Post by FLCeltsFan on Oct 10, 2012 13:21:21 GMT -5
Is KG's move good for Celtics?
Garnett's shift to center has benefited Celts' D, but what about the offense?
Updated: October 10, 2012, 1:27 PM ET
By Neil Paine | Basketball-Reference.com
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LeBron JamesJ.Meric/Getty ImagesWith Kevin Garnett as a full-time 5, the Celtics' D is improved, but Garnett's offense takes a hit.
Kevin Garnett and the center position have always had an uneasy relationship.
After all, "The Big Ticket" kicked off a leaguewide trend of tall, lanky forwards listing their heights below 7 feet, mainly out of reluctance to conform to traditional ideas about big men. In his prime, Garnett was perhaps the most versatile player in NBA history, capable of dominating the game offensively (whether facing the basket, shooting midrange jumpers or using a devastating post fadeaway), on the glass and on defense. The magnitude of Garnett's talent couldn't be contained by archaic positional designations.
But despite his long-standing avoidance of all things pertaining to the pivot, Garnett finds himself entering the 2012-13 season as the Boston Celtics' starting center. The question remains, how much will it benefit Garnett and the Celtics?
KG on defense
It's a development that began in February of last season, when the team's regular starter at the 5, Jermaine O'Neal, went down for the year with a wrist injury. (Head coach Doc Rivers insisted the change would have occurred whether O'Neal was injured or not.)
Whatever the motivation for the positional shift, the Celtics were sitting at 15-16 with only the league's 14th-best point differential after a Feb. 20 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in what would be O'Neal's final appearance of the 2011-12 campaign. Two nights later, Garnett was in Boston's starting lineup at the center position, where he stayed -- usually paired alongside power forward Brandon Bass -- for the remainder of the season.
The Celtics then went 24-11 down the stretch of the regular season, boasting the league's top defense by a wide margin and its seventh-best point differential. Garnett was widely hailed as the motivating force behind the change in Boston's fortunes, and it's hard to argue to the contrary, at least defensively.
At that end of the floor, Garnett became far more active, hitting the defensive boards much harder and recording a defensive stop (that is, a forced miss, forced turnover, block, steal or defensive rebound) on 64 percent of the opposing possessions he individually faced, up from 61 percent before the move to center -- despite the league improving dramatically on offense as the lockout-shortened season went on.
Before the position change, Boston was allowing 99.6 points per 100 possessions in a league where the average was 103.8; afterward, the Celtics allowed 98.8 against a league average of 106.8.
KG on offense
Offensively, the results were more mixed. On one hand, Garnett shouldered more of the team's offensive load while manning the 5, upping his usage from 24.2 percent of Boston's field goal attempts while on the floor before Feb. 22 to 27.7 percent afterward. This is largely why Garnett scored two more points per 36 minutes over that span and, according to 82games.com, his player efficiency rating rose sharply from 17.0 as a power forward to 22.5 as a center in 2011-12.
At the same time, Garnett's efficiency dropped relative to the league average, which is often the byproduct of a player ramping up his possession usage. Before the move to center, Garnett was producing 1.4 more points per 100 possessions than the NBA average, a number that fell to 1.1 below average after shifting to the 5. The main culprit was, paradoxically, a drastic reduction in free throw rate, which tends to indicate how close to the hoop a player is getting his shots. (It's a lot harder to draw fouls on jump shots than it is on post-up chances and other shots around the basket.)
Free throws are an incredible source of efficiency for offensive players, because even the league's typical conversion rate of 75 percent provides an average of about 1.8 points per possession, well above the league's overall average of 1.05. Playing the 5, you might expect Garnett (a terrific shooter who makes 86 percent of his free throws) to draw more fouls and shoot more frequently from the charity stripe than he had at the 4, but his free throw rate dropped from 26.6 FTA per 100 FGA as a power forward to 22.7 as a center.
[+] EnlargeBrandon Bass
Brian Babineau/Getty ImagesBrandon Bass must score more, as Garnett focuses on anchoring the D.
This fact is potentially troubling for the Celtics, as Garnett's slipping free throw rate had coincided with a decline in all-around production during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons, a deterioration that had Boston fans wondering about how long their window to contend would remain open going into the NBA's next decade.
Of course, this might also just be an unexpected artifact of the move to center. Playing next to Garnett at the 4, Bass' free throw rate rose from 22.3 to 28.2, mirroring the change Garnett saw in his own free throw rate.
It bears noting, though, that Bass also was less offensively efficient overall during that span, and that the Celtics' offense as a team actually fell off after Garnett assumed the mantle of starting center. Boston ranked 24th in offensive efficiency before Feb. 22, but fell to 28th from that point until the end of the regular season. While the rest of the league improved its offensive output by three points per 100 possessions down the stretch, the Celtics received merely half of that boost. Any perceived change to the team's offensive quality was merely an illusion of pace, as the team played 3.6 possessions faster per 48 minutes with the quicker Garnett as the biggest man on the floor.
But even if the offensive influence of moving Garnett to center is difficult to tease out of the numbers, it's clear his net impact was distinctly positive, something the Celtics are counting on to be the case again in 2012-13 despite Garnett's advanced age. (He'll turn 37 in mid-May, when the Celtics hope they'll still be playing.)
Whatever happens going forward, Garnett is already basically the most successful example in modern history of a player shifting from power forward to center late in his career. Other recent examples include Horace Grant (14.7 PER as a center), Derrick Coleman (14.2), Anthony Mason (11.3) and Clifford Robinson (8.6), all of whom were longtime power forwards who briefly tried their hands at center in their mid-to-late 30s to largely mediocre results.
If Garnett can continue to avoid their collective fate while putting up solid production at his less preferred position, the 2012-13 Celtics have a decent chance of playing like last year's version did down the stretch and retaining their status as contenders in the East.
