http://www.nba.com/news/Lenovo_Breakdown_061121.html I was surprised to see this. Apparently we have the top 5-man and 4-man combos in the league right now in +/-.
It's not meaningless, but it's really only a gauge of the last few games, and while we were successful in those, the rest of the season hasn't been quite as rich. But the +/- in any sport is based solely on scoring. And if you average more points scored than your opponents, you're bound to have a better +/- than most of them too. Let's be frank, this team can fill it up. They haven't run into a team yet that was really able to slow their offense, but their defense has been suspect at time, and excellent at others. I guess the point I'm making is that, this stat is just a little skewed towards an offense that works, and our's has so far.
<div class="quote_poster">Squishface Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">It's not meaningless, but it's really only a gauge of the last few games, and while we were successful in those, the rest of the season hasn't been quite as rich. But the +/- in any sport is based solely on scoring. And if you average more points scored than your opponents, you're bound to have a better +/- than most of them too. Let's be frank, this team can fill it up. They haven't run into a team yet that was really able to slow their offense, but their defense has been suspect at time, and excellent at others. I guess the point I'm making is that, this stat is just a little skewed towards an offense that works, and our's has so far.</div>I don't think you can really say that it's favorable to either side of the ball. Sure, a good offense is going to score more points, but you also have to be able to make stops in order to enlarge your +/- numbers. If a 5 man unit goes out there and scores 35 points in a quarter, that's great. But if they allow 33 because they played crappy defense, then their +/- is only going to be a lowly +2. I don't care how you look at it, you have to play good defense in order to have such a high +/-. Yes, a good offense doesn't have to make as many stops as a bad offense does, but they still have to make enough in order to create such a significant amount of difference in scoring. So the question is, why are we so bad if we have such an efficient starting lineup? Well, maybe it has something to do with Nurse Rivers' inabilty to coach a game of basketball. - According to 82games.com, this 5-man unit has played a total of 91 minutes together this season. - The Celtics have played a total of 480 minutes altogether. Something doesn't add up there. You have a lineup that, statistically, is the best in the league at scoring more points than their opponents, yet they are playing less than 1/4 of the total game time(or under one quarter a game, on average) together. And considering that the lineup in question is also the starting lineup, that makes it even worse because the starters generally play the majority of the first quarter together as a unit. So that means that Rivers is basically not sending his best lineup out there... at all... late in games... when it matters most. Stuff like this is why I think a good coach could make this team win games. A good coach would analyze a stat like this and adjust his rotation in an attempt to capitolize on it. Doc can't be bothered to even make a rotation.
