It's the Injuries, Stupid

Excellent article, well written with good info. Although I agree with the four “important” players listed above, one can’t overlook the impact of a healthy and developing Perkins, Rondo with improved offense, nor Delonte with better handles and improved decision-making.

We’re 10-8 in our last 18 games and that is without Wally, Tony Allen, Kandi, sometimes no Veal, sometimes no Gomes and no West and now Pierce.

Injuries are excuses for the weak.

Again, how is Memphis not called on for tanking?

A couple of thoughts on injuries:

1. I’ve been thinking about a certain amount of “nagging” type injuries as normal where and tear during the season. Sort of a marginal injury expectation – some guys on your team will get hurt, its the NBA dummy, and you better be prepared.

2. Additionally anyone with a chronic condition or Delonte West (every possible injury) should be expected to miss time beyond the category one injuries.

3. The fluke injuries are ones you can’t really plan for / mitigate against, instead you have to have an acceptable guy deep on the bench, and if in the title hunt make a move.

Jefferson, Gomes, Kandi, Scal, maybe Perkins, all fall in group 1 IMO.

Group 2 would have Wally, Theo, West, maybe Perkins

Group 3 (the flukes) would have Pierce and Allen.

Sure we had some bad luck in group 1 (more guys with injuries and more games than I’d expect) and we got no luck with group 2 as Wally played less than expected, Theo played not at all, and West had his usual round of injuries that both sidelined him and kept him from being 100% effective. However, it was the fluke injuries, Allen and Pierce that killed us. Take those away and I think we win the Atlantic. I’m very optimistic regardless of who we get next year for a strong playoff run.

Injuries have little to do with team basketball. If your best players are hurt you are sometimes overmatched by good teams, but injuries are no excuse for shoddy, sloppy clueless basketball and lack of effort on defense.

I guess the “too young” excuse was wearing thin.

I still have to disagree that the “four” are the most significant parts of this team. No mention was made of the PG who triggers the fast break, runs the show and in the case of Rondo, plays excellent defense. Without West and Rondo this team goes nowhere despite the “four”.

Brendan – I like your categorization. Wally, IMO, slides between groups 2 and 3 at least because many of his missed games I think were because of the fluke “series” of ankle turns. One turn maybe is category 1, but 3 sprains? His chronic knee caused him to miss a few games early (Group 2), and perhaps it contributed to the ankle sprains, but I think he does cross perhaps all 3 groups. Jefferson had his appendix out, so his 7 missed games early (and slow return to full minutes), I think are Group 3 also.

LB3533 – The main reason the Cs win very many games at all is Pierce, his presence is the most important factor by far. They are 3-23 (wins over Memphis, Portland, and a LeBron-less and listless Cavs team) without him in the line-up this year. Hopefully, these other players getting better in the coming years and some acquisitions diminishes their dependence on Pierce, but, even as good as Jefferson is, Pierce is nearly the whole show. Perhaps if Allen and Wally had stayed heathly they could have won a few more games in Pierce’s absence, but not a lot I fear.

we had a bad year of injuries- bad- i hope it will be our turn for some health and teeny hurts. tony a is our biggest concern. we need him back to a reasonable facsimile to before he went down.

moskqq – The top four players on each team were determined mainly by minutes per game played, although modified by current impact. Future potential was not factored in to determining the top four. You may be right that Rondo will be one of the key players next year and beyond. But the reality is that he is not yet.

Petula and Hank, very well done. And substantive to boot…

I know for a fact that NURSE RIVERS wrote this article. ONe of the worse of all time!

Good article. I just feel like the side-text quotation dealy was used a little too much and with too many colors.

Yeah…

Call me crazy, but I think Virginia is gonna go all the way next year ;D

EXACTIMENTI.

The season is already tiresome !

Clearly the season is over for all the lottery teams, and the only thing left is the reverse position posturing. Its curious who gets hurt next, and the Celtics are taking, perhaps in retaliation to Bogut dropping out, are withholding PP and jefferson both out tonight in the double whammy game with Milwaukee, their biggest challenge for pick 2.

Yeah the obvious big injuries were a problem to the Celtics this year. But there were a number of lesser ones that shouldn’t be overlooked. In some very real ways this years team was even younger than last years (although some may argure that some of our “young players” should have been well on their way to becoming experienced players.) Its easy to forget D. West’s injury that limited his preseason participation. It set the team back about ten games, without the subsequent problems caused by trying to determine his new role on the club. There were even games that would probably have been won if Brain Scalabrine were not out injured — believe it or not! I am sure other readers may remember other little injuries, that really prevented this team from “gelling.” (These injuries only encouraged the “mad Doc” to experiment more.) The team played fairly decently after Pierce came back because some of the players had played together long enough as a unit that they could now withstand injuries such as the one to Ryan Gomes.

I didn’t expect the Celtics to go to the finals this year but I expected to enjoy watching their games with more regularity. I didn’t — a big reason was the injuries and not just the big obvious ones. So yeah it was the injuries.

Brickowski – What is wearing thin is your comments. Have you never played a sport in your life?! Talent is what wins games. If you are not as talented of a player and you are guarding someone better than you are, you are going to look like you are playing bad defense and are sloppy with the ball. My Rec team is a great “team” but put us in a higher division and we will look like a bunch of scrubs. If your key players are injured you will not win consistently. Period. If your best players are hurt, especially when you aren’t at the top talent-wise anyway, you are always overmatched. Not “sometimes”. Why don’t you field a squad of your buddies and go scrimmage the Celtics bench and tell us how come you looked like you weren’t making an effort on D and were sloppy. That is because you suck and they have talent.

By the way, your comment in the other link about that “sleazebag” of a coach in the D league speaks volumes about you. Anyone who would prefer a sleazebag as a key face of the Celtics is no fan…

hankfinkel-

The groups are really meant as forward looking planning purposes.

I consider Wally a group two’er because you know he’s gonna miss time, the fact that he hurt his ankle, probably prevented him from hurting his knee. In effect he’ll have had more rest for his knee than he ever expected to get until retirement: that’s why I expect a good year from him next year (at least the first half.) The ankles were acute, not chronic, because it was two injuries (likely the second ankle sprain was in part caused by the first ankle being weak) which never healed and were reagrevated. Hopefully the surgery allievates that injury and its not a concern, but for Wally its more or less irrelvant from a planning standpoint. Any GM that has Wally should expect him to be limited by injuries in both minutes per game and total games played.

As for Jefferson’s appendicitis – again we’re talking about the quantity of injuries, and I think you expect some of your otherwise healthy players to miss time do to injury. Jefferson’s injury was a fluke (and thankfully can’t happen again) but it should be the kind of thing a team can get through.

Brick,

I agree Doc is awful, but look at the winning %‘s with Pierce and without. Factor in that they lost their best defender in Allen and another good defender and rebounder in Perkins was hobbled – these injuries are a part of why the team is sloppy. For an outsider to address these as big reasons why the C’s underperformed is not an excuse, its analysis. Now this analysis leads me to two questions:

Q: Even taking injuries into consideration, could the team have been better?
A: Yes – better system and rotations could have made it easier to plug in guys when others got hurt, and have them play well as a team.

Q: Is the roster constructed in a fundamentally bad way (w/r/t injuries) that this will be an onngoing problem?
A: I don’t think so. It was probably unwise to carry 15 players thus making us unable to sign help with 10/15 day contracts. But I don’t think that made us lose more games, as the help would have been marginally better than whoever was here. Secondly although there are some guys with chronic problems: Wally and Theo; and guys who get injured all the time: Perkins and West; I do think the overall age of the team and depth should have let us mitigate those risks. Going forward a big question for Danny to address will be: Is PP’s year a sign that he’s breaking down, or just a fluke, because if he’s breaking down and going to miss 20 games a year we are in big trouble.