The Pistons desperately need Avery Bradley to be the player he’s become
By Jared Dubin
Avery Bradley’s Celtics career has come to an end. After agreeing to a max contract with Gordon Hayward, the Celtics had to send somebody out to clear enough cap space to fit Hayward’s deal, and Bradley ended up as the odd man out.
The decision makes sense logically, as the only real candidates were Bradley, Jae Crowder and Marcus Smart. (They’re the only players with salaries large enough that shipping them out would have created the requisite space for Hayward.) Crowder is locked in for three more seasons on arguably the best contract in the league, one that pays him only $21,917,475 over that period of time. Smart is headed into the final year of his contract, but he’s still on his rookie pact, which means he’ll be a restricted free agent and the Celtics will have the right to match any deal he signs on the open market.
Bradley is also about to start the final year of his contract, but the Celtics don’t have the same right of first refusal with him. He’s due a hefty raise based on his performance over the last several years and the Celtics weren’t going to be able to give it to him. And so on Friday they sent him to Detroit along with a second-round pick, receiving Marcus Morris in return.
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The player the Celtics sent away is a far better one than they drafted back in 2010, a testament to both their development coaches and Bradley’s work ethic. He’s one of those rare players that has become far more impactful in the league than he was in college. Consider the scouting report on Bradley coming out of the University of Texas:
"Bradley is a somewhat unique prospect in that there really isn’t anyone in the NBA with his skill set, and there are questions about how easily he’ll be able to find a niche. The majority of undersized pure 2’s in the NBA are versatile scorers that can consistently create their own shot, while Bradley on the other hand is a more selective shooter who isn’t adept at getting to the rim, though is also an outstanding defender.Bradley’s lack of anything resembling playmaking skills or a point guard mentality may be his most concerning attribute projecting to the pros, as it’ll be very tough to play him at the 1-spot without great shot-creators around him. While Bradley is capable of making flow-of-the-offense passes to open shooters at times, when he puts the ball on the floor he goes into clear scorer mode, looking exclusively for his own shot, even out of pick-and-roll scenarios. Developing into a more versatile pick-and-roll threat could vastly open up his own offense, while also giving teams another reason to give him playing time. This might be the most important thing to follow as the freshman’s career progresses."
"Defensively is where Bradley projects best to the pro level, but the problem here is he will need to find a proper niche to best put his strengths to use, as his physical makeup is much better suited to defending point guards and combo-guards than it is taller shooting guards. Bigger players will be able to simply shoot over him and overpower him on drives to the basket, things that happened when faced with those situations this year—for example against James Anderson.To Bradley’s credit, one thing he does incredibly well is play outstanding prevent defense off the ball, sticking to his man like glue all over the floor and blocking off passing lanes to keep the ball away. On the ball, his lateral quickness is superb, as is his fundamental stance, and he puts in excellent effort all the time, getting right up into his man no matter where he is on the floor, using his length and hands very well, and always getting a hand up to contest a shot. For all of Bradley’s strengths on defense, however, he has struggled defending the pick-and-roll this season, due in part to his physical nature, as he’s prone to run full force into a well-set pick, getting stuck and not being able to recover, as he doesn’’t have the strength to fight through them.Looking forward, Bradley is an extremely interesting prospect, but where and who he gets drafted by will have a huge impact on his immediate success in the league."
Looking back, pretty much all of that turned out to be true. Bradley is indeed a unique player. He’s undersized for an off-ball guard in today’s NBA. For a while, he was not a very versatile scorer and it hindered his ability to contribute offensively because he was also not suited to being a primary playmaker. Once Bradley ended up next to great shot-creators, however, he flourished as an off-ball option capable of sniping from the outside — 37 percent on five 3-point attempts per game over the last four seasons — and keeping the ball moving with flow-of-the-offense passes. He even developed a nice pick-and-roll game as he moved into his mid-20s.
Bradley indeed made his bones in the NBA defensively, and he indeed has been better suited throughout his career defending ball-handlers than taller off-guards, though he’s become damn good at that over the last few years as well. He’s been one of the best on-ball defenders in the league for quite a while, though, for all the reasons the scouting report suggested he might.
And it’s not a stretch to suggest that it’s because he got drafted where he did that he became the player he eventually became. The Celtics didn’t really know what to do with Bradley early in his career. Doc Rivers got Bradley on the floor for only 31 games during his rookie season, giving him just 162 total minutes. He mostly played on the ball offensively, and he couldn’t make much happen. He came back the following season a better player, and carved out a role as an off-the-bench defensive specialist that just kind of didn’t do anything he couldn’t do offensively. He knew his limits and he stuck to them, for the most part.
It wasn’t until the Celtics moved him off the ball full-time that he really came into his own on both ends of the floor. He wasn’t quite what you’d consider a traditional point guard or a traditional shooting guard — he was just a guard. He could defend either spot, make a few plays with the ball in his hands if they were readily available right in front of him and take advantage of the space afforded to him by better offensive players to find his own shot on occasion. He settled into being a nice fifth starter during Doc’s final season with the Celtics.
When Brad Stevens got to town, he helped Bradley reach new levels of his talent. The Celtics started their re-load, and Bradley was one of the most talented players left, so Stevens just challenged him to do more. While it didn’t necessarily look like he had the capability to stretch beyond what he was, it turned out he actually did.
Bradley ramped up his usage over the last several seasons, diversifying his offense in the process as well. He became one of the best off-ball route-runners in the NBA, capable of finding the holes for a jumper or a cut wherever they presented themselves. His pick-and-roll game came along, as previously mentioned. (He ranked in the 61st percentile among pick-and-roll ball-handlers last season, per Synergy Sports data on NBA.com.) He became not just a decent catch-and-fire weapon, but a knockdown shooter. He learned to make dribble hand-offs his best friend.
And he proved himself capable of defending far more than just primary ball-handlers. Early in his career, Bradley was just the guy that played the pest — he hounded guys up and down the floor because he had to put all his energy into defense in order to have an impact. Once he took over a larger role offensively he had to dial that back, so he learned to make a defensive impact in different ways. Denying passing lanes. Switching onto bigger perimeter players or even true bigs. Making help rotations. All of it. He was rarely out of position and never out of balance. There’s a reason half the league freaked out when he didn’t make an All-Defense Team this season.
Now, though, he’s leaving the environment in which he flourished into all it seemed that he could be and more. After seven years of getting better and better, he has to ply his trade in Detroit. The Pistons don’t have elite shot-creating talent. They don’t run a flowy offense designed around tons of dribble hand-offs that create the type of creases he’s become used to seeing on the regular. They don’t have flexible defenders in the backcourt aside from maybe Langston Galloway, signed earlier this offseason. What they have is a need for a player like Bradley that can knock down shots and defend on the wing. They’ve got him now, and they need him to be the player he’s become.
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The Celtics have shown an ability to get their supporting players paid when they hit the open market. Just ask Evan Turner, Kelly Olynyk and even Amir Johnson. Bradley was on track to join that group. Whether or not he does will largely depend on whether he can still be a Celtic on a team that isn’t the Celtics.