RE: BSG reader rant

[OzerskyJA <OzerskyJA@cmog.org>]

Joe, has that been building up in you all summer?  I think defending 
Antoine is to you what attacking Kenny is to me and Mark Berry.
Please, please, please, let's not get on an Antoine thread.  I think we
can all agree that he has been playing very well of late, and that we all
hope to see it continue.

Josh Ozersky	
Marketing Communications Specialist 
Corning Museum of Glass

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Hironaka [SMTP:j.hironaka@unesco.org]
> Sent:	Wednesday, November 08, 2000 5:10 PM
> To:	OzerskyJA; jwoods21@yahoo.com; celtics@igtc.com
> Subject:	Re: BSG reader rant
> 
> > 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
> 
> ------
>