Re: Sit Walker down before he kills some kid in the cheap seats with his shot.

[j.hironaka@unesco.org]

damekmo@teleport.com wrote:

> >these two "stars" did not deserve to
> >play that many minutes.  They did more harm than good so why not give
> >the others a chance to touch the ball.
>
> Absolutely. There simply is no excuse for him playing 43 minutes. Right now
> he's stinking it up as badly as anyone I've ever seen. His confidence is
> totally shot. This team was supposed to improve...the pressure is, for
> better or worse, on him to improve his play and get the team wins...and
> he's wilting under the pressure. His confidence is shot and he needs to sit
> down....for himself and the good of the team. Right now this is ML
> Carr-time all over again and Pitino needs to get control. Walker needs to
> sit down for a game....come off the bench for a while...but Ricky needs to
> stop this bleeding now. Oh...by the way...this constantly saying "I'll make
> the right changes come July," is simply, I think, the wrong thing to say to
> a bunch of players who need to concentrate on playing better in "this
> half." They shouldn't be worrying about next July and who's going to be
> there and who's not. They're all here now and that's all they should be
> thinking about.

I totally agree. The young kids are with us until July. The v.best common sense
advice you could give RP (like he's listening!) is to stick by your damn kids
and then evaluate them after the second half. Personally, I find Michael
Holley's WEEI radio statements if not kind of bizzare then at best speculative.
Because it sure doesn't feel like mid-July out here in Paris yet (Bastille Day
and all that).

BTW, looking at the Celtics' miserable individual stats, I was stunned to
discover that Kenny Anderson (.432FG  .789FT) has actually passed Paul Pierce
(.426FG  .714FT) in both field goal and free throw shooting.

What's the world coming to? How did this happen so fast? I'm just guessing, but
Paul Pierce is likely shooting no higher than 35% from the field this month.
Over the past month, he has not deserved to be a starting NBA forward. (I keep
hoping if I say enough bad things about him he'll break out of his jinx by
dropping 35 points on someone.) Obviously, Pierce had been playing such
excellent basketball earlier: against some of the league's elite forwards to
boot.

Incidentally, a relative "bright" spot statistically is second-year kid Tony
Battie. In 22.3 mpg (appearing in all 23 games), El Busto has averaged 1.39
blocks and 5.3 rebounds. His field goal percentage also has held pretty steady
all season (.535). To me it makes sense to start a 6-10 frontline of TB, AW and
VP, while making either Ron or Paul the main scoring option of the Bomb Squad.

But the BIG statistical story so far is how much Antoine Walker's game has
regressed from last season. He's nowhere close to being a 20/10 guy. I had
gotten the impression he could get 10rpg throughout his career....that he could
get double figure boards against anyone in the league pretty much whenever he
felt like it or was angry enough to. I thought he viewed 10 boards as a basic
duty. Now he's basically just a Shareef (a guy I never felt was as valuable as
Antoine) but with a far, far lousier offensive game. When you add to Antoine's
rebounding woes his total incapacity to take over a fourth quarter this year, I
have to conclude that his game has become an embarrassment and a disgrace.
Geez, I hope this rant can help break Toine out of his slump also.