Re: Celtics Cavaliers

[opi@unesco.org]

John Lyell wrote:

> Another great all around game for Antoine tonight. He is finally  looking to
> be the player we have been waiting for, and has been excellent the last
> couple weeks. He seems to have listened to someone. He is not taking poor
> shots launching 3's and actually has noticeably passed a few up. He has also
> listened to Dan Forant and moved his game into the paint where he should
> have been, where he has been pretty dominant. Kemp had no chance on stopping
> him tonight.

    Well then I never thought I'd say this, but:  "Merci Monsieur Forant!" :-)
To me the salient point is that Antoine doesn't have to play power forward to
post up. He can post up small forwards all night long and be equally
devastating, whether playing alongside an offensive rebounding machine (Fort), a
shot blocker (Battie) or "Hondo" Griffen.

    If you want just one surprising & devastating statistic, it is that Walker
has made 43 trips to the line in the past three games, obviously well over
double his not that shabby career average coming into this year.

    In fact, he's averaged over 10ppg from the free throw line over this span!
Try asking Shaq to do that! :-)

    I like AW's swiss army knife versatility, but this is one aspect of his game
that I thought would NEVER come (Antoine finally getting some serious "luv" from
the refs). This was just a super and promising homecoming for Walker (6 assists,
2 turnovers, 13 boards) to accentuate what has been exactly the kind of quality
midseason run (7 solid games and counting) that Jim and Josh were hoping for
three weeks ago back when I was leading my highly mature-sounding "Antoine is a
Sissy!" chants.

    Y2K Celtics, baby!!


    Joe