It’s suspected that the Boston Celtics did their best to secure one of the top two choices in the 2007 NBA Draft. Unfortunately, all their efforts didn’t pay off. When the lottery gods had spoken, the Celtics were left with the 5th choice in the draft. Despite such luck, though, it may be the case that the player Boston acquired with their pick will be the best player in 2007-08.
Let’s begin by looking at the choice. The Celtics were hoping to land either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. But with these players off the board, Boston turned to Ray Allen, a 6’5” shooting guard out of Seattle.
Allen began his career in 1996 with the Milwaukee Bucks and then moved on to the Seattle Super Sonics during the 2002-03 campaign. Across eleven years he has produced 105 wins with a WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] of 0.170. An average player will offer a WP48 of 0.100, so Allen has been well above average in his career. Unfortunately Allen has already played eleven seasons, so it seems unlikely that he will be very productive for too many more years. Still, if all we focus on is 2007-08, it’s certainly a strong possibility that Allen will produce more wins next season than anyone else acquired on draft night.
Across his career, Allen has averaged 37.5 minutes per game. Given this average, if Allen posts a 0.170 WP48 across 75 games, he will produced ten wins this next season.
If we go back to 1993 we see that only fifteen rookies have produced ten wins or more their rookie season (and if I wasn’t traveling I would post the list). To put that in perspective, 29 NBA sophomores have produced at least ten wins in a season since 1993. And when we look at third and fourth year players we see that in each case 39 players have produced at least ten victories. In sum, ten wins out of a rookie is somewhat rare. The Celtics, though, acquired with their draft pick (and Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak) a player who has a good chance of producing ten victories in 2007-08. So although this may not be a good move beyond next season, for the immediate future the Celtics look to be improved.
How much better off, though, is this team? In July we are not entirely sure what the final roster that takes the floor in November will look like. Still, we can play the game of “what if” and make a guess.
Imagine if the Celtics gave these minutes to the following players (WP48 from 2006-07 reported)?
Potential Starters
– Rajon Rondo: 30 minutes, 0.189 WP48
– Ray Allen: 36 minutes, 0.170 WP48
– Paul Pierce: 36 minutes, 0.202 WP48
– Ryan Gomes: 24 minutes, 0.032 WP48
– Al Jefferson: 32 minutes, 0.252 WP48
Key Reserves
– Sebastian Telfair: 18 minutes, -0.052 WP48
– Tony Allen: 12 minutes, 0.179 WP48
– Gerald Green: 12 minutes, -0.042 WP48
– Brian Scalabrine: 12 minutes, -0.133 WP48
– Leon Powe: 12 minutes, 0.113 WP48
– Kendrick Perkins: 16 minutes, 0.042 WP48
When we look at the starters we see four players that are well above average. Who plays with Jefferson in the frontcourt is still an open question, but regardless of who is chosen, this looks like a good starting unit. The bench is a bit of a problem. Of the reserves, only Tony Allen and Leon Powe are above average. T. Allen was hurt last year, so we don’t know if he will fully recover. And it’s not clear that Powe will even get significant minutes.
Still, if we have correctly identified the players Boston will put on the court, guessed the minutes each player will get per game, and observe the reported WP48 for each player, then the Celtics can expect to win about 48 games. In other words, if all these guesses are right this team could expect to double the number of games the team won last year.
Of course, and this point needs to be emphasized, there are many problems with these guesses. First of all we need to note that the forecast only considered eleven players. So the first question is – who else is going to play on this team?
Additionally I can think of three more questions: Will Telfair be on this team in November (he really doesn’t help, but he was part of the forecast)? Will both Ray and Tony Allen recover fully from injuries (they do have to recover for this team to be successful)? And again, who is going to pair with Jefferson in the frontcourt? In sum, there are many, many unanswered questions.
So although I said 48 wins, it is way too early to make such a specific forecast. What we can say is that it’s likely the Celtics will be much better next year and should contend for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. In other words, the drafting of Ray Allen may be a pretty good choice, if all that matters is the 2007-08 season.
And given the disaster that was 2006-07, all that might matter for Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers is next season. If this next campaign doesn’t go much better, both might be living elsewhere in 2008.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
bob
July 4, 2007
where did you get “lottery gods” from? are you writing a book with new mythology?
i’m a christian and am offended.
Owen
July 4, 2007
Excellent analysis. With Pierce, Jefferson, the two Allens, and Rondo, the Celtics would seem to have a very strong core. They lack a true center, but that is about it. Not a championship team, but in the East they should pretty good next year. And after that, who knows. But getting Ray Allen for Jeff Green, and perhaps keeping Pierce happy, should make it an excellent move. It is Danny Ainge we are talking about, so odds are it won’t work out.
Vis a vis your new format. It’s great that you have a comments RSS feed. But its too bad you can’t see how many commments there are at the top of the post.
Hanny
July 5, 2007
What about the law of diminishing returns? Allen and a healthy Pierce will taken away opportunities from the rest. So you can’t assume they will match their WP48 from last with this new dynamic. It would interesting to find out how the addition of an all-star typically affects the WP48 of his new teammates.
MT
July 5, 2007
This is a complicated trade and there are
a couple more pieces to be examined to evaluate it. First, there is Delonte West, who had a WP48 of 0.087, the loss of whom has to go onto the negative side of the ldger for the Celtics. There is also the fact that they dispose of Szczerbiak’s salary and are now using their capped resurces more efficiently, a positive factor. There are some unknowns, i.e., what would Pierce have done if the trade had not been made and what impact would that have had on the employment and reputation of Ainge, the decisionmaker (the agency problem) and on marketing the team.
On the other hand, if they could somehow now attract another veteran like Garnett or O’Neal, this trade would certainly have been a contributing factor; Ainge will become a genius and the team will be more competitive and more marketable. Another little noticed factor is that the trade cost them the option to trade next year’s pick, because the league forbids trading your first round pick two consecutive years. The fact that they won’t be able to throw a pick next year into a trade probably reduces the chances of acquiring an O’Neal or Garnett, however.
And they will probably have to use the space created by Ratliff’s expiring contract to re-sign Jefferson.
So, although they should improve this year, I think what you see this year is as good as they will be over the next 3 years or so.
Tom Mandel
July 5, 2007
The Celtics win 48, huh? Hard to imagine that Allen adds quite that much. How many wins did Wally S. produce last year?
Something bothers me about predicting something and then saying it’s too early to predict? Not to mention that it’s hard for me to believe that wins produced is a useful prediction tool in a situation with as much change as this.
It’ll be interesting to see what ensues, however.
P-Dawg
July 6, 2007
In today’s Boston Globe, Danny Ainge says he thinks Pierce and Allen can play and be effective until they’re 38.. Have you done any analysis on the trajectory of WP by all-stars from age 30 on?
The Franchise
July 7, 2007
It does look good for Boston next year, if Doc Rivers can figure out how to coach. (While you’ve written that coaches do not seem to have a major impact on player performance, they do choose which players go on the floor, and Rivers seems to do poorly at that.)
I’m actually wondering why Seattle agreed to the trade, especially since they should have known it was a very real possibility that Lewis would also be leaving. Sure, the team will have bright young prospects, but it will really perform poorly for at least a couple years before they develop–if they ever do, as not every player thought to be great before the draft turns out to be as good as hoped. I also believe (without quantifiable evidence) that a very bad team is not the best circumstance to develop a future star, either.
Andrew
July 7, 2007
The hope here is that Al Jefferson becomes a dominating low-post presence on offense, and indeed he has the talent to be one of the top three or four power forwards in the NBA in that time span. But with these two dominating the ball outside, will Boston be able to feed it into Al Jefferson as much as they’d like to? And if not, what will be the effect on his development as a primary offensive weapon? It’s hard to see. The optimistic view holds Jefferson benefiting from Allen’s presence as nobody will dare double down on him now. The pessimistic view holds Baby Al as a player who showed dominating potential after the All-Star break and is suddenly asked to wait another couple of years to assume leadership.
Here’s another thing I’m very curious about: where does this leave Gerald Green, Tony Allen and Rajon Rondo? Tony Allen was a revelation filling in for the injured Pierce last season averaging 20.8 points, 5.2 boards and 3.4 assists on 50+% FGs in January before shredding his knee. And Allen was just one of the Celts who made a case for the boon in playing time that could have come with a move of Pierce. Gerald Green put up 16 points, 3.6 boards and 1.8 3-pointers as a starter in just his second year out of high school. I’m convinced the kid has superstar potential to go along with his superstar athleticism and feathery jumper. In addition to Green and Allen, Rajon Rondo looked very impressive during his rookie campaign. I wasn’t sold on the guy until mid-season, but he’s an extremely gifted ball handler and passer who has an incredible nose for the ball on defense. But will his growth be stunted and his contributions mitigated by the ball-dominating duo of Pierce and Allen? I’m not sure we can answer all of these questions by just thinking about them, we’ll need to see this team play 30 games before meaningful conclusions can be made, but the trade certainly raises some issues about the strategic planning of Danny Ainge for the next three, five and ten years.