This man has never been this wide open, and he was an elite shooter last year in Washington.
He’s taken 38 shots and is 60% from 2 and 62% from 3.
Everyone is talking about the Giannis/Dame PnR, but I believe the Tatum/Porzingis PnR is going to be as deadly because of their size and shooting combination.
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nah they too soft
Legit read the thread title and thought “Wait, KP plays baseball now? In Toronto?”
In a different universe KP is a generational reliever. Imagine staring downs a 7’3 dude on the mound.
he basically lets them play five out - and he can jack up shots way behind the arc if he wants too, while providing rim protection on an already elite defense. guy needs to stay healthy though
He does not provide any rim protection. Anyone who watched him in DC and Dallas knows that he’s near useless as a rim protector. His value is entirely on the offensive side of the ball.
Wtf you clearly didn’t watch him in Dallas. I remember seeing plenty of stats detailing number of drives he deterred while he was here. His rim protection is fine
He’s definitely been inconsistent at times defensively, but that’s pretty clearly due to injury. I feel like we have a pretty good picture of who he is on that end— an excellent rim protector with some vulnerabilities due to his size and frame, who mostly plays drop but isn’t completely helpless in other coverages. We’re well-equipped to compensate for his weaknesses, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he looks even better here than he did in Washington defensively (health willing, of course)
10th in Blocks per game last year. So that’s more than the top shot blocker on 2/3rds of the teams in the league.
Points Allowed Per Pick-and-Roll defended last season according to Second Spectrum:
- Anthony Davis (0.91)
- Steven Adams (0.92)
- Giannis Antetokounmpo (0.92)
- Kristaps Porzingis (0.93)
- Walker Kessler (0.93)
Excellent company to be in. I’m so excited for the Celtics defense this year
Would you be able to see the numbers here for KP with Gafford on the floor vs. him off the floor?
He provides rim protection
Bro a lakers fan, what do you expect
He provides rim protection, he is just injury prone. His entire tenure in Dallas was him recovering from some injury, and he looked a bit slower as a result. The one healthy year he had, the bubble, he was pretty good
I agree with you here. The dude is going to be hunted.
Maybe on the perimeter or by beefy centers in the paint, but we have some of the best perimeter defenders in the league and Al Horford, who is still one of the best big man defenders in the league, to make up for that. He’ll slot right into the Robert Williams III roaming center role and add his length to contests at the rim, while Al comes in to match against Embiid/Giannis/Jokic, and Jrue, D-White and the Jays lock up the perimeter.
He’s definitely no AD on defense but he’s no slouch, especially if you have the pieces to surround him like the C’s do.
Al Horford is old and won’t be a threat in the playoffs and most of the regular season. Putting two centers on the floor will make them really slow.
Watching him in the Robert Williams role would be hilarious. I would love to watch that. I think he’ll get lost out there.
All Al needs to do at this point is guard the players I named as best he can if we match up and hit open 3s. If he’s missing, it’s not the end of the world, because everyone else the C’s play can hit them. He doesn’t need to be a “threat.” But I do think his performance in last season’s playoffs was more of an aberration and less of an age-based regression, since he hit them at the highest clip of his career in the regular season before it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a role off the bench would help him carry that performance over into the postseason.
As for KP in the RW3 role, our defense was at its best when we were running double bigs, even when Timelord was limping around. I’m sure KP can step in and provide at least some of what Timelord did, even if it’s just being a big body under the rim when a defender gets blown by. Not that hard to picture.
block stat hunting
Lmao
I agree with you, lmao. I will say that it’s possible to hunt blocks to the detriment of the overall defense. You rush for a block, and the ball handler just dumps it to the guy you were supposed to guard? Uh oh!
Lmao you absolutely don’t know watch basketball then , players are afraid of Pingus.
The health issue is being overblown, every contending team has that issue. AD, Jamal Murray, Lillard. KP played 65 games last year. Of course your best players need to stay healthy it’s a given.
Celts are pretty good at load management. Al Horford sits in a time capsule during the off-season
In fairness to the 2023 season Horford just had we’ve BEEN playing 5-out with lots of interior blocks, Zinger gives us the chance to dynamically also play some decent 5-IN like Horford used to
The difference is that wings can guard both the Boston guys so you can switch a Tatum/porzingis PNR and live with the results.
You can’t switch a Dame/Giannis PNR because Dame is blowing past anyone strong enough to guard Giannis and anyone quick enough to guard Dame is getting dunked on by Giannis
He probably will thrive on the Celtics, but these preseason numbers don’t mean shit.
Nobody questions the fit. We question his health.
We also question Celtics fans forcing “the jays” on the rest of us. Can we come up with a better nickname?
It’s not an amazing nickname but it is low profile and smooth. Would you like to do some brainstorming?
Blue Steel… Can’t go left
License to drive… Would rather shoot a fadeaway 3 then drive to the basket
LeShutUp
They don’t even deserve a nickname. If they were on any team other than Boston, LAL, or Miami no one would give a shit about either of them
They have made a crazy amount of ECF, they would be somewhat household names on any team with that run
yeah man if Brown and Tatum were taking the Knicks on playoff runs every year nobody would notice totally bro
The Jays is a weird and forced? It’s like the simplest most direct nickname they could have.
Now when people were trying Fire and Ice, that shit was corny.
but these preseason numbers don’t mean shit.
Agree and disagree.
Porzingis is not going to shoot 62% from 3 on the season, obviously. However, the fact that he’s seeing wide open looks for the first time in his career does indeed mean a lot. We all know Porzingis is a good shooter already, but we now also know that the Celtics are going to use him effectively. So the “how well is he going to fit in?” question is already looking answered.
I remember that first season of Lakers Melo where he was shooting 50% from 3 for the first few weeks or so.
It’s preseason, but he has really looked good in that starting lineup. It seemed everyone always payed so much attention to Brown and Tatum drives that they never checked Porzingis. He is going to be getting open look after open look. Wouldn’t surprise me if his efficiencies sky rocket like they did with Brogdan last year (he went from 44/31% as a top option to 48/44% as a 3rd-ish option).
Yeah he’s gonna be great for the 40 games where he’s healthy
The usual “it’s just preseason” caveat, but yeah, KP has looked like the missing piece for us so far. We haven’t had a big who’s a real threat as both a popper and a roller since Al’s first stint here, it just adds so much to an offense
I really do hope he works out for you. He was just as open with Luka pnr when he was with us, but didn’t have the numbers even close to what OP is saying.
- he needs to stay healthy.
He really wasn’t. The issue on the Mavs is that it was the Luka show until the last two seconds in the shot clock. Kidd is a terrible coach.
He literally played half a season with Jason Kidd. He was great when healthy under Carlisle.
We just allowed to spit nonsense now? KP played most of his time with Carlisle
Take a look at some of the highlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCXIpU2JYlU&t.
As the second/third man of an action he’s absolutely unstoppable. Catch and shoot from anywhere, can drive and closeout, lob threat, and has quick footwork to catch defenders trying to close on him (watch him break ankles).
And on defense he’s been much better than I thought. He’s poised and uses his body without getting baited. I’m stoked for this season. Health is an issue for sure, but I’m hoping that his role will be less taxing than previous seasons.
Mavs are my second team so I watched a good bit of KP in Dallas - not that he was a bad player then but he’s improved leaps and bounds from those days in almost every facet of his game. he’s actually a damn good post player now which was something that was noticeably lacking when he was a Mav
in Dallas he was the de facto #2 behind Luka, now next to Tatum and Brown he can settle into a #3 scoring role on most nights. Boston is also a much better team when it comes to perimeter defense so there won’t be as much pressure on him to cover for guys getting beat off the dribble
as you said really comes down to health but at full strength the on-court payoff looks really exciting, provides so much space and versatility to our offense
Carlisle stopped using him as a post up player because he was awful and it resulted in a bad shot or turnover almost every time. People blaming Carlisle for “using him incorrectly” just didn’t watch him in the post enough during that time period. Carlisle is a great coach and knows how to get the most efficient offense possible.
However, the numbers say KP has improved dramatically in those same situations with his time in Washington, so he’s obviously made improvements.
The crazy thing is so far. I think we’ve posted KP up maybe once all preseason. He’s just rolling and spotting up
yea he’s greatly improved the weaknesses in early post game, attacking switches etc and really refined his game just in terms of knowing his spots on the court and when to rise up. he’d be a much better complementary player to luka now.
next improvement i want to see is getting him corner looks. he’s always been solely an above the break 3 point shooter and with his shooting ability getting open corner looks for him could be lethal. horford was the same way up until we really started weaponizing it the past couple seasons. hoping to see the same here.
No, because Luka wouldn’t pass him the ball when KP had a mismatch. The same problem surfaced again with Christian Wood. The team would freeze him out and then finally pass it to him and wonder why he would miss.
I just think that Carlisle’s decision to reduce KP’s role to “stand in the corner and be ready to catch and shoot” was a big reason it didn’t work out on the Mavs. undoubtedly KP wasn’t as good as a post player as he is now but his role in Dallas was almost insulting to his talent. they could’ve easily gotten him some easy baskets with some pick and pops or rim runs but they almost completely stopped going to that PnR by the end of his tenure in Dallas
at the end of the day though I think KP needed to go to Washington where he’d have a lot more freedom to operate not playing with Luka/Carlisle and more importantly no pressure to win, that situation helped him really hone his game and now the Celtics are getting a much better version of him than Dallas got
For me, the question isn’t about fit, it’s literally just health. If he can stay healthy, I consider the C’s a heavy favorite, even over the Bucks. He is such a good fit.
Pingus is offbrand Kevin Durant
Preseason dude
If the PnR with Luka didn’t work, it won’t be any better with Tatum
Maybe but Lmao mavs fans staying salty now that both KP and Jalen Brunson had career years last year away from Luka.
KP had career years with Luka too. He just couldn’t stay healthy.
Cool. I think KP is a great guy, and I hope it works.
KPs numbers were not much different in Washington than when he was healthy with us
Lol
Good one. KP doesn’t roll. He wants to shoot 3’s
Cognitive dissonance is one hell of a dug. One day you will admit Luka is overrated
I love dugs, so
Celtics actually pass the ball
You do?
lol. He was that wide open with Luka, but he couldn’t hit a shot to save his life.
We’ll see if he can maintain this level of play the entire season.
38.5% last year on 5.5 attempts in 65 games which could’ve easily been 70 if we didn’t shut him down. The year before he was shooting 28.3% on the Mavs which sky rocketed to 36.7% on the Wizards immediately. He’s elite in the post too where passed the eye test and statistically. He’ll be alright lmfao
He missed shots in dallas because he was fucking miserable
He was doing pretty good last year to. Every year it always is the same question… can he stay healthy? I hope he does
Dude is gone look like an absolute hero. Between Porzingis looking like an all nba guy in Boston and Beal shooting 110% in Phoenix the Wizards subreddit might very well collapse into a hellmouth this season.
Nah, we happy for KP, and Beal was always going to shine as a 2nd/3rd option. Beal overstayed his welcome here, and KP deserved to be on a contender. Worked out pretty well considering.
Im confused as to why the wizards felt like they needed to blow everything up
The Wiz have been making moves to stay stuck in 8th seed/play-in purgatory for years when they should’ve hit the bullet and gone full rebuild ages ago.
This is a great question. You can’t be too excited about these guys for their new teams if they really didn’t accomplish anything together.
what do you mean, wizards fans have been begging for a rebuild for years. they made some good trades in the past, which allowed them to get KP and Kuzma, but the bench was horrible and the starters could never stay on the floor together. with no assets to play with and Beals horrible contract, the teams ceiling was getting like the 8 seed and get bounced by whichever team won the east that year
So fucking mad that we couldnt trade for him. Was salary fillers + 17th pick really not good enough?
Too bad both those teams gotta go through the Cavs and TT 😤
cavs have to beat the knicks first