Re:KarateKid analogy

[opi@unesco.org]

Sptguy33@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/13/99 3:30:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> jim_meninno@hotmail.com writes:
>
> << These people have some dissatisfaction
>  with their own lives and see Antoine as the prototypical spoiled young
>  athlete with everything handed to him on a plate. >>
>
> I agree, that's part of it.
>
> But you really have to see him in action day in and day out. That's the only
> way I can describe it. Im lucky because I get to go to the games and I sit
> close to the court. There's just something about him that turns people off in
> a "Blond guy from the Karate Kid" kinda way.

That's actually an excellent and humorous "villain" analogy. Where all the funny
lines comes from, I'll never know.

To the degree that this touches a bit on the "what if Toine were white" issue, I
seriously do believe that a white Antoine (we'll call him "Tony") would also be
heckled and booed for his buffoon-like and childish on-court behavior (which BTW
he seems to have toned down much more than the Fleet Center fans have been
dishing out on him). But there are also those who might make a folk hero out of
him in light of his youth and furious play in his former All Star incarnation:
namely one of only five players with a 20-10, second overall in the NBA in
double-doubles behind Tim Duncan, 49 points on Webber in the heat of the All Star
race, considerably over twice as many rebounds as his closest Celts teammate, led
the Celts in total assists and steals etc. It's a hard call to make, but I do
feel it is deeply disengenuous to say that Antoine's "ethnic" and "cultural"
mannerisms don't play some part in the degree of our hatred for him.

I've noted in the past that Ted Williams was also a total buffoon at that age and
that Bird and Orr were antisocial misanthrope geek-types who'd diss the public
and think nothing of it. I also believe Bird put his foot in his mouth far more
routinely than Antoine, but the fraternity of sportswriters still usually covered
up for him (not because he was white but because he was GREAT). If you follow the
Boston Globe, you'd sense that they actually seem to plot ways to trip up Antoine
and make him look bad, just to prove some sort of point.

 Numbah Four Bobby Orr, Teddy Ballgame and Da Bird (along with the entire 80s
Celts compared to previous teams) are in a pantheon realistically well beyond
Bill Russell or anyone else's reach in terms of popularity. You know what I say
about that? So freaking what!  This emphatically does not  in any way "prove"
Boston is "racist".  It so happens that I instinctively root for any US sports
athlete who is more or less of my ethnicity (Zhi Zhi Wang, anyone?). I don't see
a problem with that. People on this Celts e-mail list may paint me into a corner
as a "blame whitey" rabble-rouser type smug person. I don't think that's at all
right or accurate.

There are two simple reasons I've stuck up for Antoine in the past:

1) It's unfair how he's being treated, period. New England is full of people who
grasp the concept of fairness, so we'll stick up for him and try to convey that
at least some of us hope he eventually succeeds in Boston, even against our own
doubts. Hence Tommy Heinsohn's instinctive and unconditional support for Antoine
(he sees a nice kid and he understands the hustle and energy it takes to go after
and get big rebounds all those years, even if he's "lazy" and "out of shape").
Ditto the BSG "Antoine Project", which many of us still support. To me this
demonstrates one side of what being from Boston is all about. Unfair is unfair
and you have to draw the line. There's no justification for that mob attitude.
It's nauseating.

2) The point of being a Celtics fan is our championship tradition. We're not in
this to have a "nice" team or a "fan friendly" team. We need players. I honestly
don't believe we will compete for a championship even if we do trade for a rock
solid scorer or great role-player in exchange for Antoine Walker, regardless of
how much the fans finally rally around and support our team once he's gone. I've
argued that the Celts will be a 45-48 win team from now until eternity if we give
up on Antoine's upside (which right now is blowing up in all our faces what with
his 14 straight non-double-double games and counting, but this could be due at
least a little to hometown "support" and getting used to playing smart and
aggressive at the same time on a winning team).

Pierce is my favorite ballplayer period but I'm realistic about how we should try
to project his eventual best-case scenario talent, in light of where Antoine and
other (superior) players actually were at after 70 or so NBA games. You don't win
basketball championships without having or grooming a franchise-quality big game
talent, even a guy without all his marbles like Antoine. It is myopic to assume
that other equally prosaic NBA teams don't have one or more Paul Pierce caliber
players on their roster. Look around, they do. For example, if we miraculously
acquired Grant Hill in exchange for Antoine (yeah, right), the Celts would
basically have identical talent to the middling Detroit Pistons. Their Paul
Pierce-equivalent guy - Jerry Stackhouse - is having an All Star type year while
Jerome Williams is averaging 9.7 rebounds and leads the NBA in field goal
percentage.

Paul Pierce has solid career averages (to date it's .445FG%, .717FT%, 17.2 ppg,
6.3 rebounds, 2.6apg, 2.4to's) and we all sense it will get better because of his
work ethic, but how in our right minds could this possibly project into
double-double talent? There are dozens of young players in the league who have
put up Pierce-like numbers in their first few seasons and at the same age, some
have faded some have become All Stars. A few months ago I posted a list of young
players who will compete with Paul Pierce to beat him and the more than 24
incumbent or former All Stars (Duncan, Mourning etc) for their very FIRST trip to
an All Star game. This list surprisingly includes Allen Iverson, Ray Allen,
Stephon Marbury, Allan Houston, Michael Finley, Rod Strickland (career 4.1 rpg,
8.0 apg), Damon Stoudamire (career 4.0 rpg, 8.3 apg), Vince Carter, Lamar Odom,
Shareef Abdur Rahim, Antonio McDyess (believe it or not), Keith Van Horn, Jason
Williams, Glenn Robinson, Anthony Mason, PJ Brown, Theo Ratliff, Jerry
Stackhouse, Ron Mercer.

I believe the Celtics can win championships in today's NBA only with a franchise
20-10-5 player, which is why I say we should keep rolling the dice on the
23-year-old Antoine. It's totally a hit or miss deal with Toine (it looks more
and more like a "miss"), but the point is that we're trying to win championships,
not be a decent and likeable team. He was the youngest by far of five players on
29 teams to pull a 20-10 in the last full NBA season. As flawed as he was and
still is, I'd argue this made him one of the ten most valuable "franchise"
players of that season and potentially one of the five best players in the game.
A lot (I mean A LOT) of the young players he used to make a point of humiliating
have long since passed him by (Chris Webber notably), but how many NBA 20-10
caliber players have Antoine's perimeter game or open court dribbling and vision?

The x-ingredient is that Antoine is hyper-competitive enough (or thick headed
enough) to show true fearlessness in the final two minutes of a close game,
regardless of how poorly his game is going that night. All the great young stars
talk the talk, but honestly not all of them have the character to play at a 100%
even keel with everything at stake. Would you honestly put the ball in the hands
of Grant Hill, Shareef or McDyess in the last seconds of a game? Gimmeabreak.

The problem is those guys are probably too smart and too well-adjusted as young
people. I think you need to have a pathology verging on psychosis to thrive at
the absolute center of the action in the closing seconds of a public game. In his
best moments Antoine's eyes freeze into a trance-like demonic state (as in the
frenetic closing minutes of the Miami game immediately following the big booing
incident of last year). Antoine's body literally seems to disconnect from the
part of his brain that controls judgement, fear of odds, or fear of further
humiliation (some would say his body disconnects COMPLETELY from his brain,
judging by how totally different he acts off the court). He's got a split
personality.

Say what you want but that guy has shown a knack for making big plays and showing
up for big games, which bodes well for the Celts down the road when more
meaningful games are at stake. Plus he seems to care about the outcome, or at
least he used to. He takes losing as personally as we do, judging by how I've
seen him look after games.

To his credit, our other bookend, Paul Pierce, has also shown fans that his blood
won't freeze up in close games either, but while he's had some big fourth
quarters he has yet to have made that many huge plays in the final two minutes of
a game (the first win of last season in Cleveland was one exception that I
recall, in which he tipped in a missed freethrow to cap an awesome overall 4Q and
stave off the Cavs). Not to hold it against Pierce, but this is partly why Kansas
never got past the early rounds of the NCAA tournament even with two AP first
team All Americans. They didn't get blown out by totally inferior teams, they
actually blew some pretty close ones. Nobody stepped up.

The day I give up on Antoine is the day his teammates and others who actually
know him can no longer like him. Don't hold your breath, because I haven't seen
this happening at all.  I don't care one bit if Fleet Center fans hate him, other
than that it puts a lot more unnecessary distractions on the kid's shoulders and
must be painful for his mother, father and sisters to hear.

Joe

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