Remember when we were talking about Roy Hibbert possibly being an All-Star this season?
That was pretty hilarious.
Here are the current voting results as of today.
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From the monthly archives:
December 2010
Indiana Pacers @ Washington Wizards
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
7:00 pm EST
Verizon Center
Washington, DC
OK, Roy. It’s time to get it together. Really, it’s past time to get it together. You have played atrociously for the better part of a month now, and your offensive performance since December 11 has been an utter joke. No guy with your size, footwork and touch around the hoop should be capable of shooting 34-for-107 (32%) over an eight-game stretch. Thirty-two percent. Seriously? Even John Salmons is laughing at you. (h/t Mike Wells)
Danny Granger, you haven’t been much better. Only twice have you shot above 40% in a game during December. Twice. Two times. Overall, you’re shooting 36% for the month and a miserable 27.8% from three. As with Roy’s shooting woes, such a number seems impossible for you to shoot for this long. Moreover, it is almost amazing in a you-ate-a-whole-wheel-of-cheese kind of way that you continue to launch so many treys even while converting at a Marquis Daniels-level success rate. But sure enough, only twice have you chucked up fewer than 5 three-pointers in your last 13 games (and make that 20 games dating back to November, during which you were admittedly shooting well). I will give you credit for attacking the paint a little more; you have gotten to the line an average of 8.5 times per night over your last four games. But you are also 26-for-83 (31.3%) from the floor over that same stretch, so let’s not break out the leftover spiked eggnog and start testing the New Year’s noisemakers in celebration just yet.
How about you, Darren Collison? What is it you would say you do out there? It’s December 28 and you haven’t even recorded 8 assists in a single game. Not one. Zero times. And you haven’t scored more than 18 points in a game since November 9. You had 12 games of 20 or more last year after the All-Star break alone. Are you OK? Would you like to talk about it?
We can keep piling on the coach. He deserves a lot of criticism. Bob Kravitz just handed out a bunch and it’s hard to come up with many counterpoints. God knows a lot of the things the coach of this team does seem nonsensical.
But at the end of the day, if you three guys don’t play better on offense — scoring points, shooting at at least league-average rates, set up your teammates for buckets, create easy points at the line — this team just is not going to win many games. There isn’t any coach that can do anything about how your playing other than, “Hey you … yeah, you three guys … the best three players on my team … stop playing unfathomably terrible basketball.”
Tonight — and again on Friday — you play the Wizards, the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. If you can get things back on track in these two games, fans will be able to regain some of that early-season hope that had you looking like a team that might be a tough out in the first round of the playoffs.
If not?
Well, I’m not 100% sure you guys will even make the playoffs anymore.
Pacers vs. Wizards By the Numbers
| Wizards | vs | Pacers |
|---|---|---|
| 7-22 (15th) | Record (Conf Rank) | 13-16 (7th) |
| 7-7 (Home) | Home / Road Records | 5-8 (Road) |
| Lost 3 | Current Streak | Lost 2 |
| 1-4 | Last 5 Head-to-Head | 4-1 |
| -6.97 (28th) | Point Differential (Rank) | -0.41 (17th) |
| 102.1 (25th) | Offensive Rating (Rank) | 102.4 (24th) |
| 47.1% (26th) | eFG% (Rank) | 48.7% (20th) |
| 109.5 (24th) | Defensive Rating (Rank) | 102.9 (8th) |
| 51.2 (25th) | Opponent's eFG% (Rank) | 47.2% (4th) |
| 93.2 (10th) | Pace (Rank) | 94.6 (7th) |
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I’ve been dealing with traveling through the Northeast Snowpocalypse so I actually still haven’t even seen last night’s game yet. I may share some thoughts after I watch it later but since they have the Wizards tonight, it’s probably just on to the next one. Just reading some recaps and looking at the box scores, it doesn’t look like anything unusual happened: Indy played OK for a while then the offense fell apart as Roy Hibbert had another turd of a game and the much better team took control of the game. It’s rinse and repeat at this point.
The only other thing of interest specific to this game is that, going into it, the Pacers had a point differential of 0.00 for the season. This means they had so far scored just as many points as they had given up. Obviously, with a record below .500 we already knew that the early season success was starting to look like a mirage. But a lot of people will tell you that point differential, at least before New Year’s, can be a better barometer of future play than even the W-L record. The rationale is that win/loss can come down to a few anomalous plays (e.g., the Bogut tip, the Dunleavy tip) but point differential is a larger sample size of how the team has performed on every possession of the season.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that the Pacers now have a negative point differential (an average of -0.41 points per game) for the first time since early November. So what we have been watching unfold over the past month has become official: the Pacers are not a good team. They are still not a notably bad team — at least not yet, which remains a nice change from last season — but there is no way anyone can look at their record or their point differential any longer and expect them to beat good teams.
Those wins in Miami and Los Angeles sure do feel far away.
Here was the other worthwhile thing to take away from the Celtics game: Paul Pierce diving into the stands and drinking some water. By the time the Playoffs roll around, I’m sure it will be the only thing either he — or I — remembers from this one.
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The Indiana Pacers today face off against the Eastern Conference-leading Boston Celtics. Throughout the media, much praise has been heaped upon the Celtic defense, with buzzwords such as “teamwork” and “efficiency” commonly, yet vaguely, being used to describe this excellent basketball team. With the help of advanced statistics, however, we can attempt to shed some light on a few of the many reasons for Boston’s success, and conversely, the related implications for the Pacers today.
The Celtics’ defense has constantly been praised for the last four years as being one of the most stifling in the league. At first glance, however, it appears that this truly is not the case. After all, they are nearly last in the NBA in blocks per game, and even when factoring in other stats such as charges and steals (measured through defensive play rate, an advanced formula which also takes into account related markers [ie possessions, free throws etc]), the picture is still seemingly mediocre.
In spite of this, Boston’s defense is still lauded as one of the best, and a deeper analysis shows why such a categorization is in fact astute. Consider, for instance, an analysis of the Celtics’s defense from a shooting perspective: Boston forces the opposition into jump shots on 71% of non-turnover possessions, while allowing close-range shots just 24% of the time, one of the better values in the league. Of course, this is meaningless if the shots are not well-defended, and so it is also important to note that not only do they encourage jumpshots, but also that they yield a mere 42.6% effective field goal percentage on jump shots. This indicates that the Celtics are playing high-level defense even when they are unable to force a turnover (as mentioned before, these percentages apply only to possessions resulting in a field goal attempt), and so when one sums/takes into account other metrics such as steals and charges, the defensive prowess of the Celtics becomes very visible indeed.
Of course, any discussion of Boston’s defense would be incomplete without mentioning their ability to defend the paint, and for good reason: the Celtics allow just a 52.6% effective field goal percentage on close-range shots, one of the best marks in the league. Part of this is likely due to their ability to effectively harass the opposing team’s pivot man. Specifically, opposing centers are being held to an effective field goal percentage of just 46.7%, a commendable number.
All of these figures are of particular importance to the Pacers. Although they 72% of their shots are jumpers, Indiana’s effective field goal percentage on jump shots against all opponents is 44.5%, and so we can see here from a statistical standpoint the difficult time the Pacers are likely going to have tonight in terms of scoring the basketball. It is worth noting, however, that even if the Celtics’ are able to bother Pacer pivot man Roy Hibbert in a fashion akin to the manner that they’ve harassed opposing centers all season, Hibbert may in fact not experience such an extraordinarily bad shooting performance, as he is currently shooting 45.9 percent against all teams, which isn’t too far off from the 46.7 percent that the Celtics hold opposing centers to.
Also of concern to the Pacers tonight in particular is the fact that although star Celtic guard Rajon Rondo is not expected to play, the defense still is quite adept. In the two player rotations that Boston has used the most when Rondo is out of the game, backup guard Nate Robinson has manned the point guard spot, and in fact, when this is the case, the unit’s number of points allowed per possession is actually lower than allowed by the two lineups most commonly used when Rondo plays.
In spite of Celtic’s proficiency on defense, however, let us end on an optimistic note: Although Boston has a winning record of all types of teams, they have won by the least number of average points to teams that rank in the top third in terms of effective field goal percentage allowed. This bodes well for the Pacers, as they are one of the top teams in the League in terms of forcing opponents into shooting a low percentage.
Ultimately, this (and any) basketball match-up can be dissected to infinity. It is prudent here, thus, to bring an end to all this statistical speculation, and simply let the cards fall where they may, simply hoping for the best:
Pacers vs Celtics. Conseco Fieldhouse. 7:00 pm
Jay Ganatra is a contributor to 8 Points, 9 Seconds who is currently studying accounting at the University of Florida. You can reach Jay at jay.ganatra@ufl.edu.
Pacers vs Celtics By the Numbers
| Celtics | vs | Pacers |
|---|---|---|
| 23-5 (1st) | Record (Conf Rank) | 13-15 (7th) |
| 10-4 (Road) | Home / Road Records | 8-7 (Home) |
| Won 1 | Current Streak | Lost 1 |
| 4-1 | Last 5 Head-to-Head | 1-4 |
| +8.75 (2nd) | Point Differential (Rank) | 0.00 (16th) |
| 108.5 (11th) | Offensive Rating (Rank) | 102.8 (24th) |
| 53.4% (1st) | eFG% (Rank) | 49.0% (17th) |
| 99.0 (1st) | Defensive Rating (Rank) | 102.8 (8th) |
| 46.8% (2nd) | Opponent's eFG% (Rank) | 47.0% (3rd) |
| 91.0 (22nd) | Pace (Rank) | 94.8 (8th) |
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