Anderson & Walker

[jmc@ptc.com]

Sometimes, you need problems to get to a breaking point before enough 
attention is shined upon them to get them corrected. 

So in a way, I'm kind of glad that the Anderson/Walker dispute at the
Washington game happened ON the court, in the public eye, and that
Pitino had to resort to benching them and fining them and telling them
to shut up or he'll suspend them, and that it was a contributing cause 
to the Celtics loss of a game they should have been able to win. 

I've had a hunch that tension has been building between Anderson and 
Walker since the start of the season, and this may have been the best 
way to diffuse it. 

At the player's scrimmages before the lockout was over, it was clear
that Antoine was annoying everyone on the other team with the
ridiculous fouls he would call on others, and the way he'd object to
calls against him, while everyone else seemed to be trying to call
things pretty straight, and that Anderson, as the leader of his side,
was the one to speak up and challenge Walker's calls.  Anderson also
seemed to be trying to show up Walker on the court with his play and
smile about it, which seemed like an effort to lighten the mood, but
which may have annoyed Walker more.

Someone on this list stated about a week ago that they noticed that 
Walker hardly ever got the ball from Anderson, that it always seemed 
to have to go through another player to get to him.  

Then, of course, there's been Anderson's lack of passing to his teammates, 
and taking too many shots that have missed in the early games, which has 
probably been frustrating a lot of his teammates.  This leads to the kind 
of lack of overall teamwork on offense that we've been seeing from the 
Celtics, because when players don't get their hands on the ball much, 
then when they do get the ball they're likely to not want to give it up, 
and they think "I'd better shoot now while I have the chance", and they 
force up a quick bad shot (sound familiar?), instead of looking for the 
best team option, or even looking to use the "give and go" to get themselves 
a better shot. 

Who knows what else has been happening (leadership struggles?), but I have 
a feeling there could have been a lot of unexpressed tension between
Walker and Anderson that just needed to get expressed.

On Sunday in Washington, with Walker not receiving passes which gave him 
easy scoring opportunities, and getting frustrated and forcing up tough 
shots and missing all of them, adding to his frustration, he exploded, and 
said things which I think he'd been thinking but not saying until then. 

Now that Walker & Anderson yelled what they felt in public, and the coach 
had to come down on them in front of the team and the media, everyone is 
aware of everyone else's frustrations, and the struggle has hopefully changed 
from "us against each other" to "us against public perception", which is a 
struggle they'll see themselves as needing to work together to deal with. 
They'll know that any interaction between them will be put under a microscope 
from now on, so that they'd better make sure they deal with any differences 
as quickly and quietly as possible, instead of letting them fester and 
eventually explode. 

At least Walker said "we deserve to be fined, I have no problem with that". 
It shows that while he not yet mature enough to think straight in the heat 
of competition, he at least is smart enough to know when he was wrong, and 
man enough to admit it publicly.  Let's keep an eye on whether Walker's 
level of "team play" improves. 

Hopefully this will mean the starting team can start to focus on playing 
the kind of team basketball that the second unit has already been using to 
get the Celtics back into games.

Jon