OK Fine, I'll Fix Kyrie Irving

First off, let’s not pretend like the Celtics didn’t have offensive issues last season. They ranked 18th in the league in offense, went on insane scoring droughts, and were the worst second quarter team in the league. That all doesn’t just disappear overnight, even with the addition of someone like Gordon Hayward, who’s obviously working his way back into basketball shape. But look, the Celtics right now have the 29th Ortg in the NBA, are averaging the 29th most points at 103 a night shooting 41/34%. Maybe we should have seen this start coming based off the preseason they had when they literally couldn’t buy a three. So while their overall offensive start may not be that much of a surprise to anyone who watched this team play, you know what is?

Whatever the hell is going on with Kyrie Irving.

If you just ate your lunch and you have a weak stomach, proceed with caution. Kyrie’s offensive start can best be described as embarrassing and perplexing. I mean look at these numbers. On what planet is he a 14 ppg scorer who shoots 34/14%? Those are so drastically under what would be the worst season he’s had in his career (43/35%) it makes no sense. I think at this point, all of Celtics Nation is doing the whole “it’s early I’m not worried” routine, as we should because that’s true, but something has to change. Well, knowing that we all have to do our part this season, I am going to fix Kyrie Irving. It won’t be easy, but I think I can do it. So Brad, I know you’re reading this, help me help you help Kyrie.

The first thing we have to look at is Kyrie’s approach. To me, that’s been the biggest change we’ve seen so far. He’s simply not getting to the line at the rate we are used to. A FTr of just .180, this tells me Kyrie is trying to snap out of his funk through midrange/three pointers. Every coach in America will tell you the easiest way to snap out of a funk is to get to the line. Last year for example, he lived in the .240 range. a noticable difference. So, the first thing I would tell Kyrie would be to stop dicking round and worrying about contact, and get back to the charity stripe. Here are a few examples

You’re telling me Kyrie can’t get past Amir Johnson? Why stop when he’s basically giving you baseline and you can easily beat him to the spot? This has blocking foul written all over it if Kyrie just keeps going to the rim. Is this a shot Kyrie normally should make? Yes, but when you’re struggling and the defense gives you that sort of lane, you need to take it.

Here’s another one from the other night.

You can see after that Jaylen screen, Kyrie takes both defenders to basically the corner. Since he didn’t have a clear path to the rim, he has a decision to make, should he take a jumper, or a floated from like 10 feet. You can see he went with the floater and that didn’t work out. I would say guys only unleash these long floaters when they have their touch, not when they can’t buy a basket. So to me this is just a decision making error. First, he killed his angle so he couldn’t use the glass, and he tried to float it with his momentum going towards the baseline.

The second thing I want to look at is how Kyrie is taking his shots. What I mean by that is are they coming off him dribbling a shit ton, or is he just missing catch and shoot opportunities? Here’s what the numbers show

0 dribbles – 4.7 FGA (42.9% shooting)

1 dribble – 2.7 FGA (37.5% shooting)

2 dribbles – 1.7 FGA (20% shooting)

3-6 dribbles – 3.3 (20% shooting)

7+ dribbles – 4.0 FGA (33% shooting)

So what does this mean? Well, the more Kyrie has been dribbling the lower his FG% is. Now in years past this would have been an issue because the Celts didn’t have the talent to play him off ball. Well, now they do, and if I were Brad I would figure out a way to have guys like Tatum/Hayward/Horford initiate the offense so we can get Kyrie some more catch and shoot opportunities. At least in an effort to snap him out of this funk.

Next, I want to talk about the areas in which Kyrie is shooting from to start the year. So far, this is his shot chart

On the season Kyrie has taken 50 FGA. He’s done well at the rim (10-14), but over half of his attempts have come from 10ft-3P. A total of 20% of his shots have come by the way of those brutal long twos. How does that differ from last season? Well that 16ft-3P range was his fewest FGA area last year with just 122 of his total 1,087 FGA. That’s slightly over 11%. So basically to start this season Kyrie is taking twice as many of the most inefficient shots possible. No wonder he’s struggling. To fix this we need to get Kyrie better, cleaner looks in his strong areas, which is clearly the paint. I don’t know if he’s afraid to run P&R because he’s struggled, only scoring 0.42 points on 22% shooting, but if I were Brad I would stick to my guns, have Horford give him a high screen so he can find his way to the paint to either hit a floater, or get to the line. Letting Kyrie iso into these long twos is NOT going to solve the problem. When he gets that high screen he needs to be aggressive and attack, and not pull shit like this

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until he’s snapped out of this funk. Look at all the space in the paint for him to drive past fucking Enes Kanter. Instead, he settled for a low efficient shot, which he of course missed.

One last time, I’m not telling you to panic, or that Kyrie isn’t worth his extension, or any of that shit. But the facts are he’s had a brutal offensive start to his season, and since he’s going to be a pretty important piece to this whole puzzle, he can’t take forever to snap out of it. Look at the Celts schedule coming up and it’s not easy. Teams like OKC/DET/MIL/IND/DEN/UTA/POR are in their immediate future, most of them on the road, and for the Celtics to come out on top we need Kyrie to get back to the type of offensive efficiency we saw from him last year that was pretty ridiculous. To do that it’s not complicated, it just comes down to Brad putting Kyrie in positions to succeed, which we really haven’t seen yet. Instead we’ve seen Kyrie try and shoot his way out of it, only he’s been going about it all wrong. I imagine tonight, at home against ORL, if he takes this advice and goes back to the basics, he’ll look completely different and finally the Celtics can have a game in which they don’t shoot 40% and make us all lose years off our lives.