Re: May & Holley

[opi@unesco.org]

Dan Forant wrote:

> This may be getting old but Walker has only 2 shots, the bomb and the
> drive. Which most defenses have figured out, they give him the bomb because
> he can't hit it with enough regularity, and his drives are snuffed out
> because he start out too far. He needs to get and stay low (at least
> rebound)and or learn a short jumper to open up the inside. When's the last
> time you saw him take one?

Excellent observation. Walker used to not merely be just about offensive
production (it was just a bonus, or at least a very mixed blessing), even
though that's what we all focused our critical faculties on.

But now scoring is all that Antoine seems good for (the rebounds and assists
have evaporated), and he's always been (and may always be) a very limited
player in this regard. Antoine initially showed a prodigal learning curve
quickly developing some NBA low-post moves, but even that has stagnated.

As 6-10ish players go, he will always own a far above average deep shot and an
excellent dribble and floor vision. But let's face it, he's only evolved from
"incredibly" to at best "very" erratic in his shot selection over his three
year career. He's a FOOL to think his scoring got him into the All Star game in
1998. He made that team despite his offensive shortcomings (gaudy turnover
stats, horrible shot percentages). Back then, the kid frankly was the most
dangerous and the youngest of all the "20-10" players out there (since then
Garnett and McDyess have joined that club). At the All Star break, he was
averaging 11 rebounds per game to go with his team leading assists and
obviously flawed but impressive 23ppg (impressive only in the range of
different shots he'd shoot and occasionally score on you).

Walker has now become such a consistent homo on the boards, and that's a true
mystery. As far as passing goes, maybe Pitino would profit from putting one of
his two "point forward" quality talents (the better one at this stage is
clearly Griffin) on the bench to make the flailing second unit suddenly look
much better. Maybe Walker will blossom once again if the ball passes directly
through his hands on offense, rather than just being on the receiving end.
That's my last hope for the fool.

Walker has become such a girlie-man, he's allowing himself to become almost
redundant. It's a tough call, because Walker is still 6-9 or 6-10 (his measured
height at the rookie scouting combine) and Griffin is still 6-5. And Walker
still has career highs of 49 points, 21 rebounds and 13 assists, not to mention
five games with 5 steals. He's also two years younger than Griffin (dear lord,
may he be that much wiser when he's 25).

Tough call. The riveting thing for me about Antoine is that he's one of the
most loathed sports talents in the history of Boston sports, and it is largely
because unlike the rest of America we still  judge the quality of athletes by
how well they superficially seem to step n' fetch it (we LOVE you Ron Mercer!).
But at the same time, we've also hugely overrated Antoine Walker in assuming he
ever had the sustained fury or guts to be a permanent double-double athlete,
much less a 6 assists per game guy (gimmeabreak). If he's going to continue
playing like such a fruitboy, we'll have to try to win banner #17 without him.

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