BOSTON -- During one of what was essentially a daily preseason gush-fest about the Boston Celtics’ depth, Al Horford was asked if he considered his team’s second unit on par with, say, another NBA team given the way the reserves have routinely pushed the starters during intrasquad work.
“No question,” said Horford. "Before the season started, that’s the way that I looked at it. And they’ve proven that to us all preseason. They’ve been giving us a lot of problems."
Hyperbole knows no bounds in October but Celtics players have been unwavering in their declaration that Boston’s greatest strength is its depth. The return of All-Stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, rejoining a young core that got invaluable experience during a run to the fringe of the NBA Finals last season, left Boston’s roster brimming with talent entering the 2018-19 season.
Still, Horford’s declaration made us wonder, just how many games might a team helmed by Boston’s backup 5 of Terry Rozier, Marcus Smart, Marcus Morris, Daniel Theis, and Aron Baynes win if they comprised an actual NBA starting 5?
So that very question was put to Morris, the BWA (“Bench With Attitude”) chairman, who is rarely bashful with opinions or proclamations. The query elicited a mischievous grin and, while he didn’t want to put a number on win total, he was pretty bullish on how that lineup might fare.
“We’d definitely give a lot of teams work,” said Morris.
Sure, but in this year's top-heavy Eastern Conference, might that starting 5 actually be talented enough to be a playoff team?
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“Could be,” said Morris. “Might depend on who we got coming in behind us. But we’re just trying to look at this depth as a positive. We’re not thinking, ‘We could be starting,’ or anything like that. We just want to make things competitive for the first unit in practice.”
And change games when the bench players get in?
“We have to,” said Morris. “We have to.”
The Celtics’ got a glimpse of the benefits of depth during Tuesday’s season-opening win over the Philadelphia 76ers. Morris and Rozier paired up for 27 points, while Smart and Baynes -- not typically renowned for their 3-point acumen -- combined for four triples as Boston rolled to an 18-point triumph that left Joel Embiid dismissing the notion of a “rivalry” given Boston’s dominance in recent matchups.
“Our strength has to be in our depth,” said Celtics coach Brad Stevens, whose greatest challenge this season might simply be making sure everyone has enough playing time. The lopsided opener allowed Stevens to play nine players at least 19 minutes apiece, with not a single player scaling north of 30 minutes.
A deep roster with balanced contributions could bring out the best in everyone. As Stevens noted, "Everybody has to play with great effort because the guy behind him is chomping at the bit to get in."
No reserve unit in the NBA performed better last season than the Toronto Raptors’ vaunted five-man “Bench Mob.” As we ponder Boston’s depth, it’s fitting that the Celtics travel north of the border Friday for an early season showdown between what might be the two best teams in the East.
And maybe the two best benches in the conference as well.
Quantifying bench impact is an inexact science but we can use those 2017-18 Raptors to set a benchmark for an elite second unit. Basketball Reference tracks VORP -- value over replacement player -- which, as the name suggests, tries to quantify a player’s impact over a league-average contributor. For context, LeBron James was a plus-8.9 VORP on his own last season. For the Celtics, Kyrie Irving (plus-4.0) and Al Horford (plus-3.5) ranked among the top 20 players in the league in VORP.
Last season, the Raptors’ primary five-man reserve group combined for a plus-7.4 VORP, highlighted by strong numbers from Jakob Poeltl (plus-2.0), Pascal Siakam (plus-1.7), and Delon Wright (plus-1.7). For sake of comparison, the Wizards, who were the East’s eighth seed a year ago, had a cumulative plus-9.2 VORP for their most common five-man starting unit.
Rozier (plus-2.0), Theis (plus-1.1), Smart (plus-0.6), Baynes (plus-0.1), and Morris (plus-0.1) totaled up to a plus-3.9 VORP last season. That number doesn’t exactly leap off the page but, for the sake of predicting how that group might fare as a fictional starting 5, we can adjust the numbers to reflect first-unit playing time (or about 32 minutes per game) and the cumulative bench VORP jumps to a more respectable plus-6.4.
That’s not too shabby when you consider that Boston’s playoff starting 5 — the one without Irving or Hayward -- had a cumulative VORP of plus-8.4 during the regular season.
Could Boston’s bench 5 actually compete for a playoff spot in the East this season? Let’s look at some other cumulative starting 5 VORPs from last season among teams that finished in spots 5-10 in the East:
On the surface, it seems the Celtics’ bench 5 would lag behind those teams but it’s fair to wonder if both Baynes and Morris would grade out better that even their adjusted projections with increased roles and playing time. The lack of an legitimate All-Star — like Oladipo or Antetokounmpo — also contributes to Boston’s bench total VORP being less glitzy than the other East playoffs squads. Boston’s bench, though, would be one of the better defensive groupings in the East with plus-defenders at almost every spot.
While the “could the second unit be an NBA starting 5?” is a fun question to ponder, here’s what’s more definitive: The Boston reserves routinely pushed the starters in just about every scrimmage so far this season and Boston’s first unit knows better than anyone what a luxury that second unit provides.
"We’re a pretty deep team. A lot of talent. Our effort, as we throw waves at other teams, is going to be hard for teams to manage because our bench, they’ve been starters one way or another in their career at one point,” said Irving. "So seeing that live and being supportive from the bench when I’m not out there, and then being able to impact the game is something I’m looking forward to, regardless of who’s out there.”
The long-term question is whether Stevens can find adequate playing time to keep everyone happy, particularly as Irving and Hayward find their rhythms and ramp up their floor time. Bench players in contract years like Rozier and Morris have said all the right things in the infancy of the season but it seems fair to wonder if there could be some grumbles further out, by any player that yearned for more playing time.
But especially early in the year, as the Celtics ease Irving and Hayward back in following their long rehabs, depth will only be a blessing for this team. That Irving can have a 2-for-14 shooting performance in Boston’s opener, Hayward can still be shaking rust, and the Celtics still emerge with a lopsided win only hammers home the value of the bench.
As Tatum declared: “[Depth] can take us a long way.”
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