Popeye Jones &

["Greg Davis" <pakpoy@one.net.au>]

I've  received mail from this list for about a year and appreciate the
rumours, coverage and general discussion that  goes on. Unfortunately, I
don't get to see the Celtics play too often now that I'm living in
Australia. Regretably the only recent game I saw was the last game against
Toronto that I was able to coordinate with a business trip. However, for
what its worth I would like to contribute to the discussion.

I believe that the injury to Popeye Jones created a significant loss to the
team this year. It appears that his earlier poor form was because of his
bad knee and we are yet see him at his best. Clearly, he wasn't able to
perform up to the level that he had done so in previous years. I remember
from his days in Dallas that he was a great rebounder and defensive
presence. From what I hear he also brought a mature presence to the team
which as I also understand has been clearly lacking this year.  Popeye at 4
would have allowed Walker to play 3 and therefore created favourable
mis-matches at that position.

A lot has also been said about the difficulty in playing Pierce, Walker and
Mercer at the same time - ie one of them will miss out on offensive
opportunities. I don't think they all need to start and I don't see this as
a problem given the versatility of these three players. Pierce and Mercer
can play 2 and 3, and Walker can play 3 and 4. Surely any starting five
with any combination of two of these three players would create enough
offensive opportunities. This would free up someone like Bowen to start and
do what he does best - be a defensive specialist and just terrorise the
opposition's 2 or 3 in the defensive rotation.

3 Walker	3 Walker	3 Pierce	4 Walker	4 Walker
2 Mercer 	2 Pierce 	2 Mercer	3 Pierce	3 Mercer

I hope this makes sense.

Greg