Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V5 #93

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:37:01 -0500
> From: Ryan.Lee@parexel.com (Ryan Lee)
> Subject: ANTOINE COSTING THE CELT's TWO POINTS A GAME?
> 
>      Not to name any names and cause a huge flaming ring, somebody in the 
>      group said that Walker's current shot selection costs the Celtics only 
>      two points a game.  That is RIDICULOUS!!!!  With the number of missed 
>      passes and forced shots Walker makes, he's responsible for at least 
>      10-15 lost points a game.  When Walker decides to pass more the Celts 
>      offense is extremely hard to stop.  When he hogs the ball, you see 
>      games like Golden State and Denver. 
>      
>      R

I'll claim that statement. Really if you read what I said, the
idea was that if Walker shot 45% he'd be doing pretty decently
and we'd say his shot selection is decent.  Let's make it 50% 
to further illustrate my point. He's currently shooting 20 shots 
at 40%. Say he shoots 50% which everyone will agree is a very good 
percentage for someone who is also shooting three-pointers. 
This means he hits two two-point shots that he is currently missing. 
This translates to exactly four points per game. If we allow the
45% figure it's two points per game. You can further adjust it because
really, a missed shot can be rebounded so isn't a total loss.

So I'm saying, his poor shot selection rather than average or even
good shot selection costs 2-4 points per game. Instead of gauging 
lost points by counting hits instead of misses, we can say, instead
of taking four bad shots at about 20% accuracy, he passes to a teammate
for 60% accuracy. This is pretty generous because it's not like the
rest of the Celtics are that great. Again his shooting percentage 
would go up to 50% due to fewer shots. The expected number of points 
the Celtics gain is 3.2 points.  

So either way you count it, Walker is costing us 2-4 points per game
from what a "good shooting and passing" Walker would be getting us.
Your "at least" 10-15 lost points per game is in comparison to some 
inhuman Walker that never takes a bad shot and shoots 80% from the floor. 

Interesting tidbit: the Celtics currently get outscored by 2.4 ppg.
The 96-97 Bulls outscored their opponents by 11 ppg while the
97-98 Bulls are outscoring opponents by 6 ppg. So if we could have
the 10-15 ppg that Antoine is "losing" us, then I suppose the Celtics
would currently be about 45-2 and better than the world champs. 
So whose figure is ridiculous now?

If you don't want to start a huge flaming ring, you should consider
actually reading and thinking through a post before throwing out your
own wild estimates.