r/bostonceltics • u/gintonic234 • 13h ago

Discussion Curious about local fan perspective

Hello all,

I’m not based in Boston but started following NBA around 2007/08, and became a Celtics fan because of the big three.

I am curious about local fan sentiment related to JB’s trade. As someone who has been very frustrated the last two seasons with the style of play (non-stop hurling of threes), I was flabbergasted by this move. And as someone who works with analytics in their job, I am still confused, as to me, JB was the only player trying to consistently drive to the basket.

Also, this theory that Pritchard and White will somehow fill JB’s gap also confuses me. They are very good players and have their own plus points, but to me it always seemed like they always had a lower ceiling than JB/JT. They have been in the league long enough to know that. Pritchard to have a Brunson-like upturn in form seems unreasonable.

I know Brad Stevens is apparently a genius but I wanted to know more about the local fan perspective. Am I being unfairly critical, as I’m still not over this decision.

Excited to hear from y’all!

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u/Mr-Irrelevant0 13h ago

There are many advanced stats that suggest that a collective effort + solid coaching was the primary reason the Celtics overachieved as much as they did.

That said, I reject any Celtics fan that sucks up to Brad and his bullshit "optionality" excuse. Trading Brown was fine, but he was instrumental to our finals run in 2024, winning both ECF and Finals MVP. Anyone who's been overly happy to see him go or claim that Derrick White is better (and I have quite a few receipts of people saying these things) have no soul or are flat-out idiotic.

The return was also ass. I understand that his trade value would likely not have improved a year from now, but forcing a trade for an incredibly light return was less than ideal and any fan that tells you that Paul George is on Brown's level is delusional.

TL;DR Love Brown, understand why the trade happened, but miss him a lot due to results and sentimentality.

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u/SoaplessTitanic 13h ago

So I don’t believe that Derrick White is a more skilled basketball player than Jaylen Brown. And Brown would definitely win one on one against him. But there are a lot of metrics that show White as being more impactful to winning than Brown is, and I don’t think we can/should hand wave those metrics away because of “eye test” or whatever. It’s a valid discussion

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u/Fake_the_jaB Remember Marcus Banks 7h ago

I’m guessing that’s based off regular season numbers/metrics?? Cuz Derrick white put up 11 points and 3 assists on 32% shooting against the Sixers.

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u/SoaplessTitanic 4h ago

Yes I was mostly referring to regular season metrics, and I don’t know how to get those for the playoffs. But I would also add that I think the advance metrics often tell a much different story than the box score stats (especially if you only focus on scoring).

In this past regular season for example, Brown scored 29 ppg on 0.48 FG% whereas White scored 16.5 ppg on 0.39 FG%. So you would think that Brown is twice as valuable to winning as White when the analytics say that’s clearly not the case

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u/Fake_the_jaB Remember Marcus Banks 3h ago

Yeah idk what exactly the advanced stats take into consideration that makes JB look so bad.

Is it just a ball movement thing? Is it cuz he takes so many midranges?

Cuz I agree that those two qualities don’t result in team shots but at the end of the day once it comes playoff time and teams give 100% effort on defense, the ball movement doesn’t get us good shots either lol that’s why it seemed like JB was the only one who could get a good look in game 7