Nylon Calculus: Celtics-76ers win probabilities, style, matchups and more
By Justin
The clash of the young versus the … still young but not quite as young as you’d think. This is billed as the match-up of the future with two of the youngest teams in the league who double as two of the best teams in the league. That’s not too misleading, as you can see in the graph below.
Boston is indeed one of the youngest rosters in the league, and they’re a little bit younger without Kyrie Irving playing. But the 76ers are clustered closer to the median group. They do rely on veterans like JJ Redick, Amir Johnson, Marco Belineli, and Ersan Ilyasova; those guys are in their 30’s. Also, Robert Covington is already 27-years-old, and I don’t think most people realize that. The real trick here is considering Markelle Fultz, the teenager, as part of their future already. If you only focus on their cores, these are indeed two young teams, but let’s not forget their old guys. After all, Houston, Cleveland, and Golden State are full of them.
— Justin Willard (@AcrossTheCourt)
Defensive matchups
Al Horford had a difficult undertaking in the first round, as he drew Giannis Antetokounmpo, who had overwhelmed the Celtics during the regular season. Unfortunately for Boston, the Greek Freak continued his dominance during the playoffs. He proved difficult to contain, attacking the restricted area on roughly half of his field goal attempts and averaging 26 points per game on 62 percent true shooting and 28 percent usage. To his credit, Horford did his own damage on offense and otherwise gave a valiant effort on defense.
The second round promises to be just as challenging, if not more so. With Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid leading the way for the Sixers, the Celtics have their work cut out for them, and Horford’s versatility is poised to be tested.
The following chart shows how Boston matched up defensively against Philadelphia during the regular season. Each line indicates the defender who spent the most time guarding a specific offensive player on a given possession. The thicker the line, the more frequent the matchup.
Horford has spent about 30 percent of his time as the primary defender on Simmons, with Embiid and Dario Saric coming next at 24 and 18 percent, respectively.* These matchup have naturally depended on whether the Celtics are going with a big or small lineup.
In their last head-to-head game in January, for instance, Horford started out on Simmons and Aron Baynes on Embiid. With a smaller lineup in the final minutes, however, Jaylen Brown was on Simmons and Horford on Embiid. Of course, times have changed for both teams since that game (Kyrie Irving is out for Boston, while Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova are in for Philadelphia, among other developments), but it’s a safe bet that Horford will be serving in a crucial defensive capacity.
* Note that the Celtics-Sixers game in London does not have matchup data, so there are only three games captured by this analysis.
— Positive Residual (@presidual)
Offensive styles
These charts are not meant to evaluate whether an offense is good or bad. They are designed to help illustrate how teams go about the goal of trying to put the ball in the basket. Each team’s offense is evaluated on four stylistic spectrums.
Ball movement is measured with the average touch time for each team, from the NBA’s player tracking statistics. A lower average touch time means the ball is moving from player to player more quickly.
Player movement is measured with a combination different NBA.com tracking statistics, and works out to average distance traveled per 24 seconds of offensive possession.
Pace is measured with the average length of an offensive possession from Inpredictable, a more accurate representation for how quickly a team is working than traditional pace.
Shot selection is measured with MoreyBall percentage — in this case the percentage of a team’s true shooting opportunities that came at the rim, from the free throw line, or on a 3-pointer. It’s a generalized measure but captures something about how much each team hews to the shots that are, on average, the most efficient.
On the graph below you’ll see a line for each team’s offense. As the line moves away from the center of the graph on each axis you’re seeing more of that stylistic trait. For example, shot selection shows a (hypothetically) more efficient shot selection the further you are from center. Here’s how the Celtics and 76ers match up.
— Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)
Win probabilities
To project the series, I am using my in-season game projection model. The model is trained off historical game data, and accounts for rest, travel, team strength, and matchup. Since I began using the model to predict outcomes, I have been able to correctly identify the winner in about 70 percent of games.
Despite having home court advantage in the series, my model see the Celtics as an underdog in their second-round series against the 76ers. The most likely outcome is a 76ers win in six with four of the five most likely outcomes ending in the 76ers moving on the the Conference Finals. The health of the Celtics plays heavily in this series, especially if Jaylen Brown is also to miss extended time after he has been playing like a star in the playoffs. The Celtics’ best chance is to hold serve on each home game and force a Game 7. Look for the 76ers to move on, but this series will be full of competitive games throughout.
— Jacob Goldstein (@JacobEGoldstein)