Walker and Fortson

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

A lot of good discussion about Walker and Fortson. First, about Antoine's 
"hops": this is something that Pitino has cited at least twice in his show.
It's not solely lack of jumping ability either. Walker has a tendency to
finish his move lower than he is capable of jumping. So he has to train
himself to finish at his peak, as well as improve the height of that peak
through weight training. You know what's really amazing? He's shooting 46%
from 2 point range despite getting seemingly blocked a million times per
game and hardly ever putting up a good looking shot. Imagine what he'll
be like if he improves his leaping ability, conditioning, and maybe even
a jump shot.

Onto the minutes issue with Fortson. I am sure that Pitino is not happy
about Danny complaining about his minutes to the media, because that is
the opposite of the team-first attitude that Pitino praised after the
first game of the year when Eric Williams cheered the team despite getting
a DNP. Still, I feel disappointed in how everything has worked out 
because I, too, had high hopes for Fortson on this team.

I agree with Joe's post that Fortson should generally get all the minutes
at power forward and center that Antoine, Potapenko, and Battie get. In
fact, I looked at the last five games where Fortson hasn't gotten too many
minutes (before that there were five games where he got 14, 17, 17, 19, 23
minutes) and added up the minutes for these four players. It adds up to 96
except for the New Jersey game, where I believe that McCarty got a few
minutes next to Battie on the pressing unit. Can't fault that move because
it won us the game. So it looks like Pitino is following Joe's prescription
in that regard. 

The other suggestion is to move Antoine to small forward at the expense
of the unproductive trio of Cheaney, McCarty, and Williams. I have to say
that if Antoine was being played at small forward earlier in the season,
I missed it, though it could have been at times when he played alongside
McCarty. More likely it's been something that has been tried in practice
with poor results. I think that many of us ignore or forget the importance
of practices; if something is tried in a game, it's doubtless been done
many times in practice. 

By the way, I think that if Antoine and Fortson are playing together, you
have to put Fortson at the 4 on both offense and defense. He's not a 
tweener (overused word!) in the sense of having hybrid skills, like
Walker, LJ (who can shoot the 3) or Mason (who has unusual quickness,
ballhandling, and passing ability). He basically has a pure power forward
game and is just a little short. Extend his neck and face an inch and
nobody would ever mention Fortson and SF together.

I think one of the main reasons that Pitino thought that Antoine could
play small forward at the beginning of the year and no longer believes it
is because Walker has evidently lost the ability to shoot the 3. And he
never really had the ability to hit any other outside shot. That means
if he is a SF on the perimeter, his defender doesn't need to respect his
shot, and the other team basically gets a free double team inside. So he
has to go inside every time, either through a drive or post up - basically
the same game he has as a power forward. Can you play two power forwards
and a center together? Charlotte's experience is that the lane gets too
clogged, so they've moved away from it. Vancouver seems to do it, but
they suck so I don't know if it says anything. Minnesota used to do it
with Googs and Garnett together, but they both had some jump-shooting
ability and hybrid skills. 

You could put both power forwards down low and move Vitaly towards the
free throw line similar to what Smits does when Mark Jackson posts
with Dale Davis on the weak side. I think this play would work but the
offense would become really predictable. You can't really effectively
post your 2 (which we do a lot with Pierce) because you can't space
properly with two power forwards. And it's not really a good situation
for dribble penetration by the guards because they don't have many
outside options to dish to. Now if Antoine could shoot any outside shot
accurately, not even necessarily a 3, we'd have a different story.
As it is, I would guess that playing Fortson and Walker together as
the PF and C combination is actually more effective on offense.

On defense, do you prefer Vitaly, Fortson, and Walker or Fortson, Walker
and Griffin, say? That might be the more important issue, whether Walker
can keep up with faster small forwards. Can't answer that because I 
haven't really seen him do it on the court for long. Could our 47% defense
get any worse? Probably. None of this isn't Fortson's fault so I feel
badly for him if this is the case. 

Another thing is that Antoine is probably more comfortable having just
one position that he can concentrate on, and the team is probably more
comfortable running one set of offensive plays (instead of an extra "2
PF" version). Changing in midseason in the middle of a playoff race is
tough. Now here's another option. How about you make Fortson the
second center off the bench instead of the third, and also the backup
PF? In pressing situations you still go with Battie, but you can
probably take 10 minutes from Battie and give them to Fortson.  Battie
might not be happy but he's already got his money, and he's not
performing up to par either. Fortson might prefer to play PF more but
I'm sure he'll take the minutes he can get. He gets his chance to show
what he can do with more minutes, even if it's against centers (and
remember he was averaging just about 15-15 near the end of last year
against centers). If we like what he does, then we either get Antoine
to develop his SF skills over the offseason or sign-and-trade Fortson
for better value.

But if Pitino can really get equal value for him in a trade that fits
this team better, you can't really fault him. I wonder if he is looking
for a three-point shooter with some size because he's talked about how
Pierce is the only good one who can get his shot off consistently.
Anyway, this post is getting a bit long and I hope Fortson wasn't 
traded while I was writing. 

Alex