Thoughts on the disappointing Celtics

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

I've always believed that too much importance is put on individual
games, particularly losses to bad teams. What matters at the end
of the season is how many wins you have, not whether you lost to
Chicago. For instance Miami has lost to Golden State and Vancouver
(as well as our own "lowly" Celtics). 

With that said, criticisms based on the team's overall record are
justifiable and the current 14-19 record is extremely disappointing.
Personally, I think that calls for firing the coach, especially
midseason, are unproductive. It's extremely unlikely because of 
Pitino's contract, for one thing; would Gaston want to eat $30M+
because the Celtics are underperforming by three or four wins less
than halfway through the season? If the Celtics completely melt 
down, it could be a different story at the end of the season.

A note on one of the more common criticisms. There have been
quite a few people who believe that fronting the post is a bad
coaching decision. In fact, the Miami Heat who have great inside
defenders in Mourning and PJ Brown front the post (and subsequently
trap) almost always, according to Hubie Brown and Jack Ramsay, as
well as what I've seen of the Heat on TNT/TBS. It's not some sort
of weird Pitino innovation, it's really a standard defensive move.
Has anyone noticed that most teams front Walker when he posts up?
I think that it's even more prevalent now that defensive players
can't dislodge the post player under the new rules. The Celtics
may not execute that well fronting the post (for instance they 
often forget to pressure the passer) but the decision to front the
post is a conventional (and probably necessary) one.

I'll agree with another common criticism, which is that Pitino's
substitution patterns are sometimes mystifying. In particular, he
overreacts to players getting into foul trouble, in my opinion.
He'll put in a player and yank him 20 seconds later when he gets
a foul. That's got to make the player feel a bit uncomfortable
when he's in foul trouble, to know that he's going to get yanked
unconditionally once the whistle blows. But I don't think that
substitution decisions are making that big a difference on the 
bottom line of wins. 

A major problem with the Celtics, as Cecil notes, is that they
lack an identity. This Celtics team has much more talent on paper
than the '97-'98 team that won 36 games, but is performing worse
over the recent stretch. The '97-'98 team had a clear identity; they
were a running, pressing, chaos team, similar to this year's 
overachieving Magic. It made me a little nervous when Pitino said
that he was going to make the Celtics a more conventional team,
because a team that plays like everyone else is probably going to
have results like everyone else, which in the case of a young team
with no superstars is not that great. He was also moving away from
the philosophy that made him successful. His idea was to have a
halfcourt first unit and a pressing, running second unit with
different identities but the reality is that he doesn't have enough
talented depth to do that, especially after injuries. So now he's
mixed the units up but he has some players who are suited for
halfcourt play and some who are suited for the running game - a bad
mix, as Mark Berry noted.

At some point Pitino is going to have to make a decision on which
type of team he wants to have and build towards it, unless he can
add enough quality depth to do the two units approach (which some
teams have done - New York had an uptempo second unit last year
when Camby, Sprewell, and Childs played together). If he wants a
halfcourt team, Battie may become less valuable and McCarty becomes
worthless. If he wants a running team, Potapenko and Fortson don't
fit particularly well. 

Another personnel problem is that if Antoine is going to play 40+
minutes at power forward, there aren't enough minutes for Potapenko,
Battie and Fortson to share. If we sign Fortson to a similar contract
to Potapenko, we're probably looking at a $90M three-headed center - 
not very economical for the production we get. Either Antoine makes
the move to small forward or one of the three "centers" becomes trade
bait. I believe that Fortson will be getting more playing time as he
gets his conditioning back up, adjusts to the new rules, and learns
the plays, and hopefully he will make a big difference for this team
down the stretch run.

The trading deadline is February 24. I'm thinking that Pitino might
be willing to trade a first round pick or some other asset (along
with Pervis, say) to get some immediate veteran help if the team
hasn't picked up its play. Chris Gatling? I also have this weird,
queasy feeling that Antoine might be involved in some three-way
megadeal, though base-year compensation rules make that unlikely.
Anyway, long post and more negative than I've probably ever been
(except when I was down on Mercer). Hopefully the Celtics get their
act together because the rest of the month could be a killer.

Alex