Apr 11, 2014; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Celtics guard Avery Bradley (0) drives the ball against Charlotte Bobcats forward Josh McRoberts (11) in the second half at TD Garden. The Celtics defeated the Bobcats 106-103. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
The Boston Celtics are committed to Avery Bradley’s development — to the tune of four-years, $32 million. It seems like a high price tag for a player who has yet post an above average mark in either PER or WS/48 for an entire season, but Bradley has shown the potential to be an elite wing defender and the Celtics seem to believe that they can turn him into a reliably positive contributor at the offensive end as well.
To this point in his career Bradley’s production has been drastically influenced by injuries — both his own and those of his teammates. He’s never played more 64 games in his four seasons in the NBA and with Rajon Rondo in and out of the lineup, Bradley has often been asked to play more of a facilitator role than is good for him (or the Celtics). But even still, there has been some growth over the past three seasons[1. I left out Bradley’s rookie season since he played just 162 minutes] and you can see how the Celtics have gradually moved him out of that role as offensive initiator.
Only shots attempts, trips to the free throw line and turnovers are counted as possessions used in the calculation of Usage Rate, so what we’re seeing by the steady increase of Bradley’s Usage Rate is that he is becoming more and more involved as a scorer. This is also one of the reasons his Assist Percentage dropped to such a low level. One of the really promising signs here is how absurdly low Bradley’s Turnover Percentage was last season. If he can maintain that level as a complementary scorer/sometimes point guard, it’s a huge boon for the Celtics’ offense.
The glaring concern on this table is his True Shooting Percentage. While Bradley increased his three-point percentage to 39.5% last season on a career-high 3.3 attempts per game, the totality of his contributions as a shooter are still fairly inefficient. We can see from his Nylon Calculus shot chart that a lot of it has to do with his shot selection and inefficiency at the rim.
Bradley’s three-point prowess was centered mostly around a handful of hot spots on each wing and a fairly strong performance from the right corner. The amazing thing is how many long two-pointers he took, from right inside the top of the arc. While Bradley shot well above the league average from most of those locations, the league average itself makes those shots fairly inefficient. Over the past decade or so the league average on mid-range jumpers has been about 39%, which equates to a three-point percentage of about 26%. So although he’s been making those shots at a very good rate, the fact that he’s taking so many of them is dragging down the value of his offensive contributions. If he were to move some of those shots behind the arc, even if he made them at a slightly lower rate, the Celtics would be better off because he’d be getting three points for every make instead of two. Having shown he can make three-pointers, it seems like it would be in his best interest to make altering his shot pattern a big priority next season.
Being able to make three-pointers consistently is the most basic of Bradley’s offensive responsibilities, something he appears ready to do moving forward. Pair that with his defense and ability to protect the ball and the Celtics have themselves a solid, young contributor on the wing. But at nearly $8 million dollars a year, for a player who will turn 24 early next season, the Celtics must be thinking there is more development coming.
The problem is, when we wrap all of his contributions together, it’s hard to see exactly what the Celtics are looking at. Nylon Calculus contributor Jacob Frankel, has done research on the development of players, by position, across a variety of different statistical categories, including Daniel Myers’ Advanced Statistical Plus-Minus (ASPM[2. A box score derived comprehensive metric that includes both offensive and defensive contributions and correlates very well with other Advanced Plus/Minus statistics]). With some help from Jacob I was able put to together a graph that shows the expected ASPM development curve for a guard who entered the league at Bradley’s age[3. I’ve again left off Bradley’s rookie season because, at 162 minutes, the sample was just too small] with his level of initial production. The red line shows Bradley’s actual ASPM progression.
ASPM is defined so that 0 represents an average player’s contribution. Going by the expected development curve, last year should have been the season where Bradley cross that threshold into above average contributions. Instead it looks like he would need one more season, at the absurdly high rate of growth[3. The only season where the expected growth curve even approaches the level of growth he showed last season is between ages 21 and 22] he showed last season just to get to that average threshold. The big jump up last year was mostly because he increased his TS% and USG%, while lowering his TO%, and it came despite a small decline in his defensive performance (as calculated by the defensive component of ASPM). Essentially he bounced back from a horrible 2012-2013 season and ended up back in the same spot he started during his first full season.
It’s not entirely ludicrous to suppose that he could repeat last year’s development and hit that average threshold — he continues to protect the ball, bounces back a little at the defensive end, finishes a little better at the rim and adjusts his shot selection pattern so that three-pointers make up a much bigger portion of his shots. But even if all of those things worked out together, he’d still be slightly behind the expected curve and looking to play catch up. Players typically hit their statistical prime right around age 27 or 28 so the Celtics will have Bradley under contract right up to that point. He certainly looks to be an above average contributor for most of the life of that contract but these numbers imply he may never hit the statistical ceiling the projections saw for him.
The wild card, of course, is the Celtics, an extremely smart organization with much greater statistical resources and acumen than my own. The contract they gave Bradley is a huge indicator that they see something that leads them to believe he’s on an entirely different developmental trajectory.
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