The 2014 Celtics probably aren't as good as the 2013 Celtics, who were not a very good basketball team.
Why would we be worse? We only really lost Humphries over the offseason, and our core is at the point where they should be improving or at worst plateauing. Is it the lack of Jordan Crawford?
The lack of Jordan Crawford just hurts me emotionally, not intellectually.
We had a better backcourt, a better frontcourt, better rotations... Healthy Rondo's a definite plus but only if he actually sees the floor.
Since the start of last season, the backcourt really only lost Crawford and Lee as players of note, and added Smart, Thornton, and a healthier Rondo. Frontcourt just lost Hump, and added Zeller and Turner (could be backcourt depending where he plays). Plus whatever Young and Bynum give us (probably not much this year). And guys like Sully/Oly/Bradley are likely to improve. I don't see it.
Tell you what, I'll bet you a TP our record is better this season than last. I'll even give it to you if we tie last season's record.
This pretty much sums it up.
I'm not going to assert the C's will go out and tear the league up. But I have a hard time seeing how this team is worse than last year's team going into the season.
Sheesh - our most used front court pairings last year did not feature a player over 6' 10" -- and a huge amount of the time no player over 6' 9".
This year we have two guys who will likely get large minutes up front who are 7 footers. I don't care that neither is an elite "rim protector" -- that's going to result in an improved front-court.
As to the 'advanced stats' thing -- Hump posted an inflated PER because when he WAS on the floor we fed him the ball a LOT -- his touches per minute was very high. PER is normalized against minutes but is known to be inflated by touch rate. Hump averaged 1.92 per minute. For comparison, Jeff Green - our supposed 'go to guy' in the minds of some - averaged just 1.49 touches per minute. Humphries' touch rate was 29% higher!
A cynical mind might suggest that we were 'pumping up' Humphries' stats. But that's just cynicism, ... right?
At any rate - to return to the point, while I liked Hump and thought he played well for us, I have a hard time seeing how replacing his minutes with more from Zeller and Olynyk is going to make us worse.