Avery Bradley is the Most Important Celtic

Despite being under-appreciated, Avery Bradley is the most important Celtic

The Boston Celtics are coming off of an impressive 2015-16 campaign. They finished the year with a 48-34 record, which was tied for the third best record in the Eastern conference and got them the fifth seed in the playoffs. In the postseason, though, the Celtics began to fall apart, losing their first series in six games to the Atlanta Hawks.

The Celtics team that took the floor during the playoffs looked completely different to the team fans watched in the regular season. In the regular season Boston ranked fifth in the NBA in scoring at 105.7 points per game, while holding opponents to only 102.5 points per game. However in the playoffs against Atlanta, the Celtics could only score 93.8 points per game, and still gave up 100.5 points a game. This gave them an overall net rating of -6.7 in the postseason.

An injury to shooting guard Avery Bradley may have been the key to this drastic difference in play for the Celtics in the postseason.

Since joining the league in 2010, Bradley’s durability has always been questioned. Before 2014, Bradley had only played in only 62.5% of the team’s games during his four seasons in Boston. Since the start of the 2014 season, he has played in 93% of Boston’s game. This has been huge for the Celtics since they have reached the playoffs in back to back years now, and Avery Bradley has played such an important role in the team’s recent success.

Bradley is known around the NBA for his incredible perimeter defense. In fact, Portland Trailblazer’s star point guard, Damian Lillard, called Bradley the best perimeter defender in the entire NBA. Finally this past season he was rewarded with a selection to the NBA All-Defensive First Team for the first time in his career.

He is an elite defender and excels while guarding the man with the ball. Bradley put this on display by grabbing 1.5 steals per game last season, which was the seventh best per game average in the league. His defense was so important to the Celtics in 2016, and it really helped them win many close games down the stretch. In fact, Avery Bradley produced a total of 2.8 defensive win shares (a metric that estimates the number of team wins that are contributed by individual player defense). To put this into perspective, if the Celtics did not have Bradley’s defense they would have won only 45 games in the regular season and they would have been the eighth seed in the playoffs.

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Although Bradley is known primarily for his work on the defensive end, he is far from a slouch on offense. Last year he was the second leading scorer on the Celtics averaging 15.2 points per game, only behind the sole All-Star on the roster, Isaiah Thomas. Not only did he put up the second highest scoring total, he did it efficiently as well. Bradley had a career high effective field goal percentage (a percentage that adjusts for the fact that a three-point field goal is worth more than a two point field goal) of .520, while the league average was .502.

Since his rookie year in 2010, Bradley’s offense has been steadily improving every season and there have been no signs of that changing any time soon. He began his career playing only 5 minutes a game and averaging 1.7 points, and now he is an everyday starter who can score from almost anywhere on the floor, and he can lock down three positions effectively on defense.

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Avery Bradley may not be a perennial All-Star, or even the best player on the Celtics roster, but last year he proved how much they rely on him to succeed, and that they are a completely different team when he isn’t on the court. Bradley will be an extremely important part of the team’s future success as they head into one of the most important off-seasons in recent history.

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