Re: Whooda Thunk It 33

[jmc@ptc.com (Jonathan McIntyre)]

Hi Celts fans,

  I've been busy for a few weeks, so haven't posted in a looooooong time! 

Dan Forant wrote: 
> Looks like everyone got into the action. For the Jones
>fans 9 points in 8 minutes, not bad. Let's see, that's 72 points if he
>played the whole game and produced as much. 

Let's try that math again.  He played 1/6 of the game and scored 9 points. 
That's 9 * 6 = 54 points if he scores at that pace for a full 48. 
6 of his points came in the last minute and a half of the game, as he
single-handedly cut the lead from 7 to 1.

For those still spelling his name "Dante" or other variations, the correct 
spelling is "Dontae'" (although I typically don't add the apostrophe at 
the end, myself). 

OK, now that I've gotten all the nitpicking out of my system, I can say 
some interesting things.  

> Did Cous get excited? After watching the first half, and listening to Cous
> sermons, I switched to radio. The Piston announcers at least had

Cous was excited in the 2nd and 3rd quarters whenever Kenny Anderson was 
in, pushing the pace and making assists, but other than that and the last 
minute of the game, he was his usual self.  It was great to see Kenny in 
there again.  He really changes the whole look of the offense for the better, 
even though he didn't play a lot of minutes last night, and was sloppy at 
times, hopefully just a sign of being in his first game back. 

Cousy seemed to take particular glee in talking about how a lot of fans 
were heading for the exits with a few minutes to go, assuming the Pistons 
had it won, only to be dismayed to learn the truth later. 

An interesting thing was hearing Pitino shout instructions throughout the 
game.  Of course we've all heard him shout, but last night he was especially 
close to a TV microphone on many plays, and you could hear him as well as 
the announcers, telling Anderson, Minor, Mercer and others where to go on 
defense, who to rotate to, when to get up in someone's face and pressure, etc. 
Of course this means the other team knows what's coming defensively, so this 
has to be a kind of "teaching on the go", where the goal is to get them to 
learn now, so that in a really big game, they'll know what to do without 
Pitino having to give away the plan to the other team. 

At one point when Detroit was doing an isolation and McCarty was stuck 
on the far side away from the ball covering someone, but had his focus 
completely on the man with the ball, ready to cheat over to cover a drive 
down the lane, Pitino kept shouting "see your man, Walter!  See your man!" 
as the guy could have easily walked away from Walter to draw an illegal 
defense call.  Walter never looked.  I think Anderson was the most responsive 
to what Pitino asked him to do.  Of course, he has more need to be than the 
others since he's still learning the defense, but many were questioning his 
attitude earlier, but Anderson replied he want to do "whatever Coach tells 
me", and it seems he means it. 

Jon Mc