Re: Pitino: Walker Not Ready To Be Small Forward

[opi@unesco.org]

On the one hand, the Celts desperately need to put Walker in  better
rebounding position at power forward since he's really the Celtics' only
talented per game rebounder, having led the team by a very wide margin over
his career. On the other hand (as Jim Mennino alluded), it definitely seems to
me that AW has had every one of his lousy pre-season games thus far while
starting at power forward alongside a much smaller player (Cheaney or
Griffin).

Rather than establish a rotation, Pitino elected to experiment constantly with
the starting lineup until the very end. It looks like this experimentation
will have to continue into the early part of the season. On the plus side, at
least his players will be more versatile as well as ready to play several
positions and alongside different players each night. The downside is that the
young Celts starters need a lot more experience playing side by side in order
to develop any sort of NBA-caliber chemistry.

I've often wondered why Pitino teams tend to have guys who shoot at a fairly
low percentage, as though his players were all schitzo and retarded. Part of
it may be that these guys are impressively bred as jack of all trades, with no
core moves they can mentally lock into executing each night. One thing that
clearly separates almost all efficient 20 point scorers (that is to say,
excluding a Walker or Mashburn) from seemingly equal or superior talent that
produce offense more erratically is that the 20ppg guys accumulate a fairly
vast majority of their points by hitting from the same sweet spots repeatedly
throughout a season and eventually a career.

Bird may have given you one or two highly impressive shots per game (in terms
of degree-of difficulty), but in the end he generated a ton of his offense
from the same set pieces you saw literally game after game. The fancy stuff
was the bonus on top of his regular moves, which may have accounted for as
much as say 75% of his scoring productivity. Through the endless repetitions,
guys like Bird or Miller turn long jumpers from a specific spot on the court
into a very high percentage play. Of course there is more to it than that
(moving without the ball also separates great scorers from prosaic ones).
Nevertheless, I guarantee you that a Barros or John Paxson would be
considerably less effective from 3-point range if they were coached to think
"drive, pass or shoot" whenever 23 feet from the hoop, rather than mentally
locking themselves into their specialty shot. Similarly, Paul Pierce spent a
portion of last year as an unnecessarily timid catch-and-shoot 3-point artist.
As he expands his game and becomes more aggressive about his offensive
options, we might see a slight dip in his 3-point effectiveness despite a
massive improvement in his overall game. It's the same way a guy who drives to
the hoop thinking only "shoot" instead of "pass-if-something's-there" will
tend to be less prone to blowing layups. Of course Pierce and Bird have the
talent to add far more mental options in their approach to game situations,
while a John Paxson might not.

Walker is a true jack-of-all-trades, but if he doesn't focus his offensive
preparation around 4 or 5 highly effective pet moves (and if he continues to
play alongside Fortson one night and Cheaney the next) he will never be an
efficient scorer no matter how spectacular his ability may look on a given
night. This is not to say Walker sucks or anything. It's just that Pitino
sometimes has his guys running around like jack rabbits doing too many things
from too many different spots on the floor (as best personified by the equally
inconsistent Walter McCarty, and increasingly by Tony "I'm a center, no I'm a
forward" Battie). Of course versatility is very (even critically) important
beyond the high school level, where they simply don't scout opponents enough
to know you can take a scorer out of his game by making him shoot 5 inches
farther from his or her normal sweet spot (how can you know where the sweet
spot is if you've never scouted the player before). I'm just not sure
versatility needs to be taken to such a frenetic and spastic degree. Chemistry
is so important for beating veteran NBA teams with arguably less talent, and
"chemistry" simply is not just some elusive or magical word but rather
something that really requires repetition with guys playing enough together
within clearly defined roles over a significant string of meaningful games.
I'm not writing off this season by any means, but I'd rather "Pitino ball"
finally show fans they can finally develop some semblance of traction in terms
of defining player roles and chemistry.

The Celts IMO have accumulated the kind of NBA role players (Fortson, Pots,
Battie etc.) who might end up looking wretched if they are asked to do too
much or display "versatility" in roles they do not fit. If McHale were forced
to guard centers early in his entire career on a lottery team, he could
easilty have developed into a much more tentative and less confident player.
Bill Fitch said McHale couldn't succeed as a NBA center if his life depended
on it, and very luckily for him (as top lottery picks go) his niche got
defined for him with Parish, Cowens and Robey all in training camp when he
first arrived in Boston. In the case of a Battie or Pots or Fortson, it's
conceivable that their specific weaknesses will be glaringly exposed whenever
playing the wrong role out on the court, thereby precipitating still more
trades and postponing for yet another year any prospect of developing NBA
playoff-caliber team chemistry. IMO, there a lot of NBA coaches that could
better maximize and exploit the talents of a Pots or Fortson (say a Chuck Daly
or a Larry Bird). Those guys simply aren't Pitino-style players. Thankfully he
recognized the need for aquiring them, after showing an awful lot of naiveté
building a NBA club around 230 pound "shot blocking" centers (Travis and
Battie). The difference between a 290 pound defender and a 230 pounder is 20%
more mass. In terms of leverage, it is exactly analogous to assigning a 190
pound NFL wide receiver to block a 240 pound middle linebacker over the course
of an entire game (presumably because that wide receiver shows potential as a
shot blocker). :-)

Some people show a tendency to obsess over the player's one glaring weakness
(Pots doesn't shot block ergo Pitino must dump or bench him) rather than
considering the glaring problems that player's presence helps resolve. All you
need to do when in doubt is compare our lineup without Vitaly to the lineups
of any of the real playoff teams with real playoff centers, all of whom will
isolate and pound the ball inside against us to negate any roving
shot-blocking role a lighter more athletic center can play (just as the old
Celtics and any other competent playoff team has done at will against the
Manute Bol's and Shawn Bradley's of the league).  Pots is a limited player.
Among other things, he'll probably never be even as productive a rebounder as
the woefully inconsistent Battie (for various good and bad reasons clearly one
of the league's most over-rated 6 ppg NBA players, at least on this particular
list). If Vitaly weren't tough, competitiveness and young compared to
virtually all of his noteworthy peers, I'd admit I'd also be somewhat down on
him too. But attitude really does rub off on teammates in a positive way.
Whew, that was another long-winded and maybe repetitive post. Please excuse
typos because I shall head home now.

****