Numbers for thought: The night when Boston Butterfingers showed up
Numbers for thought is a series that selects certain pieces of statistics before each game (or let's say every now and then to make this a more attainable goal) that may or may not be meaningful (you know, small sample size, outliers or whatever) but nonetheless provide entertainment value (or so I hope).
The Celtics are a -mostly- inexperienced but talented bunch right now. They have a great coach, a triple-double machine PG who's more focused on the game than he was last year, some veterans but in the end they're a bunch who need seasoning. Lots of it. Like, not just salt and pepper, but coriander and cumin and stuff. They're really fun to watch, I have already almost completely forgotten about last season. Yet that does not mean they will have some annoying performances from time to time. The Raptors game was one of those nights.
*6478: That's the number of days since the last time the Celtics had a game with 27 turnovers (actually counting one team TO, that number goes up 28 but for historical statistical accuracy, I'm gonna pretend we had 27 TOs). With a starting lineup of Williams-Wesley-Walker-Fox-Szabo *paging tb727*, the Celtics turned the ball over to the Warriors 27 times on February 19th, 1997. Not surprisingly, they lost the game. But in those guys' defense, their opponent turned the ball over 17 times so they showed some effort on defense. Compare that to the Raptors who had only 7 frigging TOs, and at least none of them had 5 TOs in 12 minutes (I'm looking at you, Evan.) Speaking of which:
*2: That's the number of teams that won a game since 1985-1986 while turning the ball over 20 or more times than their opponents did. Both games went to overtime, which helped the turnover differential, but yeah, the Celtics came quite close to being the only team that beat their opponents while having a net TO of 20+. We almost made history, guys. By the way, when the Hawks beat the Supersonics in 2002 in one of those games, our old friend Jason Terry had a double-double with 15 points and 10 assists.
*107.8: But yeah, despite that weird night, the Celtics are still scoring a lot! The Celtics currently rank 2nd in the league in points per game category, which indicates a huge transition from the "grit and balls" era of basketball. The Celtics had not averaged 100+ points since 2008-2009, and the last season they scored at a higher rate than this season so far was 1990-91 when the roster had names like Bird, Mchale, Parish and Lewis, so yeah. This is definitely something to watch. Speaking of changes:
*15.5 That's the offensive boards per game the Celtics are grabbing. 15.5! The highest season average for the Celtics in the Big 3 era was 10.6, and that was before Garnett was injured and Doc simply gave up on getting ORBs. The Celtics currently rank 2nd in the league in that category. Let's see if that'll hold up against the Pacers, but since Rondo's getting more rebounds per game (9.0) than Hibbert is doing currently (8.8), I'm somewhat confident in that.
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*6478: That's the number of days since the last time the Celtics had a game with 27 turnovers (actually counting one team TO, that number goes up 28 but for historical statistical accuracy, I'm gonna pretend we had 27 TOs). With a starting lineup of Williams-Wesley-Walker-Fox-Szabo *paging tb727*, the Celtics turned the ball over to the Warriors 27 times on February 19th, 1997. Not surprisingly, they lost the game. But in those guys' defense, their opponent turned the ball over 17 times so they showed some effort on defense. Compare that to the Raptors who had only 7 frigging TOs, and at least none of them had 5 TOs in 12 minutes (I'm looking at you, Evan.) Speaking of which:
*2: That's the number of teams that won a game since 1985-1986 while turning the ball over 20 or more times than their opponents did. Both games went to overtime, which helped the turnover differential, but yeah, the Celtics came quite close to being the only team that beat their opponents while having a net TO of 20+. We almost made history, guys. By the way, when the Hawks beat the Supersonics in 2002 in one of those games, our old friend Jason Terry had a double-double with 15 points and 10 assists.
*107.8: But yeah, despite that weird night, the Celtics are still scoring a lot! The Celtics currently rank 2nd in the league in points per game category, which indicates a huge transition from the "grit and balls" era of basketball. The Celtics had not averaged 100+ points since 2008-2009, and the last season they scored at a higher rate than this season so far was 1990-91 when the roster had names like Bird, Mchale, Parish and Lewis, so yeah. This is definitely something to watch. Speaking of changes:
*15.5 That's the offensive boards per game the Celtics are grabbing. 15.5! The highest season average for the Celtics in the Big 3 era was 10.6, and that was before Garnett was injured and Doc simply gave up on getting ORBs. The Celtics currently rank 2nd in the league in that category. Let's see if that'll hold up against the Pacers, but since Rondo's getting more rebounds per game (9.0) than Hibbert is doing currently (8.8), I'm somewhat confident in that.
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For other "Numbers for thought" posts, click here.
For more of semioticus's articles, click here.
To follow semioticus on Twitter, click here.
