Re: BSG reader rant

[Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

> jwoods21@yahoo.com WRITES:
> I just want to know if I'm completely crazy because you described Walker as
> extremely frustrating, but I find it a lot more frustrated to watch Pierce
> mail one in especially in game number 3 of 82. A bad Walker game isn't
> necessarily a mail in.

Not crazy! What you said had to be said, and it couldn't have been said better
IMO. A "mail in" game is hard to define because frustration is so hard to gauge
with defenses as good as they are in terms of athletic excellence in the NBA,
and Paul Pierce was only a borderline prima donna/girlie-man (if that) last
season and he wears a good enough game face in my book.

But someone like you needed to step up to say that Antoine basically never
"mails it in". The far greater source of our frustration and anger is that he
has the memory span of a goldfish, in that he can get stuffed on a play and the
next play and then come back even more aggressively the next time and the time
after. Mixed results, but he is the most fearless or retarded athlete in
basketball and if you are an All Star playing against him you can't count him
out because he keeps coming and he'll play even better against you if it is a
big game.  There are loads of stat hogs like Toine who fade 10% or more in the
playoffs, but anyone who thinks Antoine is the one Celtic who wouldn't step it
up when the games start to count is an idiot and the facts back me. It's simply
not an exaggeration if you look at Antoine's record against rival All Stars, and
rival teams and meaningful games in any of the past three seasons. He led the
team when it mattered even last year, but they lacked the same semi-idiotic
courage to follow.

The game where he broke down Tim Hardaway's dribble to score, then beat PJ Brown
with his own cross-over dribble on that improbable one-on-one move and banked
three pointer, is a case in point. He had an erratic shooting game coming into
the last three minutes of that game, and had come off a torrent of boos in the
previous game for missing an open 15-footer in the first quarter, but there he
briefly turned himself into Larry Bird because the fans were fully behind the
team.  You had a three minute sequence of basketball where you saw how much one
kid could keep his mouth shut and suck up all the hatred  in the faces of fans
who judged him for his racial mannerisms almost as much as anything. He gave all
of us a hint of the future we insist on avoiding because we prefer to find our
saviors in someone older like Chris Herren hopefully improving on his .363
shooting last year and deciding he ought to drop 20 pounds of fat if he's
serious about the game. Boston needs palatable stars like "Piercie" and
"Chrissie", but I'd add that you better get used to Antoine because he is also
part of the picture and he will be the one carrying the buckets for us until we
trade him for his own good. He has led the team in rebounds and scoring every
year since he was drafted, and he still never quits or sits out games for any
reason or excuse. He also has not said word one to criticize his teammates or
deflect blame onto a living soul, not even the fans or media, and he is able to
bear the weight of being the lightning rod of abuse in Boston and keep playing
hard while he's still with us. I'd write him off as a total idiot, how else can
you explain his tolerance for hate, if it also wasn't crystal clear from
interviews how intelligent he was on the subject of basketball.

Joe

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