Re: Walker's merits (was Walker vs Pierce; my 2 cents)

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 06:02 AM 12/21/00 -0800, Thomas Murphy wrote:
>Thanks for the kind words of welcome Josh and Alex (and Joe too previously).
>
>I'll restrict my comments to the point touched on by both of your
>statements - the value of Walker's ball-handling and passing skills. You
>both make a set of cogent points, the value of which is not lost on me.
>
>Given that however, I believe that the question remains: does Walker's
>merits as a passer outweigh his debits as a defender? This is most likely a
>judgment call where reasonable people can disagree. You two seem to feel
>that Walker's passing abilities translate into a much more efficient
>offense - so much more efficient that it negates whatever defensive
>liabilities he may have. I see it the other way 'round.'

Good post Tom. The main discrepancy I see in your argument is that you use
backward-looking measures to evaluate Walker's potential on offense against
forward-looking measures to evaluate Pierce. That is, you say that the
offense has been mediocre in the past 4 years, which means that Antoine's
passing doesn't help the offense. But then you essentially absolve Pierce
of his defensive shortcomings because you can visualize him becoming a
better defender in the future. 

I believe that Josh and I are evaluating Walker (and Pierce) in a
forward-looking manner when we're comparing them. Walker has not been a
consistently great playmaker in the past four years. Similarly, Pierce has
not been a consistently good defender so far in his career. However, when I
am evaluating Walker's merits as a passer, I am projecting forward based on
the talent that you see when he's playing smart. In the same way I agree
that we can project forward based on limited stretches where Pierce has
shown the potential to be an excellent defender.

Walker goes through stretches where his passing stats are unreal for a
power forward. Just subjectively, I think the offense usually looks quite
good when Walker is passing well. Now you are right that his assists come
at the expense of the point guard to some degree. But having everything
come in one package -- the scoring, rebounding, and assists -- is far more
valuable than having them come in three one-dimensional players. For
instance, if we really rely on Walker to run the offense instead of
Anderson, we can now play Randy Brown to defend the opposing point guard.
Of course Randy Brown is truly a backup level talent so this isn't the real
extent of the gain. But basically you can now play a defensive oriented
shooter instead of a point guard, like Chicago used to do when Pippen ran
the offense, which improves the team defense. 

I think one key aspect is whether you believe that Walker can improve his
body or not. There's a reason that Pitino harps on that, because it could
make him a dominant player on offense, and drastically improve his defense
also. If he can do that, the skills that he has in a 6'9" body would make
him a top 5 player in the league.

You can still go both ways on this because I do think that they both have
the potential to be exceptional players. I have a harder time to imagine
Pierce dominating from the shooting guard position the way I think that
Antoine can -- Pierce is just not a Jordan level talent by any stretch. But
he's a multitalented player. He can score from inside and out, gets to the
line, rebounds well for his position, is improving as a passer, and has the
potential to be an excellent defender.

Alex