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cryptobully-blog · 6 years

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How Kyrie Irving’s Injury Setback Affects the Celtics

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How Kyrie Irving’s Injury Setback Affects the Celtics

Kyrie Irving is expected to miss three to six weeks after undergoing a “minimally invasive procedure” on Saturday to remove a tension wire in his left knee, the Celtics announced this weekend. The wire was originally inserted during his 2015 surgery to repair a broken kneecap, per the team. The timetable places Irving’s return at some point between the start of the playoffs and the middle of the second round, which could have a significant impact on the Celtics and the rest of the Eastern Conference. Here are four thoughts on the ripple effects of Irving’s absence:

Can the Celtics Somehow Land the 1-Seed?

Boston has a six-game cushion on the third-place Cavaliers with only nine games to go, which virtually guarantees it a top-two seed in the East playoffs. The real question is whether the Celtics can catch the Raptors; Boston trails Toronto by only three games in the loss column, and the two teams will face each other twice over the remainder of the regular season.

The Raptors are slipping as of late; they’ve lost to the Thunder, Cavaliers, and Clippers and won unconvincingly against the Magic, Mavericks, and Nets. Meanwhile, the Celtics defeated the Blazers and Thunder and went toe-to-toe with the Pacers and Wizards. If the Celtics keep playing well without Irving, or anywhere close to how well they started the season after losing Gordon Hayward, it’ll be hard to make a case for someone other than Brad Stevens to win Coach of the Year. But more importantly, it will set the team up with a much more favorable spot in the playoff bracket.

The 2-seed will likely have a second-round date with LeBron James—the same LeBron James who has been dunking over fools during one of the best runs of his career to finish the season. Avoiding LeBron for as long as possible should be a priority.

Toronto has one of the league’s toughest remaining schedules, while Boston has an easier one—in addition to the two games against the Raptors, the only possible playoff teams it will face are the Jazz, Wizards, and Bucks. The Raptors should feel fairly comfortable about retaining the top seed and avoiding the LeBron side of the bracket (unless somehow Cleveland, which is just a game and a half up on Philadelphia and Indiana, drops into the 4- or 5-seed), but it’s not a certainty.

What the Celtics Will Be Missing

Irving’s basic box score numbers with the Celtics are fairly similar to last season’s with the Cavaliers, but his game has evolved under Stevens. Kyrie is finishing possessions using dribble handoffs or screens about twice as often as last season, per Synergy, while passing more frequently out of pick-and-rolls and isolations. He is still one of the game’s most lethal scorers, but now he’s a more diverse scorer, ranking in the 85th percentile or better in isolations, pick-and-rolls, handoffs, spot-ups, and cuts.

Playing down both Irving and Hayward leaves the Celtics offense without anyone who can routinely score buckets in the half court. The remaining roster will be able to scrap for wins over the final nine games, but it will be a tougher task in the playoffs, when individual possessions are more valuable and it’s harder for teams to run a set offense, like the Celtics’ motion-based system. When the game slows down, having a player who can even get a shot off against a locked-in defense becomes paramount. Those are the moments when Irving will be missed most.

If Irving’s return is closer to six weeks than three, the Celtics will have a harder time regardless of the opponent in the early rounds. The Celtics are scoring 3.8 points per 100 possessions more this season against potential playoff opponents they may see in the first or second round with Irving on the floor than they are when he’s off. If they’re without him, the Celtics will need to rely even more on their top-ranked defense. But other injuries have hurt them there, too: Their best perimeter defender, Marcus Smart, is out for six to eight weeks after undergoing surgery on his right thumb to repair a torn ligament, and their second-best big-man defender, Daniel Theis, is out for the season with a torn left meniscus.

Unless Hayward magically returns during the playoffs, all the signs are pointing to this likely not being the season Boston hangs banner no. 18.

The Jay Team Called Into Action

There are still plenty of positives if the Celtics get bounced early, starting with the unique opportunity that Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum will have to help lead a playoff team. The 21-year-old and 20-year-old will, at the least, get more opportunities in Irving’s absence. Tatum attempts 3.5 more shots per 36 minutes in games where Irving doesn’t play, while Brown tries 2.6 more. The duo also receives more playmaking opportunities, as they see a combined 2.5 more assists per 36 minutes. Stevens will feed them both more ballhandling duties, and they’ll be leaned on to score in end-of-clock situations.

Brown has made considerable progress this season as a scorer, hitting 37.2 percent of his 3s, but the largest development has surprisingly come off the dribble. Brown was disastrous shooting off the bounce as a rookie, hitting only 19 of 72 attempts, per Second Spectrum. But this season he’s drained 42.4 percent of his 59 pull-up 2s, and 43.5 percent of his 23 pull-up 3s. It’s a small sample size, but Brown looks more comfortable going from his dribble into his shot. Without Irving, perhaps Brown will be leaned on more as a scorer and get reps against tougher defenders.

The role of Tatum, a better scorer and playmaker in the half court than Brown, will be particularly intriguing. With both Irving and Brown (concussion) sidelined in Boston’s win over the Thunder last week, a lot of the Celtics offense was run through Tatum to finish the game. That could give us an idea of what’s to come.

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The Celtics ran handoffs and pick-and-rolls through Tatum, and called two plays coming out of timeouts for him in the closing moments. On the first, Tatum drove by Steven Adams and into the paint for an athletic layup. On the second, Tatum penetrated the paint and threw an accurate kick-out pass to Marcus Morris, who hit the game-winning 3. It was one of those games where you forget for a moment that you’re watching a rookie and not a multitime All-Star.

Tatum is for real, but now defenses will focus more of their attention on him. He’s sinking 47.5 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s, but he’s still not comfortable on pull-ups (28.3 percent), and he tends to dribble into the midrange. It might take another offseason of extending his range to improve, but it wouldn’t hurt to get reps in the clutch now. How he handles it all will have a significant impact on the Celtics’ current situation and their future.

Terry Rozier Has a Chance to Get Paid

Perhaps the player with the most to gain during Irving’s absence is point guard Terry Rozier, who has made a mini-leap during his third NBA season. Rozier has scored over 30 points twice this season (granted, it was against the Hawks and the Kings), and continues to improve his shot after showing steady progress over his first two seasons. Rozier is hitting 42.4 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s, per Second Spectrum, which includes a ton of attempts after racing through screens.

Rozier spent the offseason working on his scoring, and it shows. He has good footwork running off screens and uses his speed and wiggle to get himself open. We’re going to see more of it during Irving’s absence, as well as his improved pick-and-roll playmaking. After playing a more spartan brand of basketball at Louisville, Rozier can now change gears with the ball to probe the defense and has become a more accurate passer.

The Celtics need Rozier to produce—and so does Rozier. The guard will be eligible for a rookie-scale extension this offseason before he becomes a restricted free agent in 2019, and teams won’t forget if he flourishes or flops now. Rozier is already an energetic, tone-setting defender who rebounds like a forward. At just 24 years old, there’s still time for him to make even more progress as a passer and shooter. The real hurdle for him will be finishing at the rim, which was an issue in college and still is today (he’s hit only 49.7 percent of his attempts in the restricted area). But in a draft without many top point guards (aside from Trae Young and Collin Sexton) and a slim free-agent market, Rozier could end up being one of the more appealing trade options.

The Celtics could keep Rozier, but Boston’s payroll projects to be quite pricey entering the 2019-20 season, which could make it hard to pay Rozier. Not many teams have a need at point guard, nor have they shown a willingness to cough up assets for a player, but I’d at least give the Celtics a ring for Rozier.

The Bucks were high on Rozier prior to the 2015 draft and may have taken him had the Celtics not done so at no. 16, according to a league source. Yahoo Sports’ Chris Mannix also reported that, before Eric Bledsoe fell into Milwaukee’s lap in October, the new front office led by Jon Horst “eyeballed” Rozier. The Bucks’ reported interest may have changed, but Bledsoe hasn’t made the type of impact they expected, and he could be more expensive once he hits free agency during the same offseason. John Hammond, the Bucks’ general manager in 2015, now has a prominent position with the Magic, another team desperately in need of a point guard. Orlando will probably be drafting too high to take Young or Sexton, and even if it isn’t, it could make more sense to draft a player at another position and pursue Rozier.

Nonetheless, Rozier is an intriguing talent, and he has a chance to make himself a very appealing target over the stretch run.

The Celtics need Irving, but his absence will provide a chance for their younger players to develop, which could set them up for even greater success in the future.

Ripple

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gaiatheorist · 6 years

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The drugs don’t work. (For me.)

This is a weird one. Awake at midnight last night, I did what I do, and browsed the news. My disrupted sleep is partly due to the brain injuries, and partly ‘just’ the situation I find myself in. There’s the potential for some well-meaning but insensitive soul to suggest warm milk, no screen-time, ‘meaningful’ breathing, and the plethora of other things you ‘should’ do when you can’t sleep. Nobody has suggested sleeping tablets to me, yet, but there’s a whole internet out there, is it my melatonin, my seratonin, my magnesium? (I don’t know if magnesium has anything to do with anything, apparently it can impact on the binding of the vitamin D I’m probably deficient in, though.)

Can’t sleep? Take a ‘Kalm’, or a ‘Nytol’, or Valerian root, or Mankuna honey in warm milk, or something from Gwyneth Paltrow’s weird range. Lavender worked really well for someone’s auntie Gladys, and so-and-so swears by chamomile tea. I’m making fun of myself, there, because if there’s a herbal/holistic remedy, I’ll try that before the ‘chemical’, synthesised alternatives. (’Chemical’ in quote-marks, as a nod to Tim Minchin, who rightly points out that ‘Everything is chemical, EVERYTHING.’) That tendency to stick to herbs, essential oils, and food-based medicine, rather than prescribed medicine infuriates my son, it would do, he’s studying Chemistry, he understands the ‘hard’ science stuff that baffles me. He’s 20 in a few weeks, and he’s been to the doctor four times in his entire life. Fucithalmic acid drops for conjunctivitis when he was a baby. I finished the course, and then treated with eyebright and breastmilk, he’s never had a re-occurrence. Septic tonsillitis in 2010, treated with Amoxcycillin, of course he couldn’t tell the doctor whether he was allergic to Penicillin, that was his first course of antibiotics, ever. Back down, I didn’t home-school him, and he was allowed to watch TV, he’s had all of his routine immunisations, and the optional extra Meningitis one. (That the doctor didn’t know whether he’d had, but I did, because I knew which year it started being offered as a routine school-age immunisation.)

The kid implicitly trusts ‘modern’ medicine. Most people, who don’t run around in tinfoil hats, calling consumer conspiracy on everything, trust modern medicine. That’s what I’m wrestling with this morning. (Not literally, I’ve pushed the patient information leaflet to the side of my pack of antihistamines, so I don’t get frustrated about opening the box at the ‘wrong’ end. Apparently they’re set that way for right-handed people, and you can avoid opening the ‘wrong’ end of the pack by feeling for the braille, I don’t know.) What I’m over-processing is the “Antidepressants work!” news stories. There’s no reason at all for me to over-process it, the first line in one of them was something along the theme of “Antidepressants work for patients with a diagnosis of depression.” Case closed, I don’t have ‘depression’, my current ‘unfit for work’ certificate states “Stress related problem, previous SAH.” (I’ve abbreviated ‘Subarachnoid Haemorrhage’, because my GP spelled it wrong, I don’t suppose he’s written it as many times as I have in the last 3 years.)

What I’m pre-planning butting heads against is that DWP, PIP, and ATOS are highly likely to point out that I’m not ‘on’ anti-depressants. That’s fine, they can do that, there is no diagnosis of depression anywhere in my last 3 years of medical notes, I can point to the page where the Workplace Well-being doctor has reported “Gives a clear account of herself, and, to her credit, is not depressed.” (If they’re referencing the ‘Depression?’ on my admission notes following the haemorrhage, I’ll politely point out that what the ex actually said to the medics was “I think she’s got depression, but I don’t know if she’s on anything.” I tore into him about that, when I was in my angry/confrontational stage, and he was in his confused/traumatised stage. Unkind.)

It’s great that antidepressants work for some people, I wish those people all the goodwill in the world, dragging oneself through the mire of poor mental health is draining, if there’s a chemical lift that helps, use it. What I’m mindful of is that the medics have never found a dosage of this-or-that that worked for me. I have episodes of low mood, sometimes very low mood, but they pass. I make them pass, because I cannot exist in that state, in that state, I’m barely functional, forcing myself to ‘go through the motions’, it’s soul-sucking. There are lots of days when I just-don’t-want-to, I know my own pattern, and, although I’ll allow myself the odd ‘off’ day, three-in-a-row is my trigger-point. I had three-in-a-row a couple of weekends back, so presented to the GP, because ‘failure to seek or follow medical advice’ is also a flag-of-concern in me. If he’d prescribed, I would have taken the pills, I had the proof of low-income entitlement to free prescriptions in my bag, just in case.

He knows me, he’s been my GP since I was about 14, as much as I’m just one more in a sea of faces to him, he actually remembered that they’ve tried me on pretty much every SSRI and antidepressant, with very limited effect. A bit like the dodgy Johann Hari, I ‘revert to baseline’ within months on any antidepressant, and they either have to increase the dosage, or, once they hit the median lethal dosage bar, switch me to another variant. Antidepressants don’t work on ‘me’, because, for the majority of the time, it’s not depression. (Yes, there’s the resistance-in-me to being in that foggy-vague don’t-care state, but, if he’d prescribed, I would have taken them, and tried to monitor myself closely, through the “I can’t feel my leg, but it will probably be fine in an hour or so.” episodes, that are scary enough when you ARE fully lucid. The third, inoperable aneurysm is sitting in an area of brain governing the majority of my motor function, as well as the blood supply to my retinas being impacted upon my the surgery to the second aneurysm, sucks to be me.)

‘On paper’, I probably ‘should’ be depressed. That being the assumed-case, a year on antidepressants ‘should’, theoretically, stabilise me, maybe they’ll throw in a bit of CBT, to make me magically forget that, on top of everything else, I nearly died, and now have brain injuries? Yeah, I’m pulling my socks up, and person-ing up, but I do still have lumps of metal where there used to be functional brain cells, that’s not going to go away, or ‘get better.’

At some point, I don’t know when, I’ll be called in for a DWP ‘work capability assessment.’ I’m not looking forward to that one bit, and I expect that the same person who ticks the box to say I can lift an empty box will also query why I’m not on antidepressants. I need to not be a smart-arse at that point, and question how they’re a qualified doctor AND a manual handling of loads assessor. I also need to remember to state verbally, and ensure it is recorded, every time an action or activity causes me distress or discomfort. I’m going to end up losing my voice. Have that, CBT practitioners, one of my ‘behaviours’ is not-disclosing discomfort or distress, so I don’t upset other people.

I’m rambling. I’m awaiting my PIP tribunal date, where I will likely be asked why I’m not on antidepressants. I’m awaiting my DWP ‘work capability assessment’, again, I’m likely to be told, by a box-ticker that I’d be ‘all better’ with a dose of Prozac. (Prozac brand-name now expired, it’s generic fluoxetine, and my last experience of it had me on 60mg/day, with little impact, they can’t put me on a higher dose than that, due to my BMI.) I’m also waiting on an appointment with Neuro-psychology, I have tried very hard to self-manage the brain injuries, but the cognitive fatigue and disturbed sleep still persist, there’s an ironic chuckle, there, because a lot of the side-effects of my brain injuries are also consistent with depressive traits. I know the difference in me, and ‘trying’ me on antidepressants would be similar to bashing a ganglion with the family bible, just a distraction technique, and a fairly dangerous one, at that.

What I’m wary of is the powers-that-be taking the headlines and research about the efficacy of antidepressants as a one-size-fits-all silver bullet against all-that-ails-everyone. Antidepressants have limited effectiveness on me, I have no diagnosis of depression, they’d be as well giving me sugar-tablets, or something to prevent testicular inflammation. If I had a diagnosis of depression, I would have given up on the systems-and-processes already, as a demonstrable number of people have, some permanently. Not-all-antidepressants are suitable for ‘all’ people, I had to advise my own GP that one variant he was ‘trying’ me on, nearly 10 years ago, was linked to suicidal and self-harming ideation. That’s specific to me, I’m a historical self-harmer, standard ‘not all’ disclaimer here. There are myriad noted side-effects with antidepressants, I’ll throw in ‘weight gain’ as an example, even if there’s no underlying eating disorder, whacking on 3st in 2 years, like I did is hardly a confidence-boost for a person who is already experiencing low mood. The side-effects are probably under-reported, between the depressive state of there being no point, and the cloudy sheep-sleep of ‘it does not matter’, some people just won’t report. Throw in the dismissive “It could be worse!” lines some doctors are still fond of when people who do report are sent away as neurotic, and the reporting is further compromised.

Antidepressants DO work, very effectively for some people, and I’m genuinely pleased that a bit of a chemical crutch helps them to live, rather than just existing. My concern is that these articles will be taken out of context, and that the flavour-of-the-month SSRI will be seen as a magic wand. (No, head, ‘they’ are not going to fortify the tap-water with fluoxetine, to make us all immune to depression, that’s silly.) Mental health services are stretched way beyond capacity, and ‘modern life is rubbish’, the fabled increase to MH services is a nonsense, it’s superficial, the new intake of ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies’ practitioners will probably start going off sick themselves very soon. (I have a friend who’s VERY disturbed, recently allocated for talking therapy with a girl just out of college, that would have been potentially harmful for both of them, so he discontinued. The intervention has probably been recorded as completed and successful.) Antidepressants are very effective for some people, but, in others, they’re a sticking plaster over an arterial wound, I’m worried that some people, who really do need more than a pat on the head, and some ‘magic medicine’ are going to be very badly treated. If there’s a perception that Prozac is panacea, some people will be very badly harmed by it.

If the drugs work for you, that’s great, I’m not here to demonise them. There is nothing wrong with taking the right medication for the right condition, nothing at all. My worry is that it becomes a blanket-catch-all, a first-resort, and that some people will slip through the net, disappear off radar, and not have different, underlying conditions, that depressive symptoms coincide with addressed.

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