Queta Roll vs 3PA Tradeoff

Generated 2026-05-19. Companion to reports/celtics_pnr_dho_action_analysis_REPAIRED.md, reports/celtics_pnr_ballhandler_outcome_analysis.md, and reports/celtics_player_action_profiles.md. Source: nba_api 1.10.2 Synergy pulls already on disk.

---

1. Executive verdict

The RealGM objection - "decision-making is what actions produce the most 3PAs; Queta on the roll doesn't" - is a legitimate description of how some coaching staffs think, but it does not rescue the 2025-26 playoff Queta-roll under-deployment from the data. Three reasons:

1. Queta's playoff roll PPP of 1.786 = equivalent to a 59.5% three- point attempt. No realistic NBA three-point shot matches that. League-average threes return ~1.08 PPP. Elite 45% shooters return ~1.35. Queta's roll returned more than even the elite-shooter benchmark.
2. Boston's actual playoff spot-up PPP was 1.005 (equivalent to a 33.5% three). That is below league-average three-point efficiency, not above it. So even on the "we want threes" logic, swapping a roll possession for a Boston spot-up possession was negative-EV on average.
3. Synergy doesn't credit the rolling big with kickout-threes his gravity creates - those get attributed to the receiver's Spotup row. So Queta's roll PPP of 1.786 already understates the action's total value if the roll generates secondary catches.

So the objection is partially valid (coaches do think this way) but data-wrong as a defense of the actual 2025-26 usage choice. Brad Stevens has talked publicly about first-shot offense and rim pressure; the Queta-roll number is exactly that.

2. What the data can and cannot show

What Synergy gives us per play type

POSS, POSS_PCT, PTS, PPP, FGM, FGA, FGMX, FG_PCT, EFG_PCT, FT_POSS_PCT, TOV_POSS_PCT, SF_POSS_PCT, PLUSONE_POSS_PCT, SCORE_POSS_PCT, PERCENTILE

What it does NOT give us

• 3PA, 3PM, or 3P% by play type. Not a column. EFG_PCT hints at the three-share inside FGA but doesn't break it out. So "how many 3PAs does PNR ball-handler generate" cannot be answered directly from this aggregate.
• Pass-out / kickout outcomes from PNR roll. Synergy attributes pass-out outcomes to the receiver's play type. A Queta-rolling kickout-three goes into Spotup for the receiver, not into PRRollman. Queta's 1.786 PPP only counts possessions Queta himself finished.
• Action chains (PNR → swing → spot-up → drive → kick). Each link is attributed to the player who ended it, in whatever play type classification fits. The aggregate is single-link.

This means the "doesn't create 3PA" objection literally cannot be measured against Queta's roll in the Synergy aggregate. The kickout threes his roll gravity caused are credited to Hauser/Pritchard/ Scheierman in their Spotup rows.

3. Efficiency comparison (2025-26 Playoffs)

From data/celtics_queta_roll_vs_three_tradeoff.csv:

*PERCENTILE is Synergy's own efficiency rank within play type; for BOS team PRBallHandler it's 73rd vs all playoff teams, not vs other actions.

Regular-season anchors (for stability)

The 158-possession Queta RS sample shows the roll-man PPP holds up above the elite-3P% line even with the playoff-sample variance stripped out.

Reference 3P% benchmarks

4. Equivalent 3P% math

The conversion: PPP / 3 = equivalent 3P%. If every possession of some action is a three-point attempt, then PPP = 3PA × 3 × 3P%, so matching another action's PPP requires 3P% = PPP / 3.

This is a "what would a three need to shoot to break even" calculation.

Applied to the playoff numbers:

• Queta roll-man 1.786 PPP → 59.5% 3P needed. Not realistic in any sample size. The highest sustainable NBA three-point rate over a season is ~45%.
• Boston team roll 1.196 PPP → 39.9% 3P needed. Roughly league- average three. So the team-level PRRollman is comparable to an average three.
• Boston team spot-up 1.005 PPP → 33.5% 3P needed. Below the league-average three. The actual Boston playoff spot-up shot quality was worse than a generic three.
• Boston team PRBallHandler 0.856 PPP → 28.5% 3P needed. Far below any sustainable three. The playoff handler branch was the lowest- efficiency major action in Boston's offense.

So on the per-possession math, the choice spectrum was:

Queta roll  (1.786) > elite 3P (1.35) > Boston team roll (1.196) ≈ avg 3P (1.20)
                                       > Boston spot-up (1.005) ≈ 33% 3P
                                       > Boston PNR-handler (0.856) ≈ 28% 3P

Every step down the ladder loses ~0.15-0.20 points per possession. Boston ran the bottom rung 21.9 times per game and the top rung 2.0 times per game.

5. Why the 3PA objection is only partially valid

Valid part: Coaches do design offenses to maximize 3PA volume. Threes carry positive variance, generate transition opportunities for the opponent at lower rates than missed 2s, and feed the modern spacing model. Joe Mazzulla is on the record for this. Rolling and finishing at the rim doesn't directly tilt the 3PA count.

Invalid part for THIS team in THIS series:

1. Boston's own spot-up PPP (1.005) was below the equivalent of a 33.5% three. Their actual spot-up shots returned less than league-average three-point efficiency. So the "shift to 3PA" logic was not delivering above-3PA-baseline efficiency in this sample. The spot-up factory was leaking.
2. The PNR-handler branch (0.856 PPP) was the worst major action. The handler branch is where most kickout threes would originate. If those kickouts were happening at high quality, the handler branch PPP would have been higher than 0.856. So the "PNR generates threes" defense doesn't actually show up in Boston's playoff team efficiency.
3. Queta's roll PPP is 1.786 on his finishes alone. If even half of his rolls generated a kickout-three at league-average efficiency (1.08 PPP), the all-in expected value of a Queta-rolling possession is higher than 1.786 (because some rolls become kickout-threes, and 1.08 PPP threes still add value relative to no roll). The data doesn't show this directly, but the math is one-sided.

6. Why Queta roll usage still mattered

Three points the RealGM objector should concede:

1. The Queta-roll finish itself out-returned every realistic three. 1.786 PPP > 1.35 (45% three). Not close.
2. Roll gravity is invisible in the receiver's row but real. Big rolling hard collapses the help defender; the corner shooter becomes more open. Synergy credits the make to the corner shooter's Spotup row, not to the roller. So under-deploying the roller does not only lose the roll PPP - it loses some of the spot-up PPP it would have created.
3. The two-action vs two-action comparison is unambiguous. When Boston ran the PNR roll-man branch in the playoffs, they scored at 1.196 PPP (team level). When they ran the PNR ball-handler branch, they scored at 0.856 PPP. The roll branch was 0.34 PPP better. Over the 21.9 PNR-handler possessions per game, swapping even 5 of them to PNR-roll-man would have added ~1.7 points per game in expected value - more than enough to flip a 4-game-to-3 series.

7. Limits and sample-size caveats

• Queta's playoff roll sample is 14 possessions over 7 games. Real variance bands apply. The RS anchor (158 poss, 1.348 PPP, 86th percentile) is the load-bearing number. Both signal "elite," but the playoff number is not a population estimate.
• No kickout-three measurement. The "Queta roll creates threes" claim is plausible from basketball logic and the league-wide literature on roll gravity, but this Synergy aggregate cannot confirm or quantify it for Boston specifically.
• Volume scaling assumption. "Use Queta more on the roll" assumes efficiency holds at higher volume. It usually decays somewhat as defenses adjust. The right read is: moving from 2.0 to maybe 4-5 PNR-roll-man possessions per game, not to 15. The marginal cost of the next-5 reps is modest given a 0.4-PPP gap with the handler branch.
• PHI's defensive scheme. Embiid as a drop-coverage big is the exact mismatch the roll exploits. Different opponents (e.g., switching schemes) compress the gap. The "every time down" framing is too strong; the "more than 2 times per game" framing is the conservative read.

8. RealGM-ready response

Fair point that coaches design offense around 3PA generation and that Queta's roll-man finishes don't directly produce 3PAs in the stat sheet. But the math doesn't rescue the Queta under-deployment. A 1.786 PPP roll finish is equivalent to shooting 59.5% from three - not 36%, not 40%, 59.5%. No realistic NBA three matches that, and Boston's actual playoff spot-up PPP was 1.005, equivalent to a 33.5% three, which is below the league-average three-point rate. So the "we run more PNR-handler to generate kickout threes" logic only works if the resulting threes were going in at well above 33%, which Boston's spot-up efficiency in the series says they weren't. Meanwhile Boston's PNR-handler branch returned 0.856 PPP - the worst major action in the offense - while the PNR-roll-man branch returned 1.196. That 0.34 PPP gap, multiplied over the 22 PNR-handler reps they ran per game, is the actual evidence. And Synergy doesn't credit Queta's roll with the kickout-threes his gravity creates - those are attributed to the Spotup receiver - so his 1.786 PPP is the floor of what the action returned, not the ceiling. The right answer isn't "abandon threes." It's "use the roll to bend the defense, force help, and turn one of those 22 mediocre PNR-handler reps a game into the next-best thing on the floor."

---

Sources

• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Playoffs_PRRollman_T_offensive_PerGame.json
• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Playoffs_PRRollman_P_offensive_PerGame.json
• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Playoffs_Spotup_T_offensive_PerGame.json
• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Playoffs_Spotup_P_offensive_PerGame.json
• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Playoffs_PRBallHandler_T_offensive_PerGame.json
• data/raw/action_types/nba_api/synergy_2025_26_Regular_Season_PRRollman_P_offensive_PerGame.json
• Output: data/celtics_queta_roll_vs_three_tradeoff.csv