Re: First Ex. Game Thoughts

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

Alexander Wang wrote:

> At 10:52 AM 10/12/00 +0200, Hironaka wrote:
> >    The Celtics team of that year was also by far the best conditioned
> >team in camp we've ever had, yet still somehow Poultrino insists that
> >better conditioning will somehow make the system finally work this time
> >around. The only source of hope is that maybe the curfew will have an
> >impact (in other words, maybe the young Celtics gave up on conditioning
> >as the season progressed in each of the past three years). I don't know.
> >I'm hoping so.
>
> I think Pitino's hope is not just that we have better conditioning, but
> that we also now have better players and athletes. You can't say that "the
> system didn't work in 97-98 with well conditioned athletes so how can it
> work now?" because the players are different, and hopefully better, this
> time around.

Yes but I did refer in my post to last season and not 97-98. Remember how the
Celtics came into camp last Fall and set an all-time Pitino record in some sort
of fullcourt layup drill, led by Pierce and Anderson being in the best shape of
their careers? That 35-win team was approximately as talented and I think
certainly as NBA-proven based on previous years' stats as the current roster,
which has added two Bulls free agents (Carr and Brown) and two rookies (Moiso
and Blount) in place of Fortson, Cheaney, Barros and Ellison.

The crux of the matter is that many of us thought last years' team was far more
talented and more experienced playing together than the 1997-98 team, yet they
still came very close to having a worse winning percentage for the third
consecutive Pitino year.

You can conclude a lot of different things from last season depending on how
much you want to scapegoat the lame/pathetic/slow Fortson and Potapenko instead
of blaming Pitino's system, but it really isn't that farfetched as competing
theories go to conclude that the "surprise factor" is long gone whenever teams
prepare for the headless chicken outbreak these days.

In other words the Celtics might easily be five wins better in talent this year
(and BTW the conference is also weaker without Michael Jordan and other healthy
Dream Team I & II members) but that could get more than cancelled out
completely because our opponents have caught up with the Pitino game plan.

For instance, even though last night's game was an abberation, I think that any
NBA team that scouts what George Karl's teams routinely did to us over the past
three seasons (they may have swept us, I'm not sure) will already have a solid
game plan for beating the headless chicken outbreak.

A video of last night's game would probably confirm what I've seen repeatedly
last year, namely that the Pitino halfcourt defense allows for wide open
perimeter jumpshots to any team that shows up prepared to make basic, easy
passes around the perimeter. I'm talking strictly about after-made-basket
halfcourt Pitino defense, not the fullcourt press which most people associate
with Pitino-ball and which I have nothing against at all except for (I guess
arguably) the 82-game schedule fatigue factor.

On perimeter halfcourt defense, instead of having the nearest defender go and
put a hand in the face of the jumpshooter, you as often have someone else
farther away rotating way over to cover, which is too late. For the players, it
just seems like a counter-intuitive, keystone cops style perimeter shot
defense. And believe me, you see teams running the same plays to the same spot
three times in a row to a scrub player with a hot hand from downtown. How many
scrub players had career nights against the Celtics last year?

A smart team can also move the ball around on the halfcourt to get some
laughable matchups, like the point guard on the opposing center without help
within five yards. Over a nearly full 24-second sequence, focus on Antoine and
I guarantee you'll see him on many halfcourt sequences switching two or three
times the man he is guarding. Do you always blame him if "his man" scores in
that sequence? Or do you blame the Boston Roast Chicken system?

Every Celtic is scrambling around so much trying to execute the
counter-intuitive trapping assignments, that over time I swear they seem to
flick an "off-switch" on their brains on BOTH ends of the floor. They are just
energetically going through the motions.

Why does this happen? Pitino looks over the accumulating evidence and concludes
that it comes down to a problem with "conditioning". Or else it is that he just
doesn't have enough headless chicken multipurpose defenders in the 6-11 McCarty
mode. Well of course he's right in a sense, but I also fear he is tailoring his
roster to fit an empirically failing system rather than moving, or having a new
Boston coach move, the Celtics away from these gimmicks.

Why does that matter?  If we had the equivalent of a Karl Malone on our roster,
we'd probably buy into the whole Spintino myth and start calling Karl a
seemingly clueless, clearly too slow, over-the-hill defensive liability. Next
we'd let Pitino "upgrade" to stringbean guys who have never put up any stats
before but can jump through the roof. While showing Karl the door, we'd
probably also ask: "why didn't Karl go work on his inside moves more instead of
jacking up threes with the rest of the guys?"

I pray for Pitino to prove me wrong, as I so often am (and unfortunately for
me, I'm not saying this out of false modesty). I say let Pitino build the team
he wants, as long as he doesn't do too much damage to the roster before leaving
next year. There are a lot of reasons to keep believing Pitino will get it
right. This year he's got his hand-picked and paid (Battie) headless chicken
super-athletes on board, so with the exception of the tired "Blame Vitaly"
excuse, Poultrino really has only himself to scapegoat if things don't finally
work out.

I personally sense that the system won't work much better this year than the
last two-and-a-half years. I also feel that a Pitino-style offense will always
look butt-ugly aesthetically compared to a Heinsohn or KC Jones coached team.
Those three-point attempt five seconds into the shotclock are actually part of
the Pitino game plan, plain and simple. Multi-task headless chicken versatility
instead of working year-round on pet moves is another staple of the Pitino
regime.

If the players don't know the go-to moves of their teammates, you will never
see a crisp, efficient, enjoyable-for-fans-to-watch offense. Meanwhile other
teams do actually get better at teamwork as a season progresses, as well as
executing plays in the final three minutes of a game. That's another reason why
opponents deliver whup ass on the Celtics particularly later into each season,
while we fade out of the playoff picture despite our best efforts the past
three Springs.

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