Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V5 #93

[michael t hart <thart@henge1.henge.com>]

i think walker cost the team 6-8 a game at least,  and that includes his 2-3
pathetic turnovers a game.

Alex Wang wrote:

> > 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.