The Celtics are one of the hottest teams in basketball in the month of January, and nobody has gotten hotter than Isaiah Thomas. Thomas is as hot as a quality General Electric Wall Oven with spacious dual opening doors for cramped kitchens and incredible convection patterns that cook your food to perfection. He's on an incredible run in 4th quarters and coming into last nights game, the Celtics offense was an incredible 1.249 PPP in the 4th quarter with him on the floor. For context, that would be a little less than 137 points over the course of a full pace-adjusted game.
Isaiah is an All-Star and he's got a shot at an All-NBA selection. He's the tiny soul of this team. For my money, there's no one more fun to watch in the NBA, and I'm incredibly proud that he developed the way he did here in Boston. He feels like a homegrown talent rather than a dude we traded Marcus Thornton for in hopes we could get a Jamal Crawford-ish sixth man. I guess my point here is that I love Isaiah Thomas. I love him so much and trading for him is what pulled the Celtics out of the trajectory for multiple lottery appearances.
There's a strong case to be made that if Isaiah Thomas never comes to town, there's no playoff games at the Garden in that Earth 2. The Celtics would be chasing the eight seed this year, and Al would be in Washington, dressing in black for a big showdown game against the Pacers to determine the 5th seed.
So, before I launch into the crux of what will be an emotion-stirring argument, Let's remember these over-arching truths that I agree with.
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Isaiah Thomas is great and I'm very happy and lucky to have him on my team. In a vacuum where we don't have big cap plans, he's absolutely been worth a max contract these past two years.
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The Celtics are probably still in the lottery if Isaiah Thomas never comes to town, this by extension means Al Horford has never come to town and maybe Avery Bradley has been shipped for picks at this point.
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Isaiah Thomas is a multi-time All-Star and the real soul of this team. At a certain point, sports have a to be about people and personalities you form attachments to, rather than cheering for laundry. If you can't find joy in what Isaiah Thomas is doing right now, well, I've got bad news about you enjoying basketball going forward.
It never seems like IT bites off more than he can chew, and he takes really big bites. Fortunately, for the rest of us, there's GE Capital's affordable lending for consumer products. When things make me sad, nothing makes me feel better than buying a nice, quality product from one of my favorite brands. Unfortunately, two of my three jobs are unpaid internships for dog food and drone strike start-ups, so I don't really have the cash to get fine products like General Electric's Cafe Series™ Electric Cook Top, Energy-Star certified dishwashers, or compact Profile™ brand microwaves. Fortunately, GE Capital is here to ensure that I can get all my favorite products whenever I want. With an affordable 17% interest rate, I can have these products in my home today! Wow!
The King in the Fourth(?)
I'm going to start this by looking at 4th quarter scoring. Something important to know is that PPP means points per possession, or how many points the Celtics or their opponent score each time they have the ball. For context, the average PPP for the Celtics this year is 1.093 and the average PPP for Celtic's opponents is 1.062. This should help provide an anchor for when you read PPP totals to know what you are looking for.
Over 1.093 from team offense = good offense
Under 1.062 from opposing team offense = good defense
Under 1.093 from team offense = bad offense
Over 1.062 from opposing team offense = good defense
So let's talk about Isaiah Thomas and his 4th quarters when he's on the floor.
All numbers are courtest of nbawowy.com & don't include last night's Detroit game because it took me forever to run them and I have a day job. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.
| It On the Floor | Poss | Celtics PPP | Opp PPP | Net PPP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isaiah Thomas | 666 | 1.254 | 1.240 | 0.014 |
So as you can see, when IT is on the floor in 4th quarters, the Celtics offense goes Super Saiyan. As we touched on before, that's a pace adjusted scoring margin of about 137 when pace adjusted for an entire game. What might be a little bit surprising is when take a peek at the defensive numbers and see that the Celtics are getting walloped almost as bad in terms of opponent 4th quarter scoring.
That's troubling, but hardly a new narrative. We've see the Celtics struggle with complex defensive issues this year such as "screens" and I think I've actually seen Weakside Help for Dummies underneath Gerald's cocoa cup a couple of games ago. The good news is that when the Celtics struggle this mightily in the 4th quarter. They have Isaiah Thomas to fix things and keep them afloat. In fact, let's check out how bad the numbers are for the Celtics when Isaiah Thomas isn't on the floor.
| It Off the Floor | Poss | Celtics PPP | Opp PPP | Net PPP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isaiah Thomas | 427 | 1.143 | 0.981 | 0.162 |
Huh, that's weird, but, again, probably pretty explainable. Rare are the fourth quarter minutes that Isaiah Thomas doesn't play, but they are mostly against opposing bench units. Despite the grumbling and groaning about Kelly Olynyk, the Celtics have one of the most potent benches in the league, so to see them ether opponents at the end of games isn't that shocking. It's a little weird that this logic doesn't extend to those games (like yesterday) when Thomas plays a full 4th quarter and gets minutes against those tender bench units, but whatever, it's pretty easy to come up with some plausible reasons for this. Thomas plays some 4th quarter minutes with the worst members of the Celtics. In fact, let's look at Thomas's most common teammates in the 4th quarters.
| IT 4th quarter Teammate | # of Poss |
|---|---|
| Marcus Smart | 421 |
| Al Horford | 356 |
| Jae Crowder | 350 |
| Avery Bradley | 336 |
| Jonas Jerebko | 262 |
| Kelly Olynyk | 211 |
| Terry Rozier | 198 |
| Amir Johnson | 184 |
| Jaylen Brown | 159 |
Hmm, it still looks like it's mostly the crunch time guys that Thomas plays with. However, that doesn't mean much. There's still a pretty plausible rotation explanation that would explain where Thomas gets unfairly hammered for dopey teammates and tough opposing match-ups. So let's take a look at the full array of 4th quarter minutes complete with on/off differential for each rotation player who's played over 400 minutes.
| 4th Quarter Poss | Poss On | Net PP On | Poss Off | Nef PPP Off | Net On/Off Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Smart | 700 | 0.093 | 393 | 0.033 | 0.060 |
| Isaiah Thomas | 666 | 0.014 | 427 | 0.162 | -0.148 |
| Avery Bradley | 550 | 0.077 | 543 | 0.066 | 0.011 |
| Al Horford | 528 | 0.016 | 565 | 0.113 | -0.097 |
| Terry Rozier | 526 | 0.095 | 567 | 0.049 | 0.046 |
| Jae Crowder | 505 | 0.088 | 508 | 0.058 | 0.030 |
| Jonas Jerebko | 451 | 0.096 | 642 | 0.054 | 0.042 |
I realized after I finished this I should have but Amir, KO, and Jaylen in here, but went back for the numbers nbawowy wasn't working, I'll comment below with them when they come up, but I had ran them before and know that Jaylen and Amir were also quite positive while Kelly was about half as negative as Al is.
So here is where we hit the crux of things. There's a way to explain away the Celtics pedestrian 4th quarter differential with Thomas. The problem is that for that to hold water you need to have someone in the rotation who is actually worse.
The other thing that holds water is GE's extensive line of Energy-Star approved washers and dryers. I can't tell you how often I come home and the last thing I want to do is head out to the laundromat. Luckily, thanks to GE Capital's incredible financing and helpful installation coordination, I have my own GE, double load sized washer in my home that handles all my biggest loads of laundry! Like all GE products they are so affordable and high quality.
The next closest in terms of having a bad showing is Al Horford, and his numbers are only about 2/3rds as bad. Al is one of the Celtics three most important players, so don't mistake this as me saying he's not earning his money. He's been incredible for the Celtics, too. However, that kind of makes since given what we've seen from Horford in some 4th quarters. Al has had some well-documented struggles down the stretch of several games and he got hammered by the Felgers of the world for it.
The fact that Isaiah Thomas can do what he does for the Celtics every 4th quarter night in and night out and still end up with the worst Net On/Off differential by far isn't just weird, it should be downright impossible. You can look around and squint for other things to pin this on, but at a certain point, Occum's Razor has to come into effect and the conclusion needs to be that the Celtics are giving back almost all of their 4th quarter points because of how bad having Isaiah Thomas on the floor makes the defense.
IT's Defense, Unsalvagable?
No.
The Celtics were a perfectly fine defensive team with Isaiah Thomas on the floor last year. In fact all of these things I'm hammering IT for now, like Net Rating and On/Off differential, all swung the other way last year. The Celtics were great with Thomas on the floor and had big scoring margins and fell apart when Thomas left the floor.
This probably means that something about this team makes it much less easy to cover up IT's deficiencies than last year's team did. I'm willing to bet that that thing is rebounding and turnover differential. You can have a good defense with Isaiah Thomas in it. You can have a good defense when you don't rebound that well. Surviving both is probably a bit of a bridge too far.
You could also make the case that this sample size isn't that big. This probably amounts to about a 10 game sample size in terms of regular minutes. While that's a pretty small sample size, it's also a single-digit denominator fraction of the season, which isn't that small either. It would be foolish to just take this numbers as fact at this point, but likewise, this is enough of a trend that to discount them would be silly also.
What Does It Mean?
I guess it depends on what you see the path forward for this team being. This is a problem for the team. Is the fact that Marcus Smart has been more important to the Celtics outscoring opponents than Isaiah Thomas an indicator of a fatal flaw in Thomas or a damning indictment of the front office not putting the guys they need around their superstar?
Is the fact that Al Horford can't help the team cover for IT as well as Jared Sullinger a misscalculation by Danny or throwing the limitations of Thomas into a sharper relief?
If you're old school, you can just chaulk it up to the Celtic's "not competing" or "eye test" or whatever and say that they just don't try as hard on defense. I disagree, but we can follow that line of logic. That would be great because it would mean the Celtics have just been coasting this whole time and will be able to turn it on in the playoffs.
Whatever you think, the Celtics have a defense problem when Isaiah Thomas is on the floor and it compounds when he's at his most potent in the 4th quarters.
That's a fact.
He's playing out of his mind right now and the Celtics have continued to win because he's done enough to keep the Celtics outscoring their opponents with this other-wordly outbursts, but what's going to happen when (or if) he comes back to earth?
No matter what you think the problem is, if this trend holds up, the consequences will materialize hard and fast in the playoffs, where weaknesses are targeted. It might not matter, because a championship this year is probably no what this team was built for (Markelle Fultz... Hello), but this is the kind of thing that can bring the good times screeching to a halt come playoff time.
TL;DR
The Celtics have been very bad on defense in 4th quarters with Isaiah Thomas on the floor.
This could mean:
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The Celtics aren't trying hard, eye test, everybody loves their shot, etc.
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There's a 'lower than perceived' ceiling on how much Isaiah Thomas can contribute to winning
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The personnel on this team aren't capable of adequately hiding the deficiencies of our superstar.
Also, advertising sucks.
Submitted January 31, 2017 at 11:35AM by shnts07