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9 days ago

Paul Pierce’s Contract: Dispelling The Myths and Stating The Facts

The first domino to fall this offseason is Paul Pierce’s contract. Until Danny Ainge figures out what he’s doing there, little else matters. As we wait for this decision, we also must face the rest of the offseason, which means it is also rumor season. With that time of year, comes plenty of information floating [...]

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9 days ago

Final Grade: Avery Bradley (C+)

In his third year in the league, in which promising players often make brash leaps from benchwarmer to starter, from starter to star, Avery Bradley took a big step back. But his regression might be deceptive. When he returned to the Celtics’ lineup on January the 2nd after two in-season months recovering from offseason shoulder [...]

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10 days ago

Danny Ainge Expects Doc Rivers & Kevin Garnett To Return, Unsure About Paul Pierce

A long, challenging offseason awaits Danny Ainge this summer. Before he dives in head first, he joined Salk and Holley on WEEI-FM 93.7 to discuss the multitude of decisions facing him this offseason, as well as the progress of Rajon Rondo in his rehab from ACL surgery. A few of the notable highlights from the interview. Ainge [...]

11
10 days ago

Suns Hire Away Celtics’ Assistant GM Ryan McDonough

In one way or another, there will be change this offseason in Boston. That process started in the past couple days, with the first piece moving out coming as a name most C’s fans might not be familiar with. Yet, it was Celtics’ assistant general manager Ryan McDonough, one of Danny Ainge’s top lieutenants, who [...]

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11 days ago

Doc Rivers Finishes 13th in Coach of the Year Voting

It was a tough season for the Boston Celtics, and that includes for head coach Doc Rivers. The long-time coach battled to find the right fit for a lot of new pieces that were both underperforming and/or failed to pick up his schemes on both ends of the floor. Naturally, an unfortunate plethora of injuries [...]

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12 days ago

Overconfident Answers To Offseason Questions (Part 1)

It seems like every offseason since 2010 we’ve been through this: a myriad of questions and concerns about the Celtics’ roster that usually involve the possibility of the core of the team being dismantled. As we head into the summer of 2013, we’ve got a whole batch of questions, many of which will be familiar.  [...]

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Mini Wednesday Notebook

A few things of note:

• Queen City Hoops, the TrueHoop Network Bobcats blog, wanted to know which players can maintain their scoring efficiency even as they attempt more shots. Players generally score less efficiently as they take a greater share of their team’s shots. This makes sense; few players can handle the burden of taking 25 shots—many of them contested—while staying at peak level scoring efficiency.

Brett Hainline at Queen City Hoops—basically your garden variety stat genius blogger—calculated how strongly a player’s efficiency correlates with his usage rate (a measure how often a player ends a possession by doing something with the ball). He was inspired by Gerald Wallace, but if you scroll down to the third spreadsheet in that post, you’ll see the numbers—sorted by team—for every player.

If you’re curious, go find out which C’s have remained efficient even when they’ve taken on extra responsibility on offense. Hint: It may not be who you think.

• Rob Mahoney at the Mavs-themed blog The Two Man Game has a very nice video post of how the Mavericks designed some effective counters to the C’s defense on Dirk Nowitzki. Worth your five minutes.

• Link #1 to get you excited for Thursday’s March Madness: A bench player on Cornell’s team used to start for Kentucky. Wait. What?

• Link #2 to get you excited for Thursday’s March Madness: A really interesting—if ultimately pointless—discussion of whether college hoops needs to change its rules to cut down on the intentional foul-fests that make the last minute of any semi-competitive (but not super-close) college game last 20 minutes. Among the ideas: Actually call intentional fouls; give the team in the lead the option of taking just one foul shot but keeping the ball if the trailing team fouls on purpose; reducing the shot clock to 24 seconds in the last minute or two of every game.

It’s pretty clear that just about every college coach in will throw a fit if the NCAA even attempts these kind of changes, but you have to admit: They’re interesting. The “intentional” foul rule in its varied forms has always been one of the most confusing to casual fans.

• Adidas and the NBA have signed a licensing deal giving Adidas exclusive rights to distribute official NBA merchandise in Europe.

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