Re: Misc. Stats and Trends

[Josh Ozersky <josh_ozersky@yahoo.com>]

Agree with most of this, but this is not the worst
stretch of Antoine's career. He hasn't been rebounding
well, and his shooting sucks, but he hasn't been
screwing up team chemistry, jacking up dumb shots,
etc.  His floor game is going pretty well.  The shots
will start to drop in one of these games.  In the
philly game it looked to me that his hip pointer was
bothering him.

--- opi@unesco.org wrote:
> Here are some interesting Celts stats, partially
> gleaned from the Boston
> Herald:
> 
> -In three of the last five games, Vitaly Potapenko
> has 46 points on
> 21-for-29 shooting from the floor. In the other two,
> he has two points
> on 1-for-4 shooting.
> 
> -Battie had 27 boards and 8 blocks over the weekend.
> In the previous
> five games he had just 18 boards.
> 
> -After tying Larry Bird's Celtics record with nine
> steals Friday, Paul
> Pierce had none the next night.
> 
> -Adrian Griffin played a season-low 21 minutes
> Saturday (5 fouls). Since
> winning the rookie of the month, he's averaging 4
> points 3 rebounds 3.5
> assists 2 steals 0 turnovers.
> 
> -Antoine Walker is 0-for-9 on treys in the last two
> games. Among Celts
> who have made at least one, he is shooting a
> team-low 30 percent from
> that range.
> 
> -In the past 7 games (2-5), Antoine has jacked up
> many more shots (19.3
> attempts per game) and missed a lot more (.333FG%).
> He's contributed 5.6
> rebounds, 2.1 assists over that span. This is as bad
> as he's ever
> played. Certainly it is the least productive stretch
> of his career.
> 
> -By contrast, Philly (playing without Ratliff or
> Iverson) looks a lot
> like the Celts club at the start of November. No
> player took more than
> 11 field goal attempts in the win over the Celts
> last Saturday, and
> remarkably they are 5-2 without "The Answer".
> 
> -The Celts have lost five straight road games.
> Unless they break this
> trend, they will miss the playoffs. They are on pace
> to win 8 games on
> the road for the entire season. Last year they won 9
> road games out of
> 25.
> 
> -The Nuggets won in New York last night without Ron
> Mercer (don't know
> why he DNP'd). Mercer is averaging 23ppg over the
> past four games, with
> the points well balanced throughout the course of
> games (double figures
> in 8 of his last 10 halves). He's having a better
> season than Antoine
> IMO, although his assists (1.8 in 39.1 minutes),
> turnovers (2.8), steals
> (1.0), blocks (0.36) and rebounds (4.0) are about
> where you'd expect
> them to be.
> 
> -I believe Jim O'Brien is easily undefeated as a
> coach, with nothing but
> blowout wins on top of it (he ran the Fila camp). He
> certainly sounds
> like another potential pro or college coaching
> prospect after this
> season, which I find interesting because while
> Pitino credits many
> mentors in his career, I can't think of many
> understudies that he has so
> far successfullly mentored, with the exception of
> Florida's Billy
> Donovan.
> 
> IMO, awesome posts this weekend. It's a lot of fun
> to read the list this
> year. Our loss to the Philly Creamcheesers was a big
> disappointment for
> me (We knew they badly needed a road win, plus
> Philly is IMO again one
> of the three most satisfying opponents to beat after
> Pat Riley's Miami
> and Shaq's Lakers, but slightly ahead of Indiana and
> New Yawk). At least
> Battie's performance will get Pitino's mind off of
> trading our nucleus
> for Ratliff and Hughes (if this ever actually
> entered his mind at all).
> 
> Toine needs to keep on practicing his shooting
> before McDyess and
> company arrive in town. I think young Pierce is
> correct in saying that a
> focus on good defense often leads to good overall
> games. Before this
> season, I completed believed Toine would be as
> dependable on the
> defensive boards over his career as our other hybrid
> big/small forward
> Larry Bird. It seemed like money in the bank before
> Toine suddenly
> evolved into such a swish&sway, freaking girlie-man.
> 
> Take away a consistent energy around the boards and
> Toine really is
> precisely as DJessen describes: an impressive
> dribbler for his size with
> average or below average skills in every other facet
> of the game, not to
> mention that he's not exactly the brightest bulb on
> your Christmas tree.
> 
> Joe
> 
> -----
> 
> 

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