No Subject

Here's the deal. Eric Williams could help our second unit as much as Rodney
Rogers would have, but no matter how you break it down, his minutes will come
at the expense of three guys with healthy knees (Cheaney, Griffin and Wallah)
who reputedly can also run and defend. In other words, we don't lose THAT
much by trading him. Wallah and Griffin have so far had tremendous
off-seasons, yet one or both drops out of the rotation if EW gets the minutes
we project him to get. And that's the best case scenario. The worst case
scenario is four more years at 5 million a year, and contract demands from
Fortson and Battie well above that.

With due respect to some of the best articulated views I've read on the list,
I personally think we should add on 180° to "Mr Complete 360° turnaroud". I
say we ship EW + Denver's 3 million bucks out of town while he still looks
promising and relatively affordable.

Hey, if it were your own money, what would you do? Don't be surprised if
Pitino is already trying to move EW, possibly in a package deal involving one
of our decent players (hopefully not, though). Unfortunately, I don't know
how many teams have 5 million in cap space AND a willingness to take on a
four year contract.


> I think we are going to see the press used much more consistently this
> year, though probably more rarely with the starting lineup. I remember
> Pitino mentioning that even when the Celtics pressed last year, it was
> essentially just man-to-man coverage over the full court, rather than
> the sophisticated system that he teaches emphasizing spacing and
> rotations. I would think that he has enough athletic types on his
> team combined with enough scoring talent that he should be able to
> field at least one effective press unit - Battie, McCarty, Pierce,
> Cheaney, and Turner seems like a possibility, though they'd take
> a beating inside in a halfcourt game. Hopefully, the days of turning
> over six players per season are over and the current unit can start
> really learning and getting used to Pitino's system.

Good points. The big question is what elements (besides luck) have made the
Celtics consistently better than the rest of the league. A practical
definition of "team chemistry" could be having role players who rank in the
top ten in the non-scoring categories. So far we seem to have just one such
player (the NBA's #4 rebounder) but potentially, we have several others
(Walker was #2 in double-doubles a year earlier behind Tim Duncan; Pierce and
Battie could make top ten in steals, 3-point accuracy and blocks). Meanwhile
teams we trade with like Denver will continue losing games, but with fans
leaving the stadium muttering things like: "our team lost again but it wasn't
Ron Mercer's fault...he got his 25 points". Fans said the same nice things
about Reggie Theus, George Gervin, World B Free, Pete Maravich. Their losing
teammates would beg to differ (even though all of those "lottery-team
players" could actually dribble, create shots and pass the ball).

> The triangle offense
> supposedly took two years to learn (and probably much longer to perfect).
>
> Alex

With so many team-oriented, coachable stars as Shaq-ass, Rice-man and Kobe, I
think denizens of Los Angeles (in Spanish that means "City of Fairies")
should plan on enjoying mucho success. Mark the 20th of December on your
calendar as the first of many times the "pink triangle offense" will duck and
cover from Boston's 550 pound pair of pit bulls (Fort and Battleship).

Joe

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