Latest trend highlights exactly what Celtics lost in Anfernee Simons trade

February has been an interesting month for the Boston Celtics. With one game remaining before March, they’ve been the league’s best defense with a defensive rating of 105.5. Their offense, however, has taken an uncharacteristic backseat.

Trading away one Anfernee Simons seems to have shifted the identity of the Celtics. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depinging on which side of the floor you prioritize, the Celtics have missed him on offense.

Prior to the trade, they were the second-ranked offense in the league with a 120.7 offensive rating. Now that Boston is without Simons’ 14.2 points per game on 44% from the field and 39.5% from beyond the arc, they’ve scored nearly 10 fewer points per 100 possessions.

The change has been two-fold, though.

Since sending Simons to the Chicago Bulls for Nikola Vucevic, Boston has shaved eight points off of their defensive rating.

There were plenty of discussions about the former Portland Trail Blazers guard’s defensive shortcomings before he took the floor for Boston. To his credit, he worked to improve significantly as the season went on, and wanted to contribute to winning in as many ways possible.

There are other factors in the Celtics identity shift, beyond the trade

The team’s defense improving after his departure could be directly correlated, or there could be some coincidence involved. Numbers are numbers. There’s no disputing that the Cs’ defense is statistically better now than it was when Simons was on the team.

Included in the nine games since are a banged up Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns, a Stephen Curry-less Golden State Warriors, and the putrid Chicago Bulls. A few offensively-challenged teams will help the defensive rating, for sure.

It would be unfair to completely discredit the defensive leap this group has taken, even if there were a few cupcakes mixed in, though. Joe Mazzulla has shifted the rotation to include more impactful defensive rebounders, which has helped them frequently limit the opposition to one shot per trip. During this stretch, the Celtics lead the league in defensive rebounding percentage, too.

A similar coincidental argument could be made for the offense. Losing Simons truly removed a great scoring option from the rotation. It also presented the challenge of implementing Vucevic and shaping a new gameplan. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

The big man has shown flashes of comfort within the Celtics’ system, but it’s clearly still a work in progress. He has plenty of skills that should make him a plus-player on that side of the floor; passing, three-pointing shooting, and touch around the rim. Vuc, in the long run, will likely make up for some of what the team lost with Simons, but it’ll take a little time.