| Grading The Deal: Celtics Make Nate Lone Deadline Acquisition Authored by Christopher Reina - February 18, 2010 - 6:42 pm
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When the Knicks acquired Nate Robinson as the middle of three first rounders from the 2005 NBA Draft, his ceiling was a gimmick player off the bench that may win a dunk contest or two. Robinson leaves New York as a winner of three dunk contests and has actually evolved into an effective rotation player, largely because he is a fairly efficient scorer with a career True Shooting Percentage of 53.8%.
His PER of 18.9 and 17.9 in 08-09 and 09-10 respectively has been amongst the top half of the NBA, ahead of fellow point guards such as Derrick Rose, Tony Parker, Jason Kidd, Mo Williams and Russell Westbrook.
Most importantly for Boston, Robinson represents a huge upgrade off the bench in the backcourt while providing a scorer who has averaged 18.2 points per 36 minutes for his career. The Knicks obviously play at a much faster pace than Boston, but Robinson's 19.5 points per 36 minutes this season would rank first for them, ahead of Paul Pierce's 18.9 points.
Robinson hasn't been getting into the lane and hence to the free throw line with nearly as much frequency this season, with his draw foul rate down significantly. As each season has passed, Robinson has fallen increasingly in love with his own outside shot.
Robinson still has some maturity issues, but he has come a long ways from his first couple of seasons and they aren't something this veteran team can't withstand for a few months depending on how far they advance in the playoffs.
That begs the question, how significantly does Robinson actually improve Boston's playoff chances?
Robinson has a net PER advantage of +5.8 in comparison to his opponent counterpart at point guard. He is sometimes a defensive liability due to his lack of size, but should do well against the likes of Mo Williams, Jameer Nelson, Jason Williams, Mike Bibby, Jose Calderon and the trio in Los Angeles.
The Celtics are nowhere near as good as the Cavaliers at this point and that was even before Antawn Jamison was acquired.
All indications are that Danny Ainge was incredibly active leading to the deadline while searching for a way to parlay Ray Allen's expiring contract into usable assets. Robinson makes the Celtics better, but marginally and not nearly enough to win their second title in three seasons unless multiple 30-somethings all of a sudden get younger and healthy.
The other piece coming to Boston is Marcus Landry, who helped complete the trade in terms of matching salary, but is a hard worker though not as talented as his brother Carl.
Grade for Celtics: B-
For the Knicks, they get to clear out Robinson to create minutes for Toney Douglas and now Sergio Rodriguez as well. Robinson's career in New York resembled Bill Clinton's EKG, with plenty of moments of promise but many more moments of head-shakes over his frequently childish immature antics.
The New York locker room should be a slightly better place for the remainder of the season and someone in it is one bottle of Vaseline richer.
I admit to having loved Ainge's 2008 draft of J.R. Giddens and Bill Walker. They were once potential lottery picks that had their draft value quickly diminished, but it represented the kind of big swing approach that works out the way it does for San Antonio with DeJuan Blair and RC Buford becomes a genius, or it doesn't and everyone forgets and forgives.
Walker has been a very efficient scorer during his 245 NBA minutes with a TS% of 64%. He has been used extremely sparingly this season and has looked strong in the D-League.
Giddens potentially looked like a lockdown defender, excellent wing rebounder and decent system scorer when he was drafted out of New Mexico, but received very little playing time in his two NBA seasons. He recently had knee surgery after averaging 18 points and 4.5 boards in four D-League games.
Eddie House, who Mike D'Antoni is familiar with from Phoenix, is the other piece of the trade. House is the definition of a gunner, as he hasn't seen a shot he didn't like since Hayward High. He is almost exclusively a three-point shooter and he has a very good career mark of 39.4%.
Grade for Knicks: B+ |
