RE: Thoughts On Fortson

["Kerry Kee" <kkee@highground.com>]

Another things to consider regarding Fortson's foul trouble
was that he was playing center lots of the time.
Heightwise he's already undersized for power forward (6'6)
so it's pretty reasonable he'd get in foul trouble with the
centers around the league.

I watched him a bit at Cincinnati and he used to be
the "man" offensively.  Even as a Freshman at a big time
program, he stepped up right away and showed lots of poise.
He bulked up considerably after his freshman year and
had some transition to that.  He's more skilled than his stats
would show.

- KK


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-celtics@igtc.com [mailto:owner-celtics@igtc.com]On Behalf Of
Bill Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 1999 11:04 PM
To: celtics@igtc.com
Subject: Thoughts On Fortson


	He also made big strides in controlling his fouling.  Over the
first half of the season, he committed .182 fouls per minutes of
playing time (DeClerq territory), but by the second half, he had
dropped that number to just .126 (still too high, though).  And he
fouled out 7 times in the first half (despite only playing 24
minutes), but cut that to just 2 in the second half.  He seems to have
accomplished this mostly by being less aggressive on the offensive
board, as he went from .161 OR/min. to .139 (still a very good
figure).  

	It seems to me likely (but it would be nice to have some
confirmation), that at the start of the season it was Fortson's job to
go into games, be very aggressive, and not worry about the fouls.
Then Lafrentz went down, and he got more minutes, but continued to be
aggressive.  The result is that he fouled out of quite a few games (I
bet he fouled out of 6 or 7 of games 13-25).  So he began to tone down
the act, dropped his fouls considerably, and still managed to make a
very sizeable contribution.  It demonstrates ability to adjust to a
new role, and a pretty impressive learning curve.