Sunday, September 26, 2010

Offseason Review, Part II: Additions

(In advance of the opening of training camp on Tuesday, RwH is returning from its summer hiatus with a review of the offseason. Yesterday, I reviewed the team's losses from the offseason. In this post, I talk about the new faces we'll see in the green and white this year.)

Jermaine O'Neal: The acquisition of Jermaine was overshadowed by the subsequent signing of the other O'Neal, but he's the most important addition to the Celtics this year. With Kendrick Perkins probably limited even when he returns from his knee injury, JON is probably going to be our starting center for the entire year.

The more casual fans -- the ones who only remember him from the first round of the playoffs, a series in which he averaged just 4.3 points, making just nine of 44 shots over five games -- may be a little freaked out by this scenario. But he actually had a very nice season overall, averaging 13.6 points per game on 53 percent shooting, the latter being a high mark -- by four percentage points -- for his career. He's a bigger offensive threat than Perk, and more efficient than Rasheed Wallace was. He's not exactly a traditional back-to-the-basket center and he is most comfortable on offense doing the things that Kevin Garnett does, but the first unit will benefit from having a fifth offensive threat on the floor.

On the glass, he averaged seven rebounds per game last year. It's an unspectacular total, but it's at least acceptable and, moreover, he did it in fewer than 30 minutes per night. We'll certainly miss Perkins on the glass, but I doubt we're going to be cursing Jermaine for his performance on the glass.

The more important question is how he'll fit in on the defensive end. At 31, he's no longer an elite shotblocker, but he did block one and half shots per night last season, which is enough to qualify him as a suitable fill-in for Perk and a difference maker in that regard. However, Perkins is one of the very best one-on-one post defenders in the league, and Jermaine is not. Nor is he as big or strong as Perk, which means that we'll have more trouble with guys like Dwight Howard this year than we have in the past.

Shaquille O'Neal: It'll be a bit weird to see Shaq wearing Celtics green this season, though seeing Rasheed pull on a Boston jersey last season has surely helped me grow accustomed to see long-time enemies in friendly colors. Regardless of how he plays this season, the Shaq signing was a good one: when Wallace officially called it a career, we needed another center, and the only other option, apparently, was Kwame Brown. We're also not paying him very much, so the consequences of his failing are low.

It's been reported that Shaq is a bit of a locker room cancer, but however true that might have been in Miami or Cleveland, I'm not worried about it here. I don't expect Shaq to necessarily "fall in" behind Paul Pierce, Garnett, and Ray Allen, but in order to cause chemistry problems with this team, he'd have to somehow turn the Big Three against each other, or recruit the rest of the team against them. Given the team's recent success, I can't see that happening.

Shaq's a shadow of the player he once was. He'll spend most of the season horribly out of shape, he's a liability offensively in crunch time because of his free throw shooting, and he's not much of a defender these days. But he's more than just a body; he's a huge body who may even command double teams when going against second-string centers. Boston fell short of a championship in large part due to not being big enough; come the 2011 playoffs, they could well have Perkins, the O'Neals, Garnett, and Glen Davis in their 4/5 rotation. That's a lot of beef up front, enough to reduce the significant advantage Orlando and the Lakers had against us in that department last year.

Delonte West: The former Celtic isn't assured of a roster spot, having signed a non-guaranteed deal for the veteran's minimum. For that reason, I think this was a good signing; West is bipolar and has run into legal troubles as a result, but, as with Shaq, the price of his deal makes him low-risk, high-reward. If West makes the squad, he brings a steady hand to the second team. He's a good shooter who can initiate the offense, and though he's only 6-3, he's a good, smart defender who can probably hold his own against bigger players. This makes him a nice complement to all the other players in our backcourt. If the off the court stuff comes together, he could end up being a steal.

Count me among those rooting for him, by the way, and not just because I naturally wish to see people successful in their battles with mental illness. West was one of my favorite Celtics in his first stint with the team (we traded him to Seattle in the Ray Allen deal, and he played 35 games in the 2007-08 season with the Sonics before they moved him to Cleveland, where he's been since). One time during his years with the Celtics -- a particularly dark period in the franchise's history -- I went to see them play the Wizards in Washington, and found myself sitting directly behind his mother, who spent nearly as much time showing me and my buddy photos of Delonte (at his prom, at his high school graduation, etc.) than she did watching the game (which she only did, by the way, when her son was in). Hardly the most interesting brush with the NBA in real life, but it's always made me pull for him a little bit harder than I normally would.

Von Wafer: This one was a head-scratcher, particularly coming, as it did, at a time when the Celtics were said to be after disgruntled Portland wing Rudy Fernandez. Wafer was a second-round pick in 2005, and although he played here and there for a few years, he only has one season of real NBA experience -- 2008-09 with Houston, when he averaged 9.7 points in about 19 minutes per game for a Rockets team that won 53 games. According to his Wikipedia page, he signed with a Greek club last year, only to be waived four months into a two-year contract, then signed with the Mavs for ten days and didn't play a single minute.

I saw more of Wafer at Florida State than I've seen of him at his various NBA stops, and what I remember from back then is that Wafer is a, um, volume shooter. Ok, fine; as far I know, Wafer's a chucker. He did hit nearly 40 percent of his threes in that one season in Houston, and if he can hit at the kind of rate, he might be useful on the second team, particularly with Shaq drawing some attention.

I'm just skeptical he'll see the court that often. Although Tony Allen's departure leaves us decidedly short of shooting guard-sized guys off the bench, we do have point guard-sized guys who play the two (West, Nate Robinson) and a rookie guard (Avery Bradley, see more below) we're high on. Marquis Daniels is also back. Given Doc's disdain for guys who don't play defense (and I have no reason to believe that Wafer plays defense) I just can't see this guy making much of a difference.

Avery Bradley: Bradley was Boston's first-round pick, selected 19th overall. I did a little bit on the Celtics draft in this post, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I like the pick, however, for the same reason I loved the Bill Walker pick a few years ago (and actually wanted Boston to take Billy Sky with the pick it used on J.R. Giddens in that draft). Bradley, like Walker, was extremely highly-rated out of high school (I believe some rankings had him ahead of John Wall at one point). Where Walker's draft stock fell due to injuries, Bradley's dropped due to an uneven performance in his one year at Texas.

What many seem to have overlooked, however, is that everyone at Texas had an uneven season; the Longhorns rose to number one in the national rankings in mid-January, then lost 10 of their last 17 games. Bradley was asked to play point guard -- an unnatural position for him, it seems, despite his 6-2 height -- among a group of veterans.

The point I'm trying to make is that the guy is talented, and there are reasons why those talents maybe weren't on full display last year. He's a great defender with a massive wingspan, so he may be able to defend twos. And to tie it back to Walker, while injuries and circumstances dictated that he never really got a shot in Boston, he did average 12 points a game on 43% three-point shooting in 27 games with the Knicks after going to New York in the trade for Robinson. If Bradley is as good as Danny Ainge thinks he is, then it's on Doc to find a way to get him some opportunities.

Unfortunately, Bradley missed summer league because of ankle surgery, and he won't be ready at the start of camp. Hopefully, the late start won't doom his entire year.

Luke Harangody: I mentioned how much I liked Harangody in that post-draft post I linked to in the write-up about Bradley, above, but his performance in Summer League warrants some additional discussion. In five games in Orlando, he averaged 16.6 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. That wasn't that surprising; he's was a 20/10 guy in college and those guys always perform well in Summer League, since for the most part, they're going up against college players who won't make the pros. What was surprising, however, was that he went nine for 18 from beyond the arc.

Harangody didn't really extend his game to the college-three point line until his junior year, when he took roughly one per game and hit at a 37 percent clip. Last season, he averaged 2.7 attempts per game but hit just 31 percent. Moreover, his form is bizarre; he sort of flings the ball from his midsection whilst jumping backwards. In all the games I saw him play with the Fighting Irish, I never anything that suggested he'd be a threat from the significantly longer NBA line. I'm not convinced he is, but it's worth watching, especially since our frontcourt is a bit crowded while Marquis Daniels is the only backup small forward on the roster. Harangody was most effective in college near the basket, but at only 6-7, he may struggle in the post in the pros. If he sees time this year, it may very well be at the three.

Semih Erden: We took Erden with the 60th overall pick in 2008 with the intention of letting him develop in Europe for a while. He's a seven-footer about whom I frankly don't know much, and his progress in training camp and role on the team, if any, are two things I'll be closely watching over the next month.

He played for his native Turkey in this summer's FIBA world championships, helping his team earn the silver medal in that competition. I didn't watch any of his country's games, but he averaged nine points and 4.5 rebounds off the bench. He shot 62.5 percent over the nine games, and blocked seven shots during the tournament, including three against China (a game in which he scored 18 points on 9-of-11 shooting and had a dozen rebounds). He also had 11 assists in the competition, but those were more than balanced out by his 19 turnovers, an alarming number given that he averaged fewer than 20 minutes per game.

My hunch is that the vast majority of the time we see Erden, it will be when he's wearing a suit.

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