Celtics have logged 312 Center-less possessions with a +9 Net rating
I think Minotte has unexpectedly proven to be a big piece to this season. His corner 3 is far better than expected, he can crash the boards for nasty putbacks, better than average rebounder, high motor defender with good movement and high athleticism. He doesn’t have to be an elite rim defender and won’t be due to his size but he has great bounce and can get the occasional block just from being athletic.
The fact that were +9 with Minotte usually playing the 5 is kind of crazy, I love his versatility and energy. I do hope Williams develops into a serviceable big though, he has the right build for what we need but does seem to get lost every once in a while. If he develops into something similar to Time Lord he could be our rim protecting big and PnR lob threat, which would open our shooters in the corners more. I’d love to see him get some minutes to develop and maybe see the floor if/when playoffs arrive. He’s raw right now for sure but I definitely see potential.
Something similar to Timelord is a crazy high bar.
Agreed, people are forgetting how elite of the elite timelord was. Peak time lord was a DPOY candidate. You need a freakish athletic build to mimic what he did defensively. I’m thinking more like a kornet role for Amari but hopefully more ball handling/playmaking
I just ordered an almond milk minotte at Starbucks
This has got to be a house of cards in a playoff series. Major props for actually fighting in the regular season though, NBA doesn’t see anywhere near enough of that
Yeah I don’t think this roster as is has a high playoff ceiling but trades and injury recovery can change that…
Yup forsure. Get Tatum back late and a buyout Big and we could be cooking in the east
Denver won the title without a backup centre
With Milwaukee looking like a fire sale is approaching, bring us Myles Turner!
👀 that’s actually quite intriguing
Simons for turner. Its not even crazy.
Bring us Giannis
Im not sure how. And im also not sure we would be preferred. I think he would be perfect. I just cant see it without giving up JB. And I cant see them giving up significant draft capital without tatum being unseen post injury.
The thunder commonly used small ball lineups and the thunder were fine in the playoffs. It really depends however on if we can keep up this defensive intensity on the perimeter, forcing turnovers, and cutting off passing lanes in a playoff setting
Is it smallball when you have a 7 footer playing center?
They didn’t do too many minutes without Hart or Chet in the playoffs: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/OKC/2025/lineups/
Certainly they relied more on ihart and chet in the playoffs. However, their seventh most minutes 5 man lineup is small ball and is +2
I definitely still think we need another playoff level center. But if we do it perfectly, i think there can be a meaningful amount of minutes for small ball
That lineup only played 20 minutes the whole playoffs, and didn’t have SGA or JDub (included Jaylin Williams the 6’9 tweener). Doesn’t really sound like meaningful minutes to me tbh. More of a lineup used in blowouts.
Early on in the season I had high hopes for Walsh’s development and was kind of worried he’d been pushed out of real rotation minutes with the way Minott was playing—instead we’ve got two agents of chaos now. The energy and rebounding from both of those guys has been invaluable. That’s not even mentioning Hugo and how special he’s looked at times. 19 year olds don’t often get assigned the toughest defensive assignment on the floor and thrive doing so. He’s gonna be really fucking good.
I loved the championship core from the last couple of seasons but there’s something really fun to watch in a bunch of young guys just playing balls to the wall and knowing their role.
Pep Guardiola did unprecedented things with a false 9, now Joe is going to do the same with a false 5.
I don’t even think Garza and Tillman actually are more “vertical” than Minott and Walsh - standing reaches are pretty similar.
Joe hammering in the rebounding and effort at the beginning of the season is paying dividends now. Guys know that you have to hustle and do the dirty work if you want to stay on court. Joe has been great at developing these guys
I really want to see what it looks like with Tatum at the 5
It works in certain matchups but that’s not a sustainable solution. We don’t need our superstar coming off an achilles injury logging a ton of center minutes.
We’ve tried it fairly often before without great success. But we also didn’t have the size/energy of minnott hugo and walsh before. Possibly a small ball but all wings lineup would be good
His focus on winning the rebound battle and turnovers while taking care of the ball means they are getting more possessions which is a great way to generate offense.
Minott Death Lineup
Did anything in particular happen to make Luka fall out of Mazzulla’s rotation? He wasn’t lighting the world on fire, but he wasn’t awful, either. He set some solid screens.
If anything, it just seemed to me that it wasn’t anything that Luka did, but rather, Joe tried the small ball lineup and liked the energy they had on the floor.
If Garza isn’t out there on a scorcher scoring 10-15 in a quarter then he is rarely worth keeping on the floor. The rest of his game is simply too limited to be anything other than a very situational microwave scorer.
I feel similarly with Simons…
I don’t have the numbers on hand but it doesn’t often feel like Garza gives them a substantial edge as a rebounder or defender versus just going small. He’s not an actual threat from outside either and his skill set offensively is really limited.
They seem focused on getting up more shots than than their opponent as a philosophical choice and Garza is just too slow to help there.
He was by far the worst on/off net rating guy on the team. He’s allowing 70% at the rim on defense, a disqualifying number for a center.
It’s cool that they’ve been making it work and Minnott deserves a ton of credit, but we’re dead last in the league in defensive rebounding. We’re gonna get killed in certain matchups. I know nobody thinks this is a long-term solution to the center lack of depth, but still.
dead last in Defensive Rebounding % but we are still winning the 2nd Chance Pt Battle and the team is good overall at rebounding because they crash the O-Boards. That plus they win the possession game overall because they don’t turn the ball over, don’t allow fast break points, or paint points, and shoot more 3s than almost everyone. The Defensive Rebounding hasn’t been a huge problem.
Good point!
I literally just said this in a thread a day or two ago.
I won’t speak to how sustainable this actually is over the span of a full 82-game season, let alone during the playoffs, but as an additional look we can throw at teams in brief spurts it’s been a very pleasant surprise.