Regression Toward the Mean

It's been a tough patch for the Celtics - five straight losses and eight losses out of the last 10 games. Add to this that the last two losses were blowouts to the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Denver Nuggets. With this many bad days at the office, you can only imagine how tough it must be just to show up for work.  This spate of losing certainly has not inspired me as a fan to write more blog posts about the Celtics.

Most everyone had predicted that the Celtics - after trading away Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett and with Rondo still recovering from knee surgery - would be a team in the NBA cellar this season.  So what we're seeing is simply regression towards the mean and that the early season wins were simply a brief spike of overachievement.  The Celtics' lack of All Star talent and experienced big men has finally catch up with them.

There is some faint hope that things may get a little better (unless you're one rooting for the Celtics to tank to improve their chances in the lottery).  The Celtics did trade away Courtney Lee for Jerryd Bayless to give them more depth at the point guard position.  Bayless played in his first game as a Celtic last night in the blowout at Denver.  But it wasn't a game to evaluate whether Bayless impact on the team with him not having any chance to practice with the team nor much time for learning the Celtic playbook.  

On paper, Bayless offers the Celtics a quality point guard run the team until Rondo's return and allows Jordan Crawford to return to his more natural position as a shooting guard.  And upon Rondo's return, Bayless could serve as a quality backup point guard.  Rondo also won't be logging a lot of minutes right away, so Bayless will also allow Rondo to get himself back into game shape.  Of course, this will mean a diminished role for Phil Pressey, which is already happening (Pressey played on 13 minutes in the Denver game to Bayless' 25 minutes).

Of course, Bayless has yet proven himself to be an amazing playmaker.  He's never averaged more than 4 assists in a season nor has he been a regular starter for any team he's played on.

The Bayless trade should help shore up a thin backcourt, but this doesn't do anything to solve the Celtics undersized front line and lack of interior defense.  But these are problems that might not get solved until the off-season through the draft or trades.