Scouting one-pager: Boston Celtics (BOS)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,398 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Above-the-break three team: corners are only 17.4% of their threes (league 25.9%); their spacing lives higher on the arc.
- Volume-three profile: 46.7% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
- Luka Garza is a genuine shot-maker: +9.7 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Neemias Queta (1.26 xPPS on 499 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Brown - D. White - N. Queta - P. Pritchard - S. Hauser (+19.5/100 over 411 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| BOS | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.106 | 1.091 | +0.014 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.051 | 1.097 | -0.046 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +5.5 | -0.5 | +6.0 |
| Rim share | 21.0% | 28.4% | -7.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 12.4% | 10.0% | +2.3 pp |
| Three share | 46.7% | 41.5% | +5.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 17.4% | 25.9% | -8.5 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 2.0% | 1.8% | +0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Jaylen Brown | 1,543 | 1.045 | 0.982 | +6.3 | +5.3 | -0.6 |
| Derrick White | 1,108 | 0.977 | 1.011 | -3.3 | -2.7 | +4.5 |
| Payton Pritchard | 1,091 | 1.122 | 0.994 | +12.8 | +9.7 | +2.0 |
| Sam Hauser | 601 | 1.168 | 1.085 | +8.3 | +4.6 | +2.0 |
| Anfernee Simons | 568 | 1.109 | 0.995 | +11.4 | +6.8 | -0.1 |
| Neemias Queta | 499 | 1.309 | 1.261 | +4.7 | +3.4 | +3.9 |
| Luka Garza | 357 | 1.308 | 1.128 | +18.0 | +9.7 | +0.5 |
| Baylor Scheierman | 333 | 1.198 | 1.075 | +12.3 | +5.3 | +0.8 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| J. Brown - D. White - N. Queta - P. Pritchard - S. Hauser | 200 | 411 | +19.5 |
| J. Brown - D. White - N. Queta - P. Pritchard - J. Walsh | 192 | 388 | +2.3 |
| J. Brown - J. Tatum - D. White - N. Queta - S. Hauser | 153 | 325 | +6.8 |