Celtics play in L.A. ! Sunday's charity game with Walker, Anderson, and Pierce

[HMURDOCH@aol.com]

The Celtics mid-summer game report :

Sunday night, Magic Johnson put on an annual charity basketball game at the
Great (or fairly adequate) Western Forum in L.A., and I was able to attend.
There was an earlier Celeb. game, and the main event which was as follows :

The teams were the Pros (Antoine Walker, Kenny Anderson, and some other guys
:-)  (including ; Michael Finley, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Ray Allen,
Lorenzen Wright, Steve Smith, Jim Jackson, Byron Russell, etc.)

And the Rookies (Paul Pierce and a supporting cast).  (among others, Corey
Benjamin, Nazr Mohammad, Jelani McCoy, Miles Simon, Filipe Lopez, J.R.
Henderson, Brian Skinner, DeMarco Johnson, etc.)

Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.  Antoine and Steve Smith (and
Kenny) joked around a lot before the game.

As to the game, maybe Antoine will be rethinking his comments about Paul
Pierce coming off the bench :  twice Pierce blew by Antoine to the basket off
a dribble, on one of the moves forcing Antoine to foul him.  He also played
some good defense (one of the very few on the court making any attempt to do
so). On one occasion he stripped the ball from Antoine and took it in for an
easy basket.  On another, he intercepted a pass intended for Antoine, and took
it all the way for a high flying dunk.  (I'm sure Antoine wished Paul *was* on
the bench tonight at least !)

He also played some good defense on Ray Allen (with whom he seemed to be
matched up often).  Generally a nice performance.  They didn't announce any
point or rebound numbers so I can't give much of an idea about the stats, but
Pierce did make a nice 3-pointer.

He struck me as a lot like Mercer, but more aggressive - at least in terms of
taking his shot - but seemed to have the same kind of court awareness and
reasonably good judgement - and a nice shot.  Off just the one game, I'm
pretty happy the Celts were able to draft him.

Re : Walker - well, he *is* a spectacular player.  He seemed to do a fair
amount of scoring, on the one hand, but also a few silly (but spectacular)
turnovers (missed behind the back pass, missed alley-oop pass, and another one
of those "I'm going to dribble the ball through the entire other team and
...oooops .... how did the ball bounce off my foot ?" routines.)  And having
made an early 3-pointer, he kept shooting them all game when he was in,
missing a few.

But, on the other hand, he did have what I think was the most spectacular play
of the game, where he got the ball on a breakaway and tossed it up off the
backboard from around the free-throw line to himself for a monster dunk.  What
can you say - it isn't the real season and the fans were impressed.  He did
show a lot of talent, and did score pretty easily.

And now, what you've all been asking for - a Kenny Anderson knee report !
Kenny was the starting point guard for the pro team, and played maybe half the
minutes.  It was hard to tell if his knees are completely ok, because few
players (including Kenny) were attempting to play defense, and there wasn't a
lot of lateral movement to test the knees.  But he didn't show any limping or
gimpiness as far as I could see, and he certainly showed flashes of real
acceleration and speed in getting up and down the court, and in making some
nice moves to the basket.  But again, this wasn't against tough NBA level
competition, so it doesn't say much about what will happen if the season ever
starts.
But he did start and play, and didn't show any signs of pain - so - so far, so
good !

Other players of note :

Among the rookies :  Miles Simon did a nice heady job while on the court.
Seems to be an alert and smart player.  Tobey Bailey was better than I
expected, as was Nazr Mohammad.  I somewhat expected Nazr to look a little
lost from what I had read, but he seemed to play pretty well, and actually had
an offensive game.  Rafer Alston and Filipe Lopez also didn't look too bad.

On the Pro side, along with Antoine, Michael Finley seemed to have a big
offensive game (again, the defense wasn't there most of the time, but he
showed a lot of athletic ability and scored a lot).  Generally a fun (and high
scoring) game.  The final was Pros 142, and Rookies 140 !  The final could
have turned out differently if anyone had been taking it seriously, with the
Rooks having a chance to win in the last minute or so.

Oh well, any excuse to see the Celtics play !  (at least 3 of them).
If anyone else saw the game, let me know what you thought of the game and
Pierce's, Anderson's, and Walker's play.  And any of the other players I
forgot to mention.

Hank Murdoch