Re: Stith

[W <titans@ihug.com.au>]

I dont know if Detroit are a bad team. They are a capable side who will beat a
lot of teams. Take for instance their season opener in Toronto. They played a
hell of a ball game and really took it to Toronto.

The reason that they won was that Toronto dont really have an offensive big man
capable of ripping the heart out of a team unlike Boston as we have Antoine
Walker at power forward. They do have a lot of solid defensive bigmen in Ben
Wallace, Jerome Williams, et al but they'll never outscore the opposition
regardless of how well they play.

The game basically comes down to how well you can cancel out their scorers at
the two and three. You all saw Toronto struggle with this. Sure, Carter got his
usual 25 points, but there other options, Scoreliss Williamson and the rookie,
Mo Pete struggled in the season opener. Stack of course went off and opened a
can of whoop ass on the Raptors D and scored 44 points, setting a new
career-high. Last night he ran full of momentum into the brilliant Celtics
defense. In Pierce, Stith and AG the Celtics must have three of the toughest
defensive swingmen in the conference, if not the league.

We had brilliant output last night by Paul and especially Stith. We more than
cancelled out Stack and his offensively-geared mates at swing.

Whoever was responsible for playing against Chucky Atkins (was it Kenny?) did a
hell of a job in stopping him having two solid performances in a row.

In essence, I believe the scores would definitely have been closer had Detroit
gone into the game fresh like the Celts did, it really doesn't take a brain
surgeon to figure that out.

However, with that performance the single most optimistic statistic that I can
see is opposition field goal percentage. Keeping a team below .400 no matter how
dog tired a team is shows a lot of hard work and effort. Especially taking into
consideration that we didn't give away many foul shots to do it in.

Bryant Stith will do us the world of good. The worrying thing though is we just
have to keep him healthy and when it goes to injury history, Stith's record is
almost as unappetizing as Robert Pack's.

W