Celtics Plan, Summer 2021
- Thread starter lovegtm
- Start date
I mean clearly Defense Matters!!! except when it doesn't as with Steph, Dame, LeBron, Luka, and Harden. I mean not only are those guys not "elite", bad defense would be an improvement for four of them. (And, frankly, Jokic also belongs on that list, his defense is sneaky terrible.) And clearly Health Matters!!! except when it doesn't, as with LeBron, Kawhi, and Anthony Davis. And somehow I'm the crazy one.
(And as I've said from the beginning, he's one of the best two way wings in the NBA, that doesn't mean elite defender, it means plus defender that's offensive gravity well. Which Tatum clearly was outside of February and the beginning of March.)
+1
I also wouldn't be shocked if the team's defense improved along with Tatum's def adv metrics. When you subtract the weakest link everyone's defense will get a bump. Putting JT on the floor with Kemba, Fournier, TT, Chunky Marcus etc and asking him to guard the best wing while his teammates are pretty useless defensively must be frustrating.
Last edited:
There is zero debate about whether we would take Tatum over Giannis. This is getting ridiculous. Giannis is only 26 years old.
Anyway, that is a completely different question. Teams would take Zion or Luka or Tatum or even Trae over a lot of those guys (not Giannnis though)
The debate is that in a playoff series you might be better off with Tatum. Hack-a-Greek is a viable strategy and I'm not sure you want Giannis taking the last shot in a big game. The Bucks finally realized this and Middleton is their go-to in crunch time it seems.
That's all well and good, but replace Giannis with Tatum and that team isn't in the championship game
Just so we are clear. You would not trade Tatum for Giannis if offered straight up?
Giannis, at age 26, is largely a finished product. Better defensively, but offensively his inability to shoot outside of medium ranges is problematic. So, no, I wouldn't deal Tatum for him because it is, at best, a lateral move. And I say this as a huge fan of the Greek Freak. I wanted him in draft night in '13. Had Boston not been focused on building the Rondo/Love Celtics they'd probably have a title or two in hand. Because surrounded by Brown and Tatum you don't need to worry about Giannis's shooting.
So really what we mean when we say clearly a top 10 player is clearly a top 10 young wing?
I have Michael Kay on the line and he wants to speak to you about the fallacy of the predetermined outcome.
In the aggregate players' biggest growth happens their first five years in the game. Yes, Giannis is young. But he's been around for eight years now. Marginal improvements are certainly possible/probable, but at this point expecting him to be an above average three point shooter at volume is probably wishcasting. He's a bad shooter at low volume, which is a real limitation.
Until the NBA makes substantive changes being able to shoot threes well at volume is the most most valuable offensive skill. Now Giannis ameliorates that with his ability to draw fouls, but his free throw shooting dampens the value of his ability to draw fouls (and don't get me wrong, even as a below average free throw shooter those drawn fouls are valuable).
Tatum in year four was finally strong enough to finish through contact, and his FTA increased markedly once he recovered from covid. A wing that can shoot .400 from behind the arc at volume as the primary scorer that can also effectively attack closeouts and draw fouls, while playing plus defense with defensive flexibility is the unicorn everyone is looking for in the modern game.
Until the NBA makes substantive changes being able to shoot threes well at volume is the most most valuable offensive skill. Now Giannis ameliorates that with his ability to draw fouls, but his free throw shooting dampens the value of his ability to draw fouls (and don't get me wrong, even as a below average free throw shooter those drawn fouls are valuable).
Tatum in year four was finally strong enough to finish through contact, and his FTA increased markedly once he recovered from covid. A wing that can shoot .400 from behind the arc at volume as the primary scorer that can also effectively attack closeouts and draw fouls, while playing plus defense with defensive flexibility is the unicorn everyone is looking for in the modern game.
Giannis is a defensive player of the year caliber defender, something you seem to be pushing aside. He has won two MVP's and now has taken his team to the NBA finals. He can not improve one bit over the next 5 years, and there is way better than not chance that he is a superior player to Tatum in every single one of those years
I have no idea what you are talking about in terms of my predictions. Not sure I ever said what I thought Tatum would become. Maybe I did though?
Having not watched a single Lakers game in 2021 with the exception of the game when Smart injured his calf, I will take exception to characterizing Lebron as a not great defender purely on the basis that the Lakers were far and away the best defensive team in the NBA this past season. How bad could he be?
In that list of five, LeBron wasn't the one I was talking about. But Dame, Luka, Steph, and Harden? Not good defensive players. Much less the elite standard that only counts when evaluators want it to.
As for LeBron, like I said, when he's healthy and motivated he's the best player on the court. But he's been injured two of the last three seasons and coasts more and more during the regular season. And, as with Kawhi, you absolutely let him coast during the regular season in hopes that he makes it to and through the playoffs healthy. But that didn't really happen this year.
Not sure the point of going back to the bubble, we just had an entire season after that. I guess we did have the COVID X-factor for Tatum, but that’s not specific to his ranking vs. Embiid.
Maybe I’m higher on Embiid than some here, but over the next couple of years he’s not necessarily the one I would expect Tatum to knock out of that group early on.
The guy just put up a top 3 season and is 27 years old. Of course who knows with the injuries, but aside from that I don’t think Embiid is on the fringe of the top 10. Looks more top 5 to me next year.
I don't usually do asterisks, but the injury luck that Giannis had to take his team to the Finals is very outlier. Honestly, the Celtics looked a lot better against the 3-stars Nets than Milwaukee looked against the 2-stars Nets, and then Kyrie went down.
This was the weakest Finals run I can remember in my lifetime. It's nice for Milwaukee, and Giannis is a really good player, but it doesn't really change much in my evaluation.
Zion ahead of Tatum and Jokic? I don't think I agree. I am not sure Zion makes the top 5 for me.
FWIW, unless a guy is still on his rookie deal, your window of real control is 2-3 years. So that would be the horizon I would be looking at in this exercise and would be inclined to include guys like Durant, AD and Giannis who already at their peak.
And even though Brown is my favorite Celtic, I think that's high. I can't see him as the best player on a contender (unless we are talking about a Chauncey-era Piston's team)
I’m not even a Giannis guy and would start a team with him over at least half of that list.
The C's should offer Milwaukee Jaylen Brown for Giannis and a pick right after the season.
I would be quite interested in your specific thoughts about Tatum. Where do you rank him? How do you rate his offense and his defense? How do you project him to improve or regress or over the next handful of years. Because as far as I can tell from reading several pages of this thread, your contributions to the discussion seem mostly to be in the form of one- or two-sentence posts in which you dismiss others as homers, tell them they’re nuts, or throw your hands up in despair over the ridiculousness of the group-think on this board. Several posters have made detailed and specific points about why they believe or don’t believe that Tatum is a top-ten player. What are your thoughts about Tatum?I say this as not a huge fan of Giannis. You are nuts.
The staff of the Ringer did a top 25 prior to the playoffs. They had Tatum 17.
Top 10 were:
Luka
AD
Harden
Giannis
Kahwi
Durant
Curry
Embid
Lebron
Jokic
I didn’t realize Giannis was still that young. He’d probably be four.
I have Zion that high because of marketing as well as his ability. I think under the right coach he could be a monster as a scorer and a set up man.
I also forgot Melo Ball.
Marketing? This is the first time I've ever seen someone on this board take things from the owner's perspective and not the GM. Unless you mean other players are going to want to play with Zion.
I think he will be a draw for some of the younger players. I think Tatum will also be a draw for talent. But yes, if I were starting a team, having a superstar player that fans want to see would be a consideration.
By putting up 50 and 60 point games, Tatum is becoming a must see guy, even though he doesn’t have the flashiness and raw power of a Zion. Luka, Trae, Melo Ball, and Ja also have it.
Which demonstrates that their NBA writers shouldn’t be considered a reputable source.
Or that reasonable minds can differ. Where did the cap/tax level come in at this year? Would Myles Turner fetch the MLE this offseason?
Unless the Pope is posting in here, all of us are fallible and its worth remembering. For the record I though the Vonleh was a better prospect than Smart.
There isn’t a GM working in the NBA that would pick 16 players before Jayson Tatum. By default that list is going to include guys like Kyrie, whose inclusion would just be comical.
These lists are current value, not who you would take to start a team right now, correct?
The Embiid hate around here is so strange. The guy is currently one of the top 5 players in the NBA and obviously better than Tatum at this moment.
He was just 2nd in the MVP voting, and might have won if he didn't miss any games due to injury.
Last edited:
He finished 2nd in the MVP voting this year, and will be a perennial MVP (and DPOY) candidate for the rest of his prime. He likely would have won the MVP this year if he'd stayed healthy, which is of course the rub with him. After missing over 200 games his first 3 seasons (we'll just call it semi-intentional, red shirting multiple seasons), he's missed an average of 20 games per season over his last 4 years. When he's on the court he's better than Tatum, though he's a less flexible star to build around (the nature of having a star big man instead of a star wing). He's a far better rebounder and defender, and a far more efficient volume scorer. I prefer Tatum over Embiid because of the injury concerns with the latter, but when they are both on the court it isn't particularly close right now. Tatum has more room to grow and maybe he can hit his ultimate upside (IMO this would be a slightly shorter, quicker Durant) and be a better player, but he's not there yet.
Agree with your entire post.
I can completely understand preferring Tatum for the next 10 years.
I cannot understand thinking he is currently better than Joel Embiid.
Embiid is ludonkrously good. If healthy, I think he's the best young player in the league, pretty clearly. The problem is that the "if healthy" part has cost him great chances at titles in 2 of the past 3 years, and has to be priced in.
The argument against Embiid is really the argument about cornerstone centers in the playoffs.
Embiid can protect the rim and make you pay at the other end if you try to "Gobert" him (playing 5 out) in a way Gobert cannot. But Embiid still only plays drop coverage. Every playoff team with a chance to win a title is going to have multiple guys who can run a high PnR into a makeable 3 point shot off the dribble. Against drop coverage, that shot is always there. Yes, other teams also have drop coverage centers, but they aren't being paid the max (or supermax, or supehrmahx -- I tried to do that in French).
Philly still hasn't made it out of the second round of the playoffs in the lesser conference. MVP Jokic (similar drop coverage issues, but without the rim protection) couldn't make it out of the second round (and got destroyed by PnR). I've turned Gobert into a verb which tells you all you need to know about the Jazz in the playoffs.
Maybe if Philly finally gets rid of Simmons, gets their own version of a guy that can run a high PnR, and surrounds Embiid with the right kinds of players we'll see that Embiid isn't just an 82 (well, more like 65) game player but a 16 game player as well. I have some doubts.
Edit: There are also some offensive complications caused by having your best offensive player be a post scorer that I didn't get into.
Embiid can protect the rim and make you pay at the other end if you try to "Gobert" him (playing 5 out) in a way Gobert cannot. But Embiid still only plays drop coverage. Every playoff team with a chance to win a title is going to have multiple guys who can run a high PnR into a makeable 3 point shot off the dribble. Against drop coverage, that shot is always there. Yes, other teams also have drop coverage centers, but they aren't being paid the max (or supermax, or supehrmahx -- I tried to do that in French).
Philly still hasn't made it out of the second round of the playoffs in the lesser conference. MVP Jokic (similar drop coverage issues, but without the rim protection) couldn't make it out of the second round (and got destroyed by PnR). I've turned Gobert into a verb which tells you all you need to know about the Jazz in the playoffs.
Maybe if Philly finally gets rid of Simmons, gets their own version of a guy that can run a high PnR, and surrounds Embiid with the right kinds of players we'll see that Embiid isn't just an 82 (well, more like 65) game player but a 16 game player as well. I have some doubts.
Edit: There are also some offensive complications caused by having your best offensive player be a post scorer that I didn't get into.
Last edited:
Very persuasive post. How do these factors affect your rankings or tier-placement of players like Embiid and Jokic, or as you put it, cornerstone centers in the NBA?
It depends on what you value, which is what makes these tier lists hard. If you're championship or bust, these cornerstone centers might not be the best way to get there.
If you're an owner looking to sell tickets in a market with, frankly, not great prospects of winning championships because of your inability to attract free agent talent... you might have a different tier list.
Yes I think you’re hitting a similar point to the one @Rustjive was making in his excellent post upthread, when he said: “This conversation won't ever get anywhere because people are just judging it on completely different things. Even if you asked these 'reputable sources' what their criteria is they wouldn't be consistent.”
The most useful framing I have seen in this discussion is whether we believe that, right now, Tatum is good enough to be the best player on a championship team. I believe that he is, and that the Celtics understand the urgency in building a better roster around him.
Your post helps move the discussion forward by asking the same question of players like Embiid and Jokic. If the question is not of individual rankings but of ability to lead a team to a championship, do they give you a better chance than Tatum? I think that’s a very interesting question.
I think I'd put this a bit differently. I'd say the chances that Tatum will be that guy are greater than the chances the Celtics will be able to acquire that guy (and still have good enough supporting talent) through other means. So my thinking is whether or not Tatum is the guy, the Celtics should proceed under the assumption he is (even if I believe the odds of that being true are quite a bit lower than most here.)
Edit: As to the other point, I've frequently found myself wondering whether Milwaukee would have a better chance of winning in these Finals against Phoenix with Tatum than they do with Giannis, even if Giannis is clearly the better player (well, clearly better 82 game player). I go back and forth. I think they actually might have a better chance with Tatum, and I'm not exactly high (relative to others) on Tatum.
Last edited:
good posts. You don't have to be all that high on Tatum to realize:
young, strong wings that can efficiently hit 3s, draw fouls and guard 1-5 are NBA unicorns.
We have two of them ascending to the elite level