Re: post mortem, pet peeves

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

>From: Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>

>I have to say though, last year I remember a Detroit game where the fourth 
>quarter strategy was to try to guard Hill one-on-one, and that failed 
>miserably too.

The point is, though, that the Celtics' man defense has been so much better 
than last year.  Especially Griffin at the 3 spot.  He managed to contain 
Vince Carter, Mitch Richmond and Eddie Jones, all among the league's best 
scorers.  I'd say let him have a shot at stopping Hill.  Of course Hill is 
going to get his points, but at least you don't end up giving up uncontested 
layups to stiffs.

>I think we just have to live with the fact that Hill is going to burn us in 
>the fourth quarter; to beat them, we have to either blow them out earlier 
>or keep the offense running in the fourth.

Certainly running a decent offense would have helped, and missing Kenny 
before Overton has had a chance to get used to his teammates makes that 
difficult, however it seems to me that the C's offense always looks like a 
shambles when they are in pressing mode.  Part of that is that they tend to 
press with offensively challenged players, but I'm convinced that pressing 
itself contributes to the problem by tiring out the players, who end up 
standing around on offense.  If you ask me, the press should be limited to 
two minute stretches at a time.  Try to cause a few quick turnovers, then 
settle back into a smooth offense.  Right now, if they get back into a game 
using the press, Pitino almost always continues to press and they end up 
falling behind again due to easy baskets.  He doesn't want to stop doing 
something when it's working, but doen't that guarantee it will ultimately 
fail?

>The defensive rotations on the trap just don't seem quite polished
>yet.

Well it's been over two years now.  Is this ever supposed to work?  I 
thought we were promised that we would only see the press out of strength 
this year.  When it presents an advantage.  Half court trapping didn't seem 
necessary against Toronto, Washington and Charlotte.  Well, I predicted 
before the game that this was a bad game to try pressing and trapping 
because the Pistons would be a rested, prepared and veteran team.  I also 
predicted that that would not stop Pitino from doing it anyway.  I'm sorry I 
was so right.

>I have to say though, those rebounding stats might really have
>gotten bloated during that atrocious fourth qurater. The Celtics can't 
>rebound when they can't make the Pistons miss =) and the Pistons certainly 
>had a lot of Celtics misses to grab. Some of Williams' offensive boards 
>were definitely after the Celtics were out of the game and I think Antoine 
>had kind of given up.

Being at the game and not having the advantage of any statistics, the 
Pistons seemed to be rebounding pitifully.  I'm surprised they outrebounded 
the Celtics, and I think you must be right about the reasons.  Something 
else I didn't have the benefit of was a view of a shot clock.  Anywhere.  
But then, what do you expect for thirty three dollars?

>[clipped lots of good stuff about Antoine's and Kenny's offensive 
>strengths] I think that eventually, we'll see him getting his points 
>primarily from getting good inside position on defending small forwards, 
>getting putbacks, running the break, and hitting the occasional open 
>three-pointer. We won't see as much one-on-one play.

One thing I've been missing is Antoine blowing by his guy off the dribble 
from the top of the key.  This is the one one-on-one move I like to see from 
him.  He seems easily able to get by almost any player big enough to guard 
him, and once he does he draws defenders and can either finish over them or 
dump off to the open man, both of which he does much better on the move than 
out of the low post.  There's no reason he can't keep making this move even 
though he is playing power forward. In fact, it should create even greater 
mismatches that way.

My opinion of the Knicks game is that this will be a much better time to use 
the press than Wednesday was.  The Knicks played a tough game last night (in 
Minnesota?), so the Celtics should have a fatigue edge.  Also the Knicks 
seem to degenerate into individual play under pressure and do not have a 
very good passing team.  My prediction is that we will see a fair amount of 
pressing again tonight, but that it will be more successful.  Hopefully the 
Knicks will be content to set up the offense after beating the press and 
there won't be so much half court trapping.  Sprewell and Houston are 
another good 2/3 tandem, let's hope we get to see if I'm right that Adrian 
and Paul can handle them for the most part straight up.  I wonder if NY will 
put Sprewell on Pierce leaving the defensively ambivalent Houston to hang 
with Adrian.  Either way, I'm hopefull that the Celt's will return to 
looking like the team we saw in the first three games.

Have a good weekend everyone, and enjoy the games.

Jim

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