Aron Baynes to sign with Celtics

[jmost]

www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19947380/boston-celtics-plan-sign-center-aron-baynes

Does it make me a bad person if I can't recall hearing his name before? Apparently he's a decent defender and rebounder.

[eja117]

I can't pretend to know enough about this guy but I'm a tad underwhelmed

[eja117]

I have to assume those other players didn't want to play for what we were offering

[freshnthehouse]

He looks like an extra from a Mad Max movie. That's good enough for me.

[Roadrunner]

Baynes is a bruiser. In fact, Pop was quoted as Baynes injuring former SAN teammates.

[DERRENMATTS]

I want to hear what Ainge has to say about this move. Was the intent to bring him in as a starter? or as a backup?

As a backup, I think he'll be more valuable and effective. But due to our lack of experienced big men, is he by default the current starter?

Doesn't cost much, and he can leave next summer if he doesn't pan out.

I still wouldn't rule out Danny making a trade for a starting caliber big man.

[DERRENMATTS]

I also think a reasoning for this signing has to do with the development of Zizic and Yabusele. Going up against this mountain of a man in practice will teach the young guys how to play physical.

[DERRENMATTS]

Why was Baynes limited to onoy 15 minutes? It can't all be because of Andre Drummond. If Detroit statistically better defensively when he was on the court, they should have been giving him more minutes.

[jrmzt]

Jul 10, 2017 4:12:19 GMT -5 DERRENMATTS said:

Why was Baynes limited to onoy 15 minutes? It can't all be because of Andre Drummond. If Detroit statistically better defensively when he was on the court, they should have been giving him more minutes.

Tough to say how he would have been when playing more than short bursts..and to be fair he was mostly going against bench players. So i'd take the statement with a grain of salt. That said...Drummond is a terrible defender.

[DERRENMATTS]

Jul 10, 2017 12:10:31 GMT -5 jrmzt said:

Jul 10, 2017 4:12:19 GMT -5 DERRENMATTS said:

Why was Baynes limited to onoy 15 minutes? It can't all be because of Andre Drummond. If Detroit statistically better defensively when he was on the court, they should have been giving him more minutes.

Tough to say how he would have been when playing more than short bursts..and to be fair he was mostly going against bench players. So i'd take the statement with a grain of salt. That said...Drummond is a terrible defender.

Stan Van Gundy wanted Baynes to stay with the Pistons. He says it's obvious they were a better defensive team when he's playing (then why didn't he play him more?).

One reason Baynes came here, even if it was for less money than he could have gotten elsewhere, was because of playing time. He wants more playing time, which will hopefully raise his stock and value so that next summer he can be rewarded with a bigger contract.

[freshnthehouse]

Jul 10, 2017 4:12:19 GMT -5 DERRENMATTS said:

Why was Baynes limited to onoy 15 minutes? It can't all be because of Andre Drummond. If Detroit statistically better defensively when he was on the court, they should have been giving him more minutes.

I think it's mostly because he is only an average rebounder and has Mark Blount-esque hands.

That said I dig this signing. Dude is a beast on defense and is masterful at setting picks. It also helps he is good at the line. He is also reportedly a good locker room. Sounds like an Australian Perkins. Great backup center.

[jhvos7979]

Big body that can rebound in 10-15 minutes a clip? No problem with this signing.

[FLCeltsFan]

Jul 10, 2017 14:03:31 GMT -5 freshnthehouse said:

 

That said I dig this signing. Dude is a beast on defense and is masterful at setting picks. It also helps he is good at the line. He is also reportedly a good locker room. Sounds like an Australian Perkins. Great backup center.

Funny I thought of an Australian Perk also    And he fills the man bun void left by Kelly. 

[FLCeltsFan]

 I found this from a Pistons blogger who has been covering Baynes the past couple of years. 

The Good:
Aron Baynes is just a really nice all around player. He is like a Jack of all trades except he probably is not good enough to be a Jack, he is probably more like a 9 of all trades. Offensively he is a good finisher of plays, but he won't create any.

He has fairly good touch inside to finish a run in traffic, big and strong enough to throw down, and is able to hit a jumper with reliability out to just past the free throw line. It is possible that the Celtics will ask him to start shooting 3s (Stevens seems to be fond of that sort of thing), and in theory he could be ok at them, but as of now he has attempted a grand total of 7 3s in his career and hit 1 of them. Once again, he is not creating any of these looks, but if other people can create space for him to get a look, he is fairly reliable at finishing those looks, and especially with Hayward arriving, the Celtics have some real creation, which combined with Stevens' beautiful passing machine should yield plenty of good looks for Baynes. Baynes will also fit right into that machine, he spent enough time with the Spurs that he knows how to pass a bit, he won't wow you, but he makes the right passes.

Defensively is a similar story to the offense. Baynes simply does not have the tools to be anything that would resemble a force defensively, but he plays hard, communicates, gets to the right spots, is freaking huge, and actually pretty nimble for his size. Essentially, he will get to the right spots, and is a decent protector of the paint due to his huge girth alone, he can be nice cog in a good defensive unit, but he certainly isn't going to be shoring up an otherwise bad defensive unit.

Baynes best attribute however, is probably his screen setting, because holy crap this dude can lay the wood. He is not a sneaky effective screen setter in the way that Al Horford is, but rather he is huge, strong, and has a mean streak. His screens should be somewhat of a boon for Thomas in order to free him, and the potential of him and Horford going around setting screens for guys is probably the stuff of Brad Stevens' dreams.

The one thing I want to highlight as a good for Baynes is his speed/quickness. He obviously isn't going to be locking down point guards on defense or anything like that, but dude is not some slow-footed bimbo, when combined with his size it makes for the central part of why he is useful on defense and offense. He is freaking huge, and can actually move as well as most any other center, certainly most backups/lower minutes guys.
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The Bad:
Aron Baynes occasionally has slices of fresh Ham for hands. Many in the Pistons sub (lovingly of course) referred to him as "Stone hands." This comes back to bite him in a couple of different areas. The first is as a roller to the hoop, his tendency to have the ball slip out of his hands in traffic hinders him from being a really good roll guy, because his screen setting and finishing are both very nice, but he just has trouble catching the ball sometimes and it can be really frustrating. This also hurts him on his rebounding, as it is not rare for him to be in perfect position and have a board in his hands, only for it to slip/bounce away from him.

This ties into a big potential problem with the Baynes/Celtics match. Aron Baynes is not all that good of a rebounder. He isn't terrible, but not much good either. He is generally pretty good at using his size to successfully box out opponents, but the problem is that he can't jump over a phone book, which combined with his stone hands makes blown rebounds, on both ends, not uncommon.

The last bad thing is that Aron Baynes' entire game is based around the fact that he plays at borderline maniac levels of intensity and effort, one of the drawbacks of that is that he fouls at a pretty remarkable rate, that is mostly fine when coming off the bench and playing 15 minutes per game (as he did his last 3 seasons) but the prevailing theory seems to be that Baynes is likely to see more minutes with the Celtics this year.

If that ends up being the case, even if it is a modest increase to say, 20 minutes per game, it will be interesting to see if he can adjust/keep up his effectiveness with a bit of an added workload. When he made spot starts/high minutes for the Pistons he generally did very well, but that is different from night in, night out. If he wants to play more minutes he will probably have to foul a bit less, and possibly not play quite so insane to avoid gassing himself out. Or maybe he just has endless reserves of energy and will still foul like a maniac, who knows?
'

[Roadrunner]

I watched some highlights of Baynes today. Average to below average talent, however he is very effective when team's double team another player.