Picks 'n Pops: Halftime stats, a wall of fans, and puppies taken at BSJ Headquarters (Celtics)

(Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Celtics

Picks 'n Pops: Halftime stats, a wall of fans, and puppies

By John Karalis

Jan 19, 2024 • 1:36 pm

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Every week I gather some thoughts about the Celtics, the NBA, and beyond and dump them here. Because I still haven't overcome the altitude sickness I got from interviewing Victor Wembanyama

- Considering how the Celtics struggle with third quarters sometimes, maybe it’s not so exciting that we’re at the halfway point of the season. 

- Everyone loves the “stats at the half”-type pieces. Actually, every writer loves doing the “stats at the half”-type pieces because we don’t have to think very hard. We just look at the numbers and if we pull a Russell Westbrook “ahhh, that's pretty interesting,” we include the stat.

- Okay fine here are some stats: 

  • Boston is third in offense and second in defense. What’s interesting is their 110.4 defensive rating would have been 19th in the league five years ago. Just keep that in mind. The game has changed a bit, and good defense now relative to the rest of the league is not what you remember it to be. 
  • Boston runs the second-most post-ups in the league and is fourth on those plays, scoring 1.13 points per possession. I feel like they should be posting up more, but that's not what the NBA offense is nowadays. They just have to do it at the right times. 
  • Boston’s on/off leader remains Derrick White (+12 via Cleaning The Glass). Kristaps Porzingis (+2.7), Jayson Tatum (+1.4), and Payton Pritchard (+0.3) are the other positives among the regulars. Neemias Queta is +3.9 in 117 minutes, so he’s far behind everyone else, but he’s clearly making a positive impact. 
  • Jaylen Brown is Boston’s most impactful shooter. Their effective field goal percentage is +3.9% when he’s on the floor. He’s not the most impactful at the rim, though. That's White, who increases Boston’s efg% by eight points.  

I’ll end this section with a trivia question: Which Celtic has the biggest impact on the opponent’s shooting percentage at the rim, according to Cleaning The Glass (the site filters out garbage time stats)? The answer later on.

- I wanted Jordan Walsh to hit his shot as much as the crowd did. 

- White sat out the Spurs game with a sore ankle … or so they said. 

Gregg Popovich knows the truth.

“He’s afraid of us. He’s not playing tonight. He’s sitting it out,” Popovich joked before the game. “We had stuff planned for him. We were just gonna destroy him. And so he sat out.” 

- I’m 6-foot-5 and after a Wembanyama postgame press conference in a hallway at the Garden, I pressed up against a wall to let him walk by. All I saw was his chest as he walked by. 

He looks like an AI mistake. He looks like poor Photoshopping. He looks like a mad scientist replaced his hands with jai alai cestas.  

- “Hey Joe, Pascal Siakam was traded to the Indiana Pacers … “

- The Celtics are more than happy to have opposing teams attack Sam Hauser:

“’People see a white shooter, I think most people think he can't play defense. Yeah, I said it,” said Joe Mazzulla. “He's been able to play defense since I've coached him in Summer League, and he does a really good job of taking tendencies, does a really good job of understanding who he's guarding. He does a really good job of not giving up angles, and he's been that way since day one. So I've always said he could guard, I always knew he could be a good defender, and the more people attack him, the more reps we get for the playoffs. I hope they continue to do it.”

He should hope that, because Hauser’s the answer to the trivia question. The opposition’s efg% is eight points lower at the rim with Hauser on the floor. It’s -3.7% with Porzingis on the floor. Payton Pritchard is third at -3.5%, so clearly the ability to stay in front of second unit guys has been impactful for Boston. 

- That's not even the most surprising stat of the season. It’s that Pritchard is 5-5 on jump balls. Chew on that. 

- There are now only two acceptable halftime shows to me: 

1. Puppies 

Okay, preferably housebroken puppies.

Who am I kidding? Any puppies are welcome. And that served as an apt metaphor for what the Kings were about to do when they blew a 20 point lead late in the fourth quarter. 

I think this was the third puppy race Phoenix has done and a dog has peed every time. 

2: College marching bands playing the Imperial March

To the best of my knowledge, no members of the marching band peed on the floor. 

- I highly encourage coaches to bring visual aids to their postgame press conferences. 

If you’re gonna pay $25,000 to criticize the officials, make it a presentation. Do it up. Earn your money. 

- Anthony Edwards … Swashbuckling and slamming

Who even thinks to say “swashbuckling and slamming” other than Kevin Harlan?

- Congratulations to the young Detroit Lions fans celebrating the first playoff win of their lifetimes. 

- Condolences to the Memphis Grizzlies fans who have to wonder which of their players angered the basketball gods to a point that a plague of injuries was unleashed on their team. 

- I’ll just be sitting here waiting for Peacock to tell us how many people immediately canceled their subscriptions once their exclusively streaming NFL playoff game was over. 

- Hoping for the best for Christian Koloko

- Rest In Peace Dejan Milojević, assistant coach of the Golden State Warriors who died after suffering a heart attack this week. The outpouring of love for him around the league has been incredible. 

- The Clippers unveiled “The Wall” this week, 51 uninterrupted rows of fans behind one of the baskets. The section comes with a fair amount of very strict rules:

“This section is for Clippers fans only. If you choose to be a part of The Wall, you (and your guests) can't cheer for the opposing team or wear any gear that supports our opponents. Break these rules and you'll lose access to this section.

“In order to maintain this section exclusively for Clippers fans, only Chuckmark-certified fans can buy tickets to The Wall. More importantly, ticket resale can ONLY TAKE PLACE IN OUR TICKETMASTER MARKETPLACE FOR CHUCKMARK-CERTIFIED FANS.”

(Note, “Chuckmark-certified” requires owning Clippers gear, subscribing to their newsletter, following the team on Instagram, subscribing to “Clippervision” or going to a game in the past three years, and answering a trivia question about the team mascot.)

Their new arena, the Intuit Dome, opens for business next season and hosts the All-Star game a year after that. I’m betting this policy gets flushed down the toilet before that All-Star game. There's no chance it survives that long.

And they're asking CLIPPERS fans to be that rowdy and devoted? Steve Ballmer is out of his mind (which we already knew). 

- This week’s AI-generated image is what it felt like watching the Celtics play San Antonio


They don't do actual player faces. 

- Your current NBA Belt champion: The Philadelphia 76ers

- Here’s my latest podcast, if you’re bored: 


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