Re: Mark Jackson

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

Josh, I've been banging the Mark Jackson drum for a while now. He's not
perfect. He's 35, and has lost a step that he never really had, but the guy
is a pure point guard and he has good size. I don't know how to make it
work, but I hope we try. Sitting where we likely will be in the draft, how
about drafting an Eric Barkley or Keyon Dooling to learn the ropes under
Jackson for a year or two?

That answers one of our glaring problems. Then you can turn your attention
to the frontcourt and use Anderson/Pierce/Vitaly to try and land the C/PF we
need.

Just my thoughts. And one more quick thing, since Tsakalidis (or something
like that) has been on everyone's mind lately. The thing Wallace and Pitino
have to decide is if the guy is Radojevic/Nesterovic/Stepania/Weiss (read:
no thanks) or Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Everyone is quick to bring up the
Euro-projects, but Ilgauskas was an immediate impact player when he arrived.
If he were healthy, the Cavs would be a legit playoff team. He was that
good. If the C's could land a player like that with the 11th pick, it would
be one of the all-time draft steals.

The problem is, everyone seems to have a hard time telling the difference. I
mean, when Nate Huffman puts up big numbers in that league, you have to
throw all the stats out the window and look deeper than that. And that's
what Thanksdad is paying Pitino and Wallace to do.

Mark