« on: February 09, 2016, 11:25:12 AM »
You can read
the whole story and watch some videos, but here's the part about Turner:
Evan Turner, G, Boston Celtics: For most teams, there are segments of every game that are just about surviving -- scrounging for points until the star is ready to come back in, and manufacturing stops when mismatches shove you onto your heels. It's the NBA equivalent of plugging holes in a leaky dam.
Turner has done that as Boston's de facto backup point guard, keeping the offense afloat while Isaiah Thomas, the Celtics' only other reliable source of dribble penetration, takes his breathers. That is a demotion after Turner started most of last season, but if he's disappointed to be a backup, he hasn't shown it.
"We never heard one word," Brad Stevens, Boston's coach, said. "He just wants to help the team. That's the most underrated thing about him: He loves basketball. He talks about it all the time. He watches high school games. Everyone likes basketball, but he lives and breathes it, and you never lose sleep over a guy like that."
Turner bricks a lot of pull-up jumpers, but he's slithering to the rim more often, and he can create a decent shot from scratch when the shot clock winds down. He's a good passer, though a bit turnover prone when he gets too cute threading no-chance fancy passes through tight quarters.
He loves to mosey around a pick, "snake" back in the other direction, and rise for a jumper -- or pull the ball out and exploit a bigger defender if the opponent switches. Turner has canned a tidy 44 percent of his long 2-point jumpers, a career-best.
Turner has allowed Boston to ease Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart into more ball-handling duties without over-extending them. Thomas can spot up for 3s, a less taxing job, when the Celtics pair him with Turner.
Turner has nearly abandoned the 3-pointer, and defenses ignore him when he doesn't have the ball. Boston schemes around that by pairing Turner with its spaciest big man combination -- Kelly Olynyk and Jonas Jerebko -- and inverting the floor for Turner bully-ball post-ups.
Turner settles for too many tough baseline turnarounds, but he can score over smaller defenders, and if opponents send help, he picks out open cutters.
Turner has worked his butt off to become a solid defender, and his ability to guard all three perimeter positions -- including big wings like Anthony -- gives Boston a handy versatility. They can hide Thomas in the most convenient spot, and everyone else can find their most comfortable matchup; Turner eats the leftovers. In transition, players can pick up the closest opponent without fretting about matchups.
Being pretty good at lots of skills is a skill in itself. It makes you a chameleon. When key players get hurt, teams don't have ready-made replacements who can mimic what those players do. You need guys who can fake it just enough, and Turner can fake it in lots of roles.
Lowe also shares some Celtics-related opinions in "10 Things I Like and Don't Like" (at the bottom of the above article), including:
3. Avery Bradley, moving it early
This looks like a standard Boston set, but there is something funny about the timing.
Video
It's Bradley, and the speed with which he pings the rock to Jae Crowder. Most players who take a hand-off like to bounce the ball a couple of times in search of a jumper or a line of attack toward the rim. Bradley doesn't even dribble before passing, and the speed of that decision helps create Crowder's driving score; Crowder's man, Anthony, is still rotating away from Crowder when Bradley passes. Anthony's momentum is going the wrong way, and he has no shot at pivoting back to wall off Crowder.
If Bradley hesitates, Anthony could come to a stop, regain his balance, and lunge back toward Crowder with full power.
10. Jonas Jerebko, small forward
Jerebko has the multi-positional, fill-the-gaps look of a Walton All-Star, but Brad Stevens should probably stop running him out there as a small forward alongside two big men -- even when one of them is Olynyk, a good 3-point shooter. Only two such lineups have logged 20 minutes, and both have been awful on offense, per NBA.com stats tracking.
The speed edge Jerebko has at power forward vanishes when Boston shifts him down a position, and his 3-point shooting -- a scorching 43 percent this season -- doesn't have as much of an impact when he's not dragging an opposing big man away from the rim. The lane gets crowded when Jerebko, a canny cutter, slices into the paint.
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"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"
"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis
Topic: Turner Named a Starter on Zach Lowe's 'Luke Walton All-Stars' (Read 844 times)