Archive for the ‘History’ Category

Ray Allen‘s $19 million expiring deal generated a lot of chatter over whether the C’s should trade him, and it certainly appears they tried. I’m not here to tell you that’s a bad thing. It’s good to have a proactive general manager, and it’s true that Ray Allen is 34 with past ankle problems.

But here’s the thing about trading Ray Allen: It would mean a huge adjustment to the C’s offense, because there are very few players in the league who can shoot three-pointers as often and as accurately as Ray. Defenders have to be constantly vigilant, and that vigilance creates space for the other four players to operate. The current roster has no player like him. Paul Pierce can shoot threes, but his come in transition or in those random moments where he finds himself with a few feet of space in the flow of the offense. Pierce rarely shoots threes by design. Eddie House can shoot ‘em with anybody, but he’s rarely going to play even 20 minutes in a big game.

Ray will play 40. And he’s a very, very unique weapon. How unique?

Only 15 players in the history of the NBA have hit at least 40 percent of their three-pointers in a season in which they attempted at least six threes per game and played enough to qualify for the scoring title–and they’ve combined to do that in just 19 individual seasons, according to Basketball Reference.

Here are the top 11 seasons, ranked in order of best three-point shooting percentage. (Why 11? Because Ray’s 2008-09 season was the 11th-best).

Ray did that last year, and he’s done it three times in his career–more than anyone else in the history of the NBA. Peja Stojakovic and Rashard Lewis have done it twice. No one else has made the cut more the once. Reggie Miller–once. Paul Pierce–once. Dennis Scott–once.

The list of players grows if you loosen the criteria a bit, but that only reinforces Allen’s rarity as a shooter. If you lower the minutes-played requirement to include all players who qualified for the three-point shooting title, you get 46 individual seasons. If you lower the minutes requirement even further by including players who launched six threes per 36 minutes (instead of per game), you get 61 individual seasons–the equivalent of about two guys per season.

(Side note:  If Simmons can be the Picasso of the Trade Machine, can I be the Rembrandt of the Basketball Reference Full Court function? Give me something).

Having a high-volume three-point shooter who can actually shoot has a dramatic effect on a team’s offense. Jon Nichols studied this for point guards recently, and found that a high-percentage, high-volume shooter at the PG spot sends an offense into the historically-elite stratosphere. An offense with that sort of PG significantly out-performs even an offense with an accurate shooter who doesn’t shoot as much, according to Nichols’ preliminary numbers.

The effect for shooting guards probably isn’t as statistically significant, since there are more good three-point shooters among two guards than PGs.

Still, when I thought about trading Ray Allen for Tyreke Evans or trading a Ray-Rondo package for Prince-Hamilton-Stuckey, my first thought was always: How are we going to replace the three-point shooting?

Because the offense would look an awful lot different without it.

We all miss James Posey. I’d guess that a majority of Celtics fans view Danny Ainge‘s decision to bow out of the Posey bidding as a bad one, possibly the worst choice Ainge has made since taking over the C’s basketball operations earlier this decade. Ainge committed to offering Posey only a three-year deal worth the mid-level exception; when New Orleans tacked on a fourth season, Ainge wouldn’t match, and we all wondered whether it was really worth losing a key cog in a championship team over one year and 6 million measly dollars. 

A year later, it’s time to ask: Does the signing of Rasheed Wallace (and, to a lesser extent, Marquis Daniels) change your perception of Ainge’s decision on Posey? I think it should. Because right now, for this team, I’d rather have Rasheed Wallace than James Posey, and the C’s would not have had the mid-level free to use on Wallace had they reserved it for Posey. 

(Side note for collective bargaining agreement fans: If I’m reading the CBA right, the C’s did have the right to go over the cap to sign Posey without using their mid-level, but since they did not have Bird Rights on Posey, they could only offer a 20 percent raise on Posey’s 2008 salary plus future 8 percent raises–less than other teams could offer with their mid-level. So the C’s would have had to use their mid-level to sign Posey, even though he was technically their own free agent. End side note). 

Let’s put aside for a second that Posey is 32, coming off his worst statistical season since 2006 last year and fits the profile of a type of player who tends to decline quickly in this early- and mid-30s, according to a piece John Hollinger wrote last year criticizing the Hornets’s decision to sign Posey. With Kevin Garnett’s knee a potential problem for the rest of his career, the Celtics need a Wallace-type more than they need a Posey-type, and that’s even before considering that Marquis Daniels can at least approximate Posey’s unique value to the team (if not his three-point shooting). 

Ainge took a one-season gamble in 2008, and it (sort of) failed. He believed, correctly, that it would be unwise to tie up the team’s mid-level exception (its only real source of financial flexibility) in an aging perimeter player, even if that stance placed a larger burden on Tony Allen. If the team couldn’t find a better wing player than Allen, then it would be up to Allen to assume the role of Paul Pierce’s main back-up and ace defensive specialist. If he couldn’t step up, perhaps increased production from Big Baby, Leon Powe, Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo could keep the team at a championship level.

It was certainly a gamble. But you know what? It might have worked had Kevin Garnett stayed healthy. He didn’t, and with a knee that is likely in the early stages of an arthritic condition, the Celtics need to be very careful with KG going forward. Yes, Wallace is older than Posey, and, yes, he also put up some of the worst numbers of his career last season. But for this team, right now, I’d rather have an aging and declining Wallace than an aging and declining Posey. Especially with Daniels on board. » More: The Posey Decision: One Year Later