Bill Simmons gets at Rasheed Wallace
Chances are, you either love Bill Simmons or you hate him. I happen to be the type of guy who loves him.
Today, he wrote a column bashing Rasheed Wallace. He says a lot of the things all Celtics fans have been saying all year long, but in his own way. It’s worth a read, for sure, especially if you’re the Sheed-bashing type. Here’s my favorite part:
Sheed doesn’t rebound as much as debound. “Lazy” isn’t a strong enough word. He always seems to be standing in the wrong spot. He constantly forgets to box out. His hops are long gone, so balls routinely bounce over his head to opposing players. When matched against a hustler like Anderson Varejao, it’s like watching a golden retriever fight off a Rottweiler. Advanced metrics prove that he’s a catastrophic offensive rebounder and someone who subtly altered the identity of this season’s Celtics team. (See sidebar.) So there’s that.
Sheed’s plus-minus is predictably bad: minus-4.6. I don’t trust individual plus-minus as much as numbers for five-man lineups, so let’s dig deeper. When Boston’s three best perimeter players (Rondo, Pierce and Ray Allen) play with Garnett and Perkins, that unit is plus-280 for the season (plus-12.0 per 48 minutes). Swap Wallace for Perkins and it dips to minus-19 (-5.0 per 48 minutes). Swap Wallace for Garnett and it dips to minus-4 (minus-1.1 per 48 minutes).
Sheed makes me say the words, “Why won’t we play Brian Scalabrine?”
The sad part? I actually read this and thought to myself, “Yeah! We should play Scal!”
Not exactly the reaction you want to have when somebody writes that your $6 mil-a-year backup center should find his way out of the rotation.
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