Re: Celtics Barely Win: Celtics 100-Rockets 96

[Georgek27@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/11/99 12:58:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
cecil@hfx.eastlink.ca writes:

<< Seriously now, that is an excellent point.  I said in an earlier post that 
I
 thought Houston might just be up to the task out of respect to Chuck.  I'm
 sure he told them that he would have liked nothing better than to beat
 Boston when they were honoring him.  The fact that Houston fought back may
 not be a sign of our weakness as much as their fire and desire on this
 night.  Comebacks are part of the game.  Last night, I watch those mentally
 tough Raptors come back from an early deficit, only to fall to the
 sharp-shooting Bucks.  They are going to make life miserable for a lot of
 teams.
  >>
Also overlooked was how our defense took apart two young players who many on 
this list were salivating over -- Cato & Francis.  The game plan was 
obviously to concentrate on Francis and take him out of the game but when you 
do that you always risk one of the lesser players getting hot -- in this case 
Mobley -- and putting up some numbers.

The biggest problem continues to be that we don't have someone who can 
consistently hit from outside when the opponent clogs the paint -- especially 
on the second unit (which is what Dana was supposed to be able to do).  We 
have a number of guys who can sometimes do it but when they can't the lead 
slips away.

The way Thomas Hamilton played, which was standing in front of our basket for 
80% of the time he was on the floor, we should have gotten a number of 
illegal defense calls but they always seem to come against us instead.  It 
was like the refs knew he couldn't keep up with the pace so they gave him a 
break.

As for Walker, my opinion is that he's doing things right 90% of the time but 
he goes through spells when he can't buy a basket from 5 feet away!  That 
will change.  He is blending well with his teammates and I wouldn't trade him 
without getting a real stud in return.  The fallacy of all these Walker for 
Sharim type deals is that even tho they have identical salaries the base year 
compensation restrictions makes such a deal impossible.  We keep measuring 
Walker by stats at the same time we preach that the team has to ignore stats 
for the sake of teamwork.

Regarding stats: Peter Brown of One on One Sports has been arguing with 
callers the past few days that Barkley was as good as -- if not better than 
-- Larry Bird and his argument is all based on stats.  Callers have brought 
up that Larry made teammates better but he counters that with the fact that 
Larry's teammates WERE better.  Now I've always liked Barkley and consider 
him one of the games best as well as one of the greatest overachievers ever 
to play the game but no stats are going to convince me that he was equal to 
or better than Bird.

George