Antoine's weight

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Pitino's take on it (in the Globe) is that Antoine is in very good
shape to play power forward, but not in sufficiently great shape
to play small forward. Perhaps 235 is the playing weight that Pitino
wants Walker at if he wants to play small forward; it doesn't 
necessarily mean that Antoine is 10 pounds "overweight" if he is at
245 currently, just that he's not in the appropriate shape for the
position he wants to play. It's similar to how you could call Battie 
"underweight" because he doesn't have the bulk to bang with big 
centers, when in reality he's probably in very good shape to handle
the power forward position.

The irritating thing to me about Antoine is that when Pitino tells
the media that Antoine needs to get a Karl Malone body, get a Scottie 
Pippen body, eat better, lose weight, hire a trainer over the offeseason
and whatever else he can in order to get Antoine to dedicate himself to 
really developing his body, Antoine will then tell the media that he 
doesn't think he really needs to do that, just like he did in the Globe 
today. He's basically telling everyone, "I'm not even going to try 
Coach's approach because I don't believe it'll work." It's really 
infuriating because I think Pitino's right when he says that if Antoine
was totally dedicated to his body, he'd be one of the top five players
in the league. Can you imagine Walker if he was quicker, stronger, with
more endurance and leaping ability? He could easily be the leader of 
our next championship team.

It looks like Pitino is trying to motivate him by dangling the small
forward spot for him; he gets to play there if he's in great shape,
otherwise Fortson might relegate him to the bench. Hopefully this move
will convince him to get into great shape during the season, and his 
resulting success will convince him to carry it into the offseason.
Otherwise, Pitino just has to keep trying.

Alex