Thought I would try my hand at illustrating what I think is an issue for Boston's front office.
Its quick/dirty and uses the interactive tool that
BBall Index created for their LEBRON metric. I understand that there are flaws with the underlying data but regardless of what you use, the rough idea is to use a single player metric to compare the strength of teams.
In short, I took the Lakers, Clippers, Jazz, 76ers, Bucks and Celtics '20-21 LEBRON data to compare the value of their entire rotations (i.e. all players who average double digit minutes per game) as well as the top three players for the metric. Below are the results.
The take away is that while the C's clearly need help in their rotation, which has been objectively poor, they also need more elite talent if they want to contend for a championship. The key issue for contending, however, is how much difference there is between Boston's top players and the rest of these teams.
As stated upthread, my sense is with Brown making his leap, Boston should explore top end trade targets (and the chatter suggests they are doing this) to make up that difference. There may be no such deal available, the TPE may not be usable for certain targets and the Celtics may have other considerations from financial to coaching/chemistry that might preclude them from acquiring a difference maker. However its clear to me that the top end is where the focus should be. A player with a net LEBRON of 3 or higher makes this team very interesting come playoff time when rotations are much shorter and shot creation is a premium - if that player happens to be a big or a ballhandler, you can argue that there are compound benefits (e.g. the acquired player is presumably in a suboptimal situation at present, which depresses their production). A league average rotational player will certainly help the team near-term but isn't likely to change their current playoff trajectory.
The next steps for this team will be fascinating and its not clear why they would choose one path over another - adding rotational bodies or even doing nothing before the deadline could mean a number of things including that they think they have a shot at a Beal or other star player via a series of moves or maybe ownership doesn't want to spend right now. But its pretty clear to me that if they want to play with the adults in the NBA, the team is going to have to make some tough decisions with money and personnel. Likely sooner rather than later.
| Rotation |
Top 3 |
| MIL |
5.47 |
11.59 |
| UTA |
11.86 |
11.22 |
| LAL |
6.4 |
10.69 |
| LAC |
4.31 |
10.56 |
| PHI |
2.01 |
9.14 |
| BOS |
-4.84 |
5.33 |
|
