00:00 How are we feeling about this roster as compared to last year and what major questions do you
00:05 have going forward?
00:06 Oh man, well can we first can we have a fair and balanced conversation about Chris F's
00:12 Porzingis?
00:13 Oh, okay.
00:14 No, because like I want to talk about there's like a Twitter guy, there's like a kind of
00:19 Twitter guy these days who is like, okay, what this what this kind of person is doing
00:26 is like taking video highlight videos of Porzingis from last year in Washington with the Wizards
00:33 and acting like this is like the Rosetta Stone to understanding the entire career of this
00:38 person and I just want to like, okay, Chris F's Porzingis is a really good basketball
00:45 player.
00:46 He also is like, was it hard for you to admit that?
00:49 No, it's not hard for me to admit that at all.
00:51 I don't think I think what's going on is that when it's convenient, people want to look
01:01 at the previous season and say that like improvement is linear.
01:06 Whatever you did last season, you should be able to replicate that the subsequent season.
01:11 But this guy has not been a good player for like most of the last four years.
01:17 He had a really good year last year, and I think what's going on is that he's a player
01:23 who everyone talks about how he misses a lot of time, like he's injury prone, he misses
01:29 games.
01:30 I think the bigger concern is that when he's hurt and he does play, he's ineffective.
01:35 And so not only are you missing some games, but like part of the reason that he wasn't
01:41 as effective in Dallas as he was last year in Washington is that he wasn't healthy.
01:45 And so what that affects is like is all are all the things that the Celtics are ostensibly
01:51 bringing him in to do.
01:52 So they've talked a lot about like beating mismatches in the post to scoring out of the
01:58 post.
01:59 He was great out of the post last year.
02:01 I looked up, he shot 61 percent on post ups last year.
02:04 The previous three seasons, it's 46 percent, 50 percent, 42 percent.
02:09 He's not like this is not a player who has traditionally been a good post up player.
02:14 He had a really good year last year doing it.
02:18 The rim protection.
02:19 So like last year, opponents shot fifty three point five percent within six feet of the
02:27 hoop when he was the primary defender.
02:29 The previous two seasons, it was up at fifty seven percent, which isn't good.
02:33 So yes, he was a good rim protector last year.
02:36 He's still not nearly the rim protector he was early in his career.
02:40 And for the previous two seasons, when Dallas brought him in to do that job on a team that
02:45 had real ambitions, he struggled to do that.
02:48 So this is not to say like I don't even know what to predict for next year.
02:53 Like if he's healthy, I think he'll be really good.
02:55 I think I think there's there's good reasons to believe he could replicate some of what
03:01 he did last year.
03:02 But it's it's totally fair to wonder about whether last year was a fluke.
03:08 And I think a good comparison point would be like a player like Julius Randall, who
03:13 has made made all NBA teams two of the last three years, but is sandwiched in between
03:18 those two seasons is a season where he was terrible.
03:22 And I think, you know, a lot of players who aren't, you know, like the top 10 players
03:27 in the league are going to have years where they're better than other years, depending
03:30 on how healthy they are or what system they're in.
03:33 And so I don't know that like when when it comes to Porzingis, I feel like I think the
03:39 Celtics have a lot of eggs in that basket, especially with the the two years they added
03:45 on to his deal.
03:48 I think I think they're paying him fair market rate.
03:50 I just it's not the gamble I would choose to make if I was running a team.
03:56 And and I think the I'd rather like run it back with smart and Grant Williams or if you're
04:02 going to do that smart trade, take all the assets that they could have got instead.
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04:26 Do you believe they're worth?
04:31 So on paper, are we saying that Porzingis like how many games are you giving Porzingis
04:35 on paper?
04:36 Well, I mean, you're.
04:39 If I give him 50 games, I think like 50 out of 80, if I give him 55 games, let's say he
04:44 plays two thirds of the games.
04:46 I think they probably win right around the same number of games they won last year.
04:50 I don't I don't think they're meaningfully worse or better.
04:53 I just I think I think they have like a more likely downside than they did last year.
05:00 But I think, you know, if everything goes right, they're just as good a team as they
05:03 were.
05:04 I'm going to ask you to do what Celtics front office had to do when considering whether
05:10 or not to make this trade.
05:12 Put yourself inside, you know, Brad Stevens said Mike Zarin said Austin Aikens said whoever
05:16 else and project.
05:18 You know, we don't know.
05:19 We're not going to know until we actually see it.
05:21 But we are projecting.
05:23 Looking back on, you know, he's he's bounced around a little bit, but let's forget New
05:27 York.
05:28 Let's forget Dallas.
05:30 Let's forget last year in Washington specifically.
05:33 Let's say that was some sort of a turning point.
05:36 He's entering his prime years age wise, all that good stuff that people like to reflect
05:41 upon.
05:42 David Aldridge, you know, who watched him very closely there was on this show and talked
05:45 about how in his mind, Porzingis is your perfect third star, which obviously is what the Celtics
05:50 are asking him to be.
05:52 How do you believe he fits into this system and what the Celtics are going to want from
05:57 him?
05:58 Yeah, I think so.
06:02 Once what I think is that once it became clear that Derek White needed to play more, I think
06:07 at some point last year it became clear Derek White was the best guard on this team.
06:12 And once you acknowledge that, you have to acknowledge something we saw in the playoffs,
06:18 which is that Derek White is not as good at Marcus Smart as Marcus Smart at guarding up.
06:24 And so I think if you have more lineups with Derek White on the floor and a higher percentage
06:29 of minutes with Derek White on the floor, you're sort of already conceding that you
06:33 probably can't switch on defense quite as much as you were switching before that it's
06:38 going to make sense to play more standard coverages.
06:42 So once you decide that, I think there's some reasons to try to get bigger.
06:48 Porzingis is really good in the drop.
06:50 In fact, it's probably the only defense he's comfortable playing.
06:53 He's not someone that's going to be out on the perimeter checking guys and staying with
06:57 like water bug guards on the perimeter.
07:01 You want him around the rim and hopefully if he's healthy when he's been healthy in
07:05 his career, he's done a pretty good job protecting the rim.
07:08 So I think in that sense, it's like it's fair to those two things go together.
07:16 More Derek White, less switching.
07:20 Porzingis makes sense in that scheme.
07:22 I think all those pieces do kind of fit.
07:41 [Music]
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