RE: Walker's FG%

[OzerskyJA <OzerskyJA@cmog.org>]

Well Joe, I don't know if Walker has been shooting that bad.  Even Sunday's
game, which I was there for, he looked pretty good to me.  He got fouled a
few times (no call, still no love from the refs) and is much more under
control than he has been in the past.  He's taking fewer shots, but shooting
much better.  I am happy with Antoine's shooting/scoring at this point, with
the major exception of getting him the ball in crunch time.  He's not yet at
the point where you can depend on him to make something good happen.  Pierce
is better in that role. But I'm very happy with Twon's game all around,
especially his rebounding and to a lesser extent his passing, and I feel
that he has finally grown up.  I think this is the player he is, and I'm
pretty pleased.  If the team was winning he would be getting respect as
arguably the best power forward in the east, low fg% or not.  

Josh Ozersky	
Marketing Communications Specialist 
Corning Museum of Glass

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Hironaka [SMTP:j.hironaka@unesco.org]
> Sent:	Monday, December 04, 2000 10:45 AM
> To:	celtics@igtc.com
> Subject:	Walker's FG%
> 
>     Antoine can do a lot of things (he has 6 games with 12 or more
> rebounds, and 8 double-doubles) but he's not an efficient scorer. After
> 17 games, he's at a career low FG%. Playing at power forward, he's made
> half his shots or better in only 3 of 17 games to date. Last night's
> 6-17 performance marked the fifth time he's missed around two-third of
> his shots (Pierce has also done this five times), including two games in
> a row (14-41 versus the Clippers and Wolves). And don't look now but
> he's 3-15 on treys over the last three games.
> 
>     This bears watching, how he'll handle his latest shooting slump.
> Obviously he'll break out of it eventually, but the question is will he
> ever break out of it permanently. He owes it to his team to be working
> overtime on his shooting what with Orlando and Indiana coming up this
> week. It isn't even a matter of shooting as shot selection.Walker is the
> second-best freethrow shooter in our lineup after Stith. I think this
> guy can shoot pretty straight and he probably has worked fairly hard at
> it. He needs to back off the low percentage shots. I can live with a
> 4-15 night once in awhile from Pierce and Walker (that is the nature of
> the game if you are mainly a one-on-one and perimeter shooting player).
> But these 6-19, 8-24 games shouldn't happen.
> 
>     Walker probably knows he'll always be widely viewed as a flawed
> player because of his low FG% for a 6-9 guy (and because his team
> doesn't win either). He's like a 40 homerun guy who bats .220 every
> year, like a Dave Kingman or whatever. It's hard to get used to the idea
> of Antoine always shooting under 45% for the rest of his career. It's
> hard to believe a championship contending team can co-exist with that
> level of shot efficiency by your star (although Iverson and Co. are
> doing just fine right now). I hope Toine steps it up as a priority. The
> thing is, if he starts passing up likely bricks or blocks, he has the
> talent to turn that into a nice dish off (what with three guys guarding
> him by the time he's under the basket). He was headed in the right
> direction last Spring in terms of assists and FG%. But even I'll face
> the fact that with each passing season, it seems less-and-less likely
> we'll ever see Antoine Walker shoot even as high as 47% over an 82 game
> schedule and playoffs (like Bird did as a 24-year-old rookie).
> 
> ----