Re: When Fortson returns...

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> ... why not start him and move Walker into the 6th man role?  Walker might
> be struggling right now to fit in with the top unit, but he could add a
> lot of skills to the second unit (scoring, ballhandling, rebounding,
> passing).  
> 
> Right now, the production from the Celtics starting lineup seems to come
> mainly from Pierce (scoring), Anderson (leadership/scoring/passing), and
> Griffin (rebounding and all of the above). 

I'm not so sure that moving Walker's scoring to the second unit is
that good an idea. He seems to play best when he lets the offense
come to him and has been the beneficiary (in the early games) of the
passing skills of Anderson and Griffin. If you put him in the second
unit, he'll definitely be in one-on-one mode the whole time, and
we'll be seeing a lot of turnovers and low percentage shots.

When Pitino hasn't substituted en masse, he's generally been keeping
Pierce on as the second unit scorer, which makes more sense to me.
In my opinion Pierce is more reliable as a one-on-one scorer than
Antoine. He's also probably more capable on a pressing unit.

I think the overall idea of making sure that at least a couple of the
starter-quality players are on the floor at a time (with special 
exceptions depending on game situations) is a good idea if it can
be done consistently in a way that builds chemistry. But the current
starting lineup is still a successful one in my opinion, even though
Walker has had two weak efforts in the past two games.

Alex