Another look at Gomes and stats

A big difference in Gomes' recent play has been his shift to PF, where he uses his quickness and speed to get around the other team's big men and either get to the hoop or create an open jumper for himself. Doc Rivers was apparently on WEEI a little while ago commenting that the Celtics only ran one play for Gomes against the 76ers last night, in which he missed his shot. All 29 of his points, therefor, came from his taking shots that were available to him as part of ball movement and crashing the offensive boards.

How much better is he playing now compared to the fall? 82games.com keeps very handy records of each players' PER* by position, as well as the PER for the player they are matched up against at the time. PER is a forced-ranked scale, with the league average for productivity set at 15.



The danger of drawing conclusions from small numbers applies here, as Gomes' minutes at backup SF earlier in the season were really pretty limited. This also demonstrates what we all already know: that Ryan's contributions on the offensive end have improved dramatically since he has been given free reign at PF. That said, it's interesting to note that he was apparently doing a better job on defense against SFs earlier this season than he has been lately in the paint. This is perhaps to be expected. The result, unfortunately, dilutes some of his many offensive contributions as is shown by his rather modest net PER of +1.3

'*' For those who want a refresher on PER can look for an initial explanation here.