[Windhorst] Even though Jaylen Brown was talking about himself for MVP, the Celtics did not feel like Jaylen had the best season on their team. They felt that Derrick White had a better season.
I’m starting believe that the Celtics were the source that thought Jaylen was the 7th best player lol.
That would be hilarious.
Derrick White’s agent must’ve been the source
Derrick whites agent is asking for a max deal
We have our heads so far up the ass of analytics
Anal lickingly, Brown was the 7th best player on our team
Everyone misheard. Hes anatomically the 7th best player, once everyone finds out you are not in fact a grower your market really tanks and that’s clearly what happened here
I’m so sorry. It think you also might have heard wrong. He’s actually atomically the 7th best player on that team. He’s worse than six of those guys on a purely molecular level.
Interestingly, it’s Prichard, Hauser, Scheierman, Vucevic, Gonzalez and Tatum for some odd reason who are just inarguably atomically better according to Boston media. Not sure how Tatum snuck in there. They had Max Shulga!
You are so right about this one. Common sense has left the building. Why watch the game when you have stats?
Okay but how do you actually explain Brown’s negative on/off? What is the data missing?
Yeah, it’s almost a 10 year sample. It’s not just noise at that point.
Because the stat needs context. JB isn’t Tatum or Giannis or Wemby, but he is the only one on the Celtics who can go one on one and create a shot consistently. It’s actually a rare skill, just to create a shot that needs to be honored by the defense out of nothing.
And so he must fulfill this inefficient role to create better opportunities for Prichard, White, Walsh, etc. those guys keep the machine running, Brown has to start the machine against friction.
If it seems like smoke and mirrors and bullshit what I’m saying, it kinda is. In the regular season, JB does this role well enough for the celts and the role players to outperform expectations. It gets exposed in the playoffs because he is not Kawhi, KD, Tatum, Giannis, etc. and he can’t make his offense efficient enough to buoy the team. with the focus of playoff defense he is inefficient AND his teammates become inefficient too.
If he’s creating betting opportunities for Pritchard, White, etc..this should show up as positive on/off.
The guy can’t pass. Isn’t an efficient scorer. Is not good off the ball on defense. And is good on the ball.
He looks cool when he scores. But he is the most overrated player in the league on a terrible contract. You think the Celtics just traded him to their rival for that return without asking the entire league what they would trade. The market doesn’t lie.
So you think the Celtics would’ve had a better record without Jaylen Brown last season?
For a different 60 million dollar a year player? Absolutely
That’s not the question tho - if you really believe this data, you should be able to argue that the Celtics would’ve had a better record by simply removing Brown from the team entirely, since this data point says they were better without him. Are you really prepared to make that argument? Because it’s been laughed out of the conversation by every serious writer and analyst this week.
If going by the games he didn’t play, they were 9-2 (67-win pace), with 5 wins against playoff teams, a 2 point loss, and a loss against the champs. So maybe they could’ve. Any answer with a definitive yes or no is just one’s opinion
Thats not really the question. On/off isnt about contract value. Negative on/off would indicate that the celtics are just functionally worse off with him playing than they are with him.
Would you want to say that the Celtics last year would just be a better team without him?
He is NOT creating better opportunities for anybody, that dude never watched a Celtics game in his life
This does not make Sense. If he was improving his team his on/off would go up
Who cares he won a championship and was eastern conference mvp and finals mvp. I thought winning was the point. Now if Tatum gets hurt the season is just done and they pray they get a lottery pick in a hood draft.
The equation I invented proves w/ numbers that Hugo is every bit as good as Tim Duncan.
Why watch the game when you have stats?
A reminder that “wash da gamezzz” is why we have banger takes like Kobe being the goat, Paolo being a future superstar, and JB being the best player on the Celtics
I can totally understand not really rating brown like he rates himself. But Derrick white was really fucking bad after the new year.
Brown was robbed of 7th man of the year!
Brad playing 6D chess to…. lower his own player’s trade value
Evidently the rest of the league wasn’t too far off on that assessment either. They were shopping JB and the best they could get was Paul George
Yes this wasn’t a situation where the Mavs only talked to the Lakers to trade Luka.
We’ll never know how bad it might have been had they not made this trade, and they went into the season with Brown on the team. I assume they thought that it would be a disaster that would deeply fracture the team and compromise Brown’s trade value further.
The deal seems like a bad one to me but I also don’t presume to know better than Brad Stevens, or at least assume enough to be pretending like he’s a fucking idiot.
The Celtics are definitely one of the most analytically driven teams in the league. Look at how much they prioritize threes.
When Bill Simmons was talking shit about analytics guys, the call was coming from inside the house.
There’s a reason Boston was eager to get rid of him.
Yeah, maybe. But if they’re so analytically driven and JB was that bad, why was he always the guy with the ball during clutch time?
I think ownership is being too clever by half on this whole deal. So much of it doesn’t make sense, including the money. The only explanation is that something else is about to happen. Otherwise, shame on them.
Thugnificent: Damn, what did he do to make that FO so mad?
You and I don’t have access to the advanced propofactoretical statistical models these front offices use. Don’t question them.
Well Brad didn’t want to include two bench guys in the giannis deal so maybe
They’re the analytics the media was referring to huh
The analytics are coming from inside the house
Lmao I can’t believe this.
Wait, was Josh Hart right all along?
Analytics really do lean more White than Brown?
Derrick White is a better third option than Brown is a first/second option, is what analytics would tell you.
That was a fantastic way to put it, thank you! 🙏
Is PG a better 2 option than Brown?
Analytical and by the eye test yes. Better shooter, playmaker and defender.
He’s just old and can’t stay healthy
So, no lmao
What do you mean no?
Ketamine P ended the season so strong it convinced Brad Steven’s, notorious Sixers fleecer, to trade a pillar of his team away for him.
Analytics can’t factor in availability? Sawft
Which…is true I think just based off the eye test but Jaylen is still very fucking good, so idk numbers are crazy I guess
Huh
ESPN is so mad brown went at Stephen A
Lmao ESPN loves players going at SAS, are you slow? It’s engagement.
FR they made so much content with Bron vs SAS too. They even had him go to the game to talk smack
To be fair to Windy and MacMahon, if you actually listen, they said this was a terrible trade and said they value Brown higher than these analytic based FO’s and they don’t understand why they basically just dumped him.
Large part why they traded Brown.
After Jaylen went after SAS, Brad Stevens came out to calm everybody down. Next day, Jaylen did it again and Stevens didn’t make another comment.
Thats fucking stupid if true it’s Steven a smith not some esteemed legend.
You underestimate how stupid the Celtics are about to get with their new ownership.
Now that he is traded, let the smear campaign from the Boston media begin! Before the trade, they rave about him being a top 5 player but after the trade, it’s he wasn’t even good 😂😂
well he was their 7th best player last year
JB is turning into Rafael Devers before our very eyes.
@getoffmydickerson
windhorst just saying shit
Then explain why the Celtics traded Brown for that package
Yeah, this sounds like exactly what the Celtics would say lol. Mazzulla is the king of optimal analytics ball, that’s why they live and die by the 3. They fucking love Derrick White, and based on this trade, were super tired of JB
It’s all Windhorst’s fault
After reading the posts, I slowly start to get it. I think it boils down to a couple of things:
When has he been caught making up wild speculation? Seems like he will rarely make comments like this about the insider FO thinking unless he has solid evidence to back it up.
He’s not like the clickbait artists that just make shit up like Jake Fischer
FO is analytics pilled
He literally carried the team to the 2 seed. The fuck are the Celtics front office talking about?
They clearly don’t think he carried them.
Well im glad they think derrick white with his season long anthony bennett shooting splits who shot them out of the playoffs was the actual driving force
Sub 40% from the field Derrick White? 32% 3pt shooter Derrick White? That front office is on drugs.
Analytics say he’s the third best player in the league.
Wilt Bam Kobe White
Coby White confirmed to be 3rd and 4th greatest of all time COMBINED!
And people laughed at us for trading LaMelo
Derrick White and Ty Jerome is the GOAT backcourt per Analytics.
Greatest gaslight of all time. Dwhite is good but past his peak for sure
28 other teams could’ve outbid Philly if they felt Brown was worth a lot more, but that didn’t happen. There’s a lot of smoke that teams just don’t think he’s a big positive on his contract. I don’t think it’s much deeper than that, though Boston’s urgency to move on for this haul is still surprising.
On his contract is the key. And windhorst is just flat out saying Boston thinks Derrick white had a better season than JB and not mentioning the contract. Your argument makes sense, it’s bostons argument that is insane
People are still struggling to the reality of how hard the new cap system hits teams for giving out max contracts to players that are not actually star players. Jaylen Brown was someone that the Celtics thought would limit their future flexibility if they kept him and took what was available to move on.
I’m with you, I’m just not sure how taking on a 36 year old Paul George who is far less tradable and has a player option is really going to offer them MORE flexibility. Unless they buy him out, that’s 2 whole years of 36-38 year old Paul George on damn near the same amount of money as JB.
It’s not like they are spreading this money out across a few players, in the short term they’re in the same spot just with PG instead of JB. They’re only gaining a few million in terms of the cap
Trade him as an expiring, or extend at lower #. Part of trading JB is they didn’t want to have to offer him the 2 years $140m max extension that he’ll soon be eligible for. We’ll see how hard Philly negotiates on that.
This is basically where I am too
EPM bro he’s higher than Jaylen Brown -Brad Stevens
tbf, EPM rates JB higher on offense. It’s the massive defensive gap that leads to White ranking higher.
Tyrese Maxey’s dinner Derrick White?
Windhorst looks like he is in pain choking out that insane take. Like the Brad Stevens is holding a gun off camera on him. Love Derrick White but I bet if you asked even him, he would say that JB carried the team and allowed others to play their roles best.
This is probably like any other workplace. The boss doesn’t like Jaylen, so praises someone else and says they’re better even if they are not. And just like any other workplace sometimes you just have to change scenery. JB was never gonna get his flowers in Boston.
and only 5 assist a game. The same as JB
I mean, White is a better playmaker
3.67 TOs from Brown vs. 1.74 TOs from White
now do turnovers
JB took over soo much of an offensive load when Tatum was out, thats the only reason his Turnovers went up. He’s a career 2.5 TOV guy, and for someone who avgs over 25ppg thats pretty good.
His career ppg average is 20, not 25
Brown also averaged a career 2.9 assists to go along with those 2.5 turnovers
Brown just isn’t a playmaker
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Brown basically has the impact of a Derozan/Lavine/Ingram he’s just spent his whole career on a stack Celtics team
What does Brown offer you besides volume scoring?
Jaylen Brown is a much better on-ball/PoA defender than the three guys you mentioned. I’m not even a huge Brown fan, but this seems pretty hyperbolic.
Is this ragebait
Did anyone watch the playoffs? Derrick white was a big reason why they lost. He was absolutely putrid. I’m so lost on this Derrick white talk
Guys let’s just let the Celtics keep believing please don’t stop them
Celtics analytically won game 8
They’ve run the 2K sims thousands of times
But he’s a theoretical All-Star!
Just like JT is a theoretical Finals MVP
It was crazy seeing all the Derrick white praise and then watching him shit a brick in the post season. make no mistake about it, that is 100% what happened. He sucked
Also had a garbage offensive regular season. Efficiency tanked without Tatum
It’s one of those things where public opinion takes time to catch up to how they’re actually playing imo. He was super underrated for a while then once people caught on and his play dipped a little he became overrated.
No no no no our eyes say he is terrible but until we look at the analytics we can’t know for sure
If you need Derrick White to get you an inefficient 15ppg as a 4th option he can do that. If you need Derrick White to step up as a 2nd option he will get you an inefficient 15ppg.
I love DW, but he has some offensive limitations.
He literally shot us out of the playoffs and straight to Cancun. Yes, a +/- analytical beast but come the fuck on.
Celtics are gonna regret all these statements next season lmao.
Celtics FO preferred white to brown? Shocking…
Derrick White Privilege
HAHAHAHA
The Celtics or the Lakers?
Kenny Atkinson said Derrick White was a top 5 player during the season
When asked about it, Joe Mazzulla didn’t deny that evaluation, saying to the media, “At the end of the day, you guys don’t have a ton of access to the advanced analytics. That type of player is just not commercialized.”
Im not anti advanced analytics, but if you read some numbers and genuinely think Derrick White is a top 5 player in this league, you are straight up smoking crack
And it isn’t an issue with analytics or math. Correct math is 100% accurate on whatever it is measuring. The issue is that people falsely interpret what the analytics mean.
So many of these ‘advanced’ analytics are skewed by tons of variables, like who is on the court. For simple on/off which isn’t advanced but a good example: the coach might play the star more with the bench guys so he can carry those minutes, and run the other starters separately to carry the minutes when the star is on the bench. Because of his minutes with bench players, the star could be worse than the other starters by on/off even though he’s the best player on the team. And any ‘advanced’ analytic ranking which factors on/off is now partially flawed. Then some doofus declares the star bad because “the analytics say.”
It’s interesting that the greatest NBA problem solved by analytics geniuses is that 3 points is more than 2 points, which apparently took the league over 30 years to figure out. Really, how much more useful have they been in the NBA than that? We’re overcomplicating simple problems here way too much. Then you have the ignore math crowd insisting that if guys went back to fade away toe on the line 2s and post ups they would play better. Both sides of this are frustrating.
The on/off stuff is crazy. Like stats that use on/off kept saying that Jokic was the GOAT for a while, when really it’s that he’s a star and his backup was DeAndre Jordan until this past season.
The Jokic analytic that was the weirdest to me was whichever defensive stat had him as some kind of immensely impactful defender. IIRC it was something that weighted defensive rebounding a lot, which obviously he is very good at, but anybody with functional eyeballs can tell you that Jokic is not one of the best defenders in the league.
It was Defensive Box Plus/Minus, which includes assists as a defensive stat for centres, hence players like Jokic or Sabonis get overrated on defense by this stat. Unfortunately advanced stats for defense just aren’t great atm, and you can’t point to any one stat to judge a player’s defense.
Models can also just be wrong. Or they can be trained on the previous 5 years of data and then the league changes and it’s completely useless the next season. I say this as a data scientist. In a field with this little data and constantly changing variables, context is just as important than the numbers.
Derrick White is not top 5 but his impact is insane and he’s way better than box score numbers suggest, Brown is the opposite
White had such an awful shooting year yet his rim protection, defense overall and intangibles make him extremely valuable he’s like guard Draymond
Intangibles dont put the ball in the basket and neither does derrick white, which is why they blew a 3-1 lead
14-42 from the field across games 5/6/7
It’s also why when he was on the Spurs they were a lottery team lmao. People see a role player do well on a good team and lose their mind.
Cmon man he’s improved so much since his time with the Spurs that’s just disingenuous. He was playing firmly like a top 15-20 player during their 2024 run
He’s improved because he’s on a good team and you’re watching his games. When I watched him on the Spurs he was a similar player just nobody gave a damn because it was on a bad team 😭.
He wasn’t no where near a top 15-20 player. He played well but top 15-20 players are typically the best or 2nd best player on their team, this is the definition of winning bias.
And Jaylen Brown is just DeRozan with better supporting cast and PR. People see a high volume scorer do well on a good team and lose their mind.
DeRozan had 1 good playoff series in his entire career and he lost it
Exactly. Role players on good teams always have super inflated advanced stats. But fuck context I guess.
Still not top 5, 10 ,25 or 30 player in the league.
Yeah, even when he was on the Spurs and had mediocre shooting splits and okay raw stats, if you’d watch every game, you’d be able to tell Derrick was the most impactful player on the team, even though Dejounte and DeMar put up the most numbers
Vassel on the Spurs is a similar guy. Flies under the radar his impact
You know what the media wont do? Come out and say vassell is more valuable than Castle
The eye test is a dying art
And by the eye test, Derrick White isn’t a top 25 player in the league, much less top 5.
The “eye test” is meaningless. Who’s eye test? Yours? Or is it some average of every NBA viewers eye test? Do we need to exclude casuals?
What if I say Derrick White was a top 25 player by my eye test? Does that not count?
I would say your eyes are lying to you. You get the 25th pick in a draft of every nba player, you’re starting your team with Derrick White??? No. Didn’t think so.
Team USA literally did this 2 years ago.
People responding to you are so funny. “The eye test only matters if it supports my personal beliefs about NBA player values.” So it’s just the exact same way they evaluate advanced stats. If somebody else watches the game and sees something different from them, their opinion just doesn’t matter.
Top 25 will never be unanimous. What you value will never align with what everyone else does. Someone could make an argument that white is top 25 and it wouldn’t be that crazy if you heard them out.
Im pretty sure that Atkinson probably specified that “the analytics say…” and wasnt directly saying that he is a top 5 player ITL.
And if anyone doesnt understand that White is super valuable, moreso than his box score numbers might say, then I would argue that it’s really that their eye test is faulty. He’s obviously not a top 5 player in the league; that’s not the point of whatever analytics point to anything like that.
The point is to point out that he’s obviously much more impactful than the average person’s naked eye and box score watching will tell you.
Yep. Coaches know.
Maybe I’m stupid but nothing could convince me that D White was a top 5 player in the NBA last year
I mean the NBA doctored together footage to make me believe BAM could score 83 in a game, so convincing me D White is top 5 isn’t out of the realm of possibility
Top 5 player shot 32 from the field in the playoff and held NO smoke.
that’s how you know he isn’t a top 5 player because if any ACTUAL top 5 player did what he did they’d be destroyed.
He was bad that series (including the advanced stats) but that statement was made in the regular season where White was incredible in the advanced stats department.
It’s also likely that FOs have much much better metrics than what we have. However, due to just how complex basketball is, I doubt they have metrics that account for everything. DWhite looked much worse the moment he was asked to feature more in the offense, I doubt that’s a coincidence.
I’m an analytics enjoyer but we just getting ridiculous here.
Obviously analytics also says if you jack up unlimited threes you will win more than you lose but when extended to the playoffs it resulted in two collapses the last two years. They can be useful to understand the game and trends but also misleading if that’s the only data point you’re taking into account.
Analytically the Cavs are champs and Derrick White is MVP
That’s my coach
Top 5 is obviously a little much, but he is an incredible connective player with his fast, correct decision making. Obviously an incredible defensive player from the guard position, too.
He had a down year shooting, but I don’t think the Celtics are worried about that being a lasting thing and even with the bad shooting, he still led the Eastern Conference in +/-
This feels like the news we were getting after Lukas trade
” He was eating cheetos during practice” or whatever
Analytically Jaylen Brown is actually very fat
The analytics on Jaylen Brown’s Cheetos eating is bottom of the league.
Whether you agree or not, that’s fucking funny
I mean it’s like objectively wrong right?? Wtf is going on lol
ANALytics
Who would agree? Lol
Derrick White regressed HARD last year because he wasn’t spoonfed
lol is that the same Derrick white who was ice cold since like… half way through the season or something like that?
His shooting fell off but the team was still better with him on the court compared to JB. He’s a far superior playmaker, less turnover prone, better rebounder and a far better defender. White gives you rim protection value as a guard, which is why people underrate him. He was still a very impactful player last year.
And he disappeared in the playoffs and was a huge reason they lost THIS YEAR. You analytics nerds are the worst
Doesn’t this just prove his point though? You can’t claim JB was the reason they won 50 games last year, and suddenly it’s everyone else’s fault when they get shit on in the playoffs (while he’s averaging more turnovers than assists).
You’re both right, for what it’s worth. Boston’s strength during the regular season was their depth and coaching, but in the playoffs when rosters only go 7 deep Boston got hard exposed. So then what value is Brown at $60 million a year if he isn’t enough to move the needle when it matters most? What are you even paying for?
People who cannot have a conversation, discussing points, without calling people analytics nerds are the worst
Which is odd because Derek White made Brad Steven so hard he thinks that nonsense
The same Derrick White who’s shooting percentages cratered once he was featured more in the offense and didn’t have Tatum to take the pressure off him?
still got all-nba votes from the Boston media 😭
His last name confuses them.
yeah Brown needs to get away from that team
How did this team win so recently…
Does this have to do with the ownership change…
Wait I’m starting to think the analytics call on JB was coming from inside the house
I hope to god JB wins with Philly and everyone throws their fucking analytics in the trash cuz this shit is dumb as fuck.
Celtics going to shoot 55 3s a game this year.
I don’t understand anything anymore
bobby marks source was definitely in the celtics organization. confirmed.
Why are they disrespecting Brown so much? Shit is getting bizarre lol
Dude was number 2 for the franchise for a decade and got FMVP in the first championship in almost 2 decades. I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes but I would expect a lot of praise and respect coming from the media, not this shit.
When your own team is your biggest haters
Makes sense, analytically, Derrick White is the GOAT
How much goodwill has Brad Stevens tarnished
I went from thinking hes one of the smartest guys in the league to thinking hes an idiot in mere hours.
are..are they joking, like no way, Chisholm was a fake fan if he actually believes this
oh shit boston media about unload the clip tomorrow if this is a sign of things to come
You cannot be serious dude shot below 40% FG that’s insanity
That guy who shot 32% in the playoffs?
What shit hit piece take
propaganda is worse than Fox News
Bobby Marks trying to hold back from telling us that the executive who said Brown was the 7th best player was Brad Stevens.
I’m so used to the Sixers as an organization being incompetent and the Celtics being well run. It’s crazy to see the opposite especially because we finally beat them in the playoffs.
This Brown smear campaign is absurd. He was one of the best players in the league all year.
All this analytics talk is the Boston FO trying to save face because he probably asked out after the Giannis trade didn’t happen.
Boston is in complete shambles what an absolute disaster
If you thought White had a better season, then you didn’t deserved Jaylen Brown.
Jaylen Brown was probably the driving force for Boston winning a lot without Tatum and this is how he gets treated?
White being the lead man on Boston probably gets them a top 5 pick on this years draft
They really trying to f with Jaylen Brown so hard
I think time is gonna show Jaylen’s value is more than the numbers. The hustle on D and assertiveness sets a tone, even when off the court. Analytics doesn’t show everything in team sports.
White > Brown.
9 out of 10 Boston fans agree
As a Laker fan, the Celtics are on crack. Jaylen held the fort the whole season!! Derrick white was trash the first two months of the season!!
Everyone is rightfully mentioning how Derrick white shot 39% FG and 32% 3pt in the regular season but he somehow played even worse against Philly where he shot 32% FG and 27% from 3
The narrative battle of JB being too smart vs the Celtics valuing other guys more is going to be cinema
didnt white lose his 3pter lol
They’re trying to gaslight us about Derrick White this past season because they all talked him up before & all that happened was his %ages going down & got worse in the playoffs
Jaylen Brown will fit in nicely in Philadelphia as an eighth man, which is the role he belongs in.
Nico possesed Bradley Stevens
39% from the floor Derrick White?
Celtics are crashing out
Didn’t White have a down year?