Re: Antoine Walker, and work ethic

[jmc@ptc.com (Jonathan McIntyre)]

Christiaan said:
> im not going to comment on whether or not his attitude sucks, but dont
> interpret the fact that AW averaged almost 40 minutes a game to mean that
> hes a hard worker; heck, for most of the year, there were more coaches on
> the celtics bench than players. thus, as one of the lucky healthy few, he
> _had_ to play that much.

  I think you're absolutely right that the fact that he averaged 40 minutes 
per game does not mean he is a hard worker.  Heck, most players would love 
to play that kind of minutes. 

  However, I do think Antoine works hard at his game, and that there is 
other evidence to show this.  The evidence is that he improved his 
skills steadily throughout the year in all areas of his game.  In fact,
I just went to look at his stats for the season, and decided to take 5
samples of 10 games spaced evenly throughout the season and see what
his stats looked like.  Here's what I found:

Games
         MIN FGM FGA FTM FTA OFF DEF TOT AST PF ST TO PTS
 1-10    283  49 125  21  32  22  41  63  20 32 10 31 127
               39.2%   65.6%
19-28    279  50 123  22  41  34  42  76  16 36  7 20 122
               40.65%  53.7%
37-46    413  81 180  35  57  56  49 105  35 30 17 33 198
               45.0%   61.4%
55-64    399  64 174  29  45  28  51  79  37 35 16 24 156
               36.8%   64.4%
73-82    444  98 223  36  46  27  58  85  59 33 14 29 249
               43.9%   78.3%

Notice that his field goal percentage did improve slightly, 
and his free throw percentage improved dramatically.  In the 
second game of the season, he was 12 for 12 in free throws, 
but in the other 9 games, he was 9 for 20, or 45%.  He then 
steadily improved throughout the season, to finish with 78.3% 
in the last 10 games.  His rebounding improved steadily, too. 
His steals seemed to stay even.  

Most notable, however, is his assist/turnover ratio.  His 
passing skills were made obvious at the end of the season, as 
he had his first 2 career triple doubles, including 13 assists 
with only 3 turnovers in the second to last game.  Granted he 
was trying to pile up the assists, but at least he didn't commit 
a lot of turnovers, and he did make some very creative, difficult 
assists, exploiting momemtary opportunities for layups that his 
teammates had, which have all too often gone unnoticed by other 
Celtics in recent years.  His assist to turnover ratio went 
like this in the 5 "sample periods" above:
	0.65
        0.80
        1.06
        1.54
        2.03

Also, his assists per game was only surpassed by 3 rookies, all 
of them point gaurds.  He's easily the best passing big man of 
all the rookies.  That's what I think I like best about Mr. Walker. 

Jon Mc