand of athleticism allows him to mimic the output of quick-sprinting, high-flying players through far more dynamic means. His live dribble begins as a dance, but transforms into an unpredictable deke — a series of sways and jolts that remains impossible to pin down even after extensive film sessions. It’s from that zone of zigs and zags that Pierce so often dupes his opponents, leveraging their expectations by baiting them into fouls. That’s where Pierce gleans a huge advantage in terms of ATH. According to Doolittle, Pierce rated as 26.4 percent above the league average in his ability to draw fouls, which should come as little surprise to those who have seen Pierce fool even the most disciplined defenders with his drives of fits and starts.
Again: This an area of performance so commonly chalked up to cleverness. Many write off Pierce as a vet getting the better of less experienced players. That’s just not an accurate representation of the skills at work, and it’s a disservice to the impeccable coordination needed to execute this level of stop-and-go mastery. Through slowed first step, slipping vertical and all, Pierce is still an impressive athlete. His physical gifts just manifest in more modest form.

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 28, 2013

Boom

Jeff Green layup FTW

ozguy3825 · Mar 28, 2013

green saves your asses again...lol

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 28, 2013

ozguy3825 said:
green saves your asses again...lol

It's a change, it's normally Pierce!
Needed a win!

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 28, 2013

Green beats the Clevelan Cavaliers

GarnettFan4Life · Mar 30, 2013

Old man triple double today - Paul pierce 20/10/10 in W vs Hawks

GarnettFan4Life · Apr 29, 2013

boomshakalaka

911_Turbo · Apr 29, 2013

Nice to get a W on the board after our poor stretches in the first three games, hoping to take another game before the Knicks win the series.

GarnettFan4Life · Apr 29, 2013

911_Turbo said:
Nice to get a W on the board after our poor stretches in the first three games, hoping to take another game before the Knicks win the series.

i more like the idea of becoming the 1st team ever to come back from 0-3 down....

ljandkg · Apr 30, 2013

Don't like our chances of doing that Matt but where there's a will there's a way....

SpriteAllNight33 · May 4, 2013

Possibly KG's last game as a Celtic tonight !!!

... So enjoy the game best as you can !!!

... ... ... And feel free to bid on my KG Wolves tag ! http://www.ebay.com/itm/2008-09-Exq..._Basketball&hash=item3f24be2b32#ht_222wt_1399

... Go Boston ! Hope they win tonight !

SpriteAllNight33 · May 4, 2013

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/227494/Carmelo-Anthony-Admits-Wife-Should-Be-Upset

... Taste like Cheerios !

GarnettFan4Life · May 4, 2013

Celtics stinking it up. Ugh

24-10 down after 1

GarnettFan4Life · May 4, 2013

End of an era. So depressed.

If this ends up being KG last game I need a couple days to grieve lol

ozballer23 · May 4, 2013

NY look to have this in hand dare I say, still time for the C's to mount a come back.

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