What Can The Celtics Expect From Kyrie Irving?

Adding Kyrie Irving signaled the Celtics’ desire to look towards the future. Bringing in a 25-year-old point guard to pair with their two 3rd overall picks and 27-year-old Gordon Hayward sets the core of this team up for the long haul. Many people are expecting many different things from Kyrie Irving. Many think Brad Stevens will get the best out of him and that he will thrive in an offense predicated on ball movement and spacing. Others think that Kyrie does not have what it takes to be a true point guard and his lack of facilitation and isolation playstyle will actually bring the Celtics backwards. I wanted to look at a few different factors and see if there is any sort of pattern that could give us evidence as to what we could actually expect from Kyrie Irving this season. The three factors we will be looking at are Kyrie Irving’s Progression, “The Al Horford Effect”, and How Brad Stevens’ Offense Treats Point Guards.
Kyrie Irving’s Progression

Season	G	FGA	FG%	3PA	3P%	TRB	AST	TOV	PTS	TS%
2011-12	51	14.6	.469	3.6	.399	3.7	5.4	3.1	18.5	56.6
2012-13	59	18.1	.452	4.7	.391	3.7	5.9	3.2	22.5	55.3
2013-14	71	17.4	.430	4.8	.358	3.6	6.1	2.7	20.8	53.3
2014-15	75	16.5	.468	5.0	.415	3.2	5.2	2.5	21.7	58.3
2015-16	53	16.6	.448	4.9	.321	3.0	4.7	2.3	19.6	54.0
2016-17	72	19.7	.473	6.1	.401	3.2	5.8	2.5	25.2	58.3
Career	381	17.3	.457	5.0	.383	3.4	5.5	2.7	21.6	56.1

Kyrie saw his biggest jump in efficiency in the 2014-2015 season. This was the season that LeBron came back to Cleveland, but also the year that David Blatt was instituted as the head coach. The next year, Kyrie was hurt and missed the beginning of the season and didn’t really get truly back to form until the playoffs. This past season he had an identical True Shooting mark as he did in the 14-15 season. In his first two seasons with LeBron, Kyrie took less shots than in his prior two seasons. This could explain his jump in efficiency for that first season- he took less shots because LeBron was taking more, but the shots he did take were better looks. However, this last season, he took a career high in shots, with 19.7 per game, and tied his career high in True Shooting, with a career high in 2-Point FG%, FT%, FG% and points. LeBron or no LeBron, I think it’s fair to say that Kyrie Irving has become a more efficient scorer in the past three seasons.
Kyrie also saw a dip in his assists when LeBron returned. From about 6 per game the year before LeBron came back, to about 5 when he was there. This is easily explained by LeBron being another facilitator that takes the ball out of Kyrie’s hands. Another thing to consider however, is that Blatt’s Princeton offense that he tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to implement with the Cavs is much more similar to Brad Stevens’ offense than Tyrone Lue’s. Both Blatt’s and Stevens’ are focused on ball movement and making the right pass. This means giving the play time to develop and having the ball not sit too long in anyone player’s hands.
That sounds like it should benefit Kyrie’s assists numbers, right? Keeping the ball moving should mean more assists for everyone, especially the point guard. But perhaps not. Kyrie excels at getting to the rim and either finishing or kicking it out to shooters. In fact, according to NBA.com tracking data, Kyrie made on average 6 passes that led to a three-point attempt per game last season, and only 7.5 passes that led to a 2-point field goal attempt. This coincidentally (or not) led to Kyrie having the most assists per game since LeBron joined the team. Kyrie thrives when he has the ball in his hand. Lue’s isolation style offense allowed Irving to attack the rim more and force the defense to collapse. Playing in Blatt’s scheme forced the ball out of his hands and led to more players having assists, instead of assists being focused on the primary ball handlers. For example, in the 14-15 season under Blatt, 6 Cavalier players averaged more than 2 assists per game. In the 16-17 season? Only 3. Moving to an offense that will run more of a focused offense could be bad for Kyrie’s assists numbers.
However, there is a third side to this passing coin. Last season, Isaiah Thomas led the entire NBA in drives per game. He attacked the basket 12.7 times per game on average. Kyrie Irving only had 9.3 per game. Both Thomas and Irving had similar passing rates out of these drives, at 29.8% and 27.6% respectively. So, if we are to believe that Irving is afforded a similar role and similar opportunity to what Thomas had last season, we could expect a slight increase on Irving’s assists due to him being able to attack the hoop more than he did last season. Adding in Gordon Hayward probably means that Irving won’t have quite the same number of driving chances, but I’d be willing to say that Hayward will demand less possessions than LeBron used last season. Basically, Stevens’ offense equals less assists, more driving equals more assists, but Gordon Hayward equals less driving chances than Isaiah Thomas had last season. Overall, I think we have seen Irving’s ability and tendency to pass. I wouldn’t expect him to suddenly be an 8+ assists per game player, but he should still be solidly in that 5-6 assists per game range.
“The Al Horford Effect”
This is something that you hear talked about occasionally amongst Celtic fans, mainly due to the fact that the offense performed much better this year after they added Al Horford. 3-Point percentage, FG percentage, free throw percentage, assists, points, and offensive rating went up and turnovers went down. It really was a massive leap and they only big change roster-wise was adding Al Horford. Now, I’m not claiming that Horford is secretly a super elite player that will automatically make a team better in literally every offensive category. I’m not. But, I do think it is worthwhile to investigate the impact that he might have on his team’s starting point guard and see if they improve similarly to how their team improves.
Isaiah Thomas

Season	G	MP	FGA	FG%	3PA	3P%	FTA	FT%	TRB	AST	TOV	PTS	TS%
2015-16	82	32.2	16.9	.428	5.7	.359	6.6	.871	3.0	6.2	2.7	22.2	56.2
2016-17	76	33.8	19.4	.463	8.5	.379	8.5	.909	2.7	5.9	2.8	28.9	62.5

Jeff Teague

Season	G	MP	FGA	FG%	3PA	3P%	FTA	FT%	TRB	AST	TOV	PTS	TS%
2014-15	73	30.5	12.2	.460	2.8	.343	4.4	.862	2.5	7.0	2.8	15.9	56.6
2015-16	79	28.5	12.5	.439	3.5	.400	3.9	.837	2.7	5.9	2.8	15.7	55.1
2016-17	82	32.4	11.1	.442	3.1	.357	5.1	.867	4.0	7.8	2.6	15.3	57.4

There isn’t too much to pull from this. Many things that Thomas got better at when Horford came in are things that Teague got better at when Horford left. This leads us to believe that there is very minimal impact that Horford has on his point guards. However, the one aspect that stood out to me, was three-point shooting. Thomas shot 2% better in his one season with Horford while Teague shot 40% in his last season with him, but 35.7% in his first season without him. This is in no way conclusive, but the year that Teague shot 40% was also the season Horford started shooting more threes. When your center can provide spacing, that will open up many more open looks for everyone else, both on the perimeter and in the paint. I think it is no coincidence that Teague suddenly had a career year from three the same year Horford upped his three-point attempts from 0.5 to 3.1 per game. I could see this trend continue, probably with a smaller increase for Kyrie though. Irving already shot 40% from three last season. He has proven before to be able to get to the 41% mark and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him do that again this year.
How Brad Stevens’ Offense Treats Point Guards
Perhaps the biggest single factor on Kyrie’s numbers this season (outside of, ya know, Kyrie himself) will be Brad Stevens’ offense. Now, this offense has proven to be able to support ridiculous scoring numbers from a sole source. Isaiah Thomas scoring almost 30 points a game is evidence to that. However, this year there will be two players that could both be the main scoring threat. The last time Stevens had two main scoring threats was his 2009-2010 Butler team led by none other than Gordon Hayward and All-Horizon point guard Shelvin Mack. Now, it is much clearer who was the better player on that Bulldogs’ team than it is on this Celtics team. However, Mack was still given the green light and actually led the Bulldogs in shots attempted per game.
Now, Stevens’ offense has certainly evolved and Kyrie Irving will most likely be afforded opportunities that even the great Shelvin Mack wasn’t. But, looking at the past few years of Boston Celtics’ basketball, Isaiah Thomas was the clear scorer and he led the team in shots and points by far. Now, you might dismiss this as obvious because Thomas was the clear best scorer on the team, but I believe that there was some design to Isaiah becoming the scorer he has. The Celtics have wanted Isaiah Thomas since he was a free agent in 2014. Stevens has been known to have sway in the front office, so I would not be surprised if Brad has had his eye on Isaiah for a while before he even came to Boston.
Why does this matter? It matters because it shows that Brad likes to have a scoring point guard. He utilized them at Butler, in fact he had a point guard as one of his main scorers in 4 out of his 6 seasons, and he has utilized them in the pros. Stevens knows how to use these point guards, and you know that he is on board with bringing in Kyrie Irving. Stevens’ offense is predicated on ball movement and making the right passes, but it also gives the primary playmaker lots of freedom to attack the hoop, cut off a big at the high post, or spot up for shots. I think Irving will have the green light pretty much all the time in this offense and he will see a similar number of opportunities as he did last season where he had a 30% usage rate.
Conclusion
Kyrie Irving’s got a lot going for him. He has gotten better as a player recently, he gets to play with Al Horford who may have a strong positive influence on point guards’ three-point shooting, and he gets to be the point guard in Brad Stevens’ offense. These are all great things for his scoring. I would not be surprised at all to see Kyrie average a career high in points, probably around the 26-27 points per game mark. I would also expect Kyrie to become slightly more efficient. Relying less on isolation plays should afford Kyrie some better shots and playing with Horford might give him that small bump in 3-point percentage. I think 47-48% from the field, 41% from three, and 90+% from the line is realistic, optimistic, but realistic. He should see an increase in his free throw attempts as well. As mentioned previously, Isaiah Thomas average over 12 drives per game last season and 8.5 FTA. Irving averaged only 9 drives and 4.6 FTA last year. Both of those number should go up this season, as he won’t have a player of LeBron’s caliber to defer to. Becoming the primary facilitator won’t do too much for his assists however. In Blatt’s offense, Irving’s assists went down, and I think playing with Horford and Hayward, two very capable passers, will put very little pressure on Irving to facilitate. I would expect his assists to stay right about in line with his career average at 5-6 per game.
TL;DR: 26.5 points/5.5 assists/47.5%/41%/90%