Re: In praise of sluggish play

[bird <birdw@aloha.net>]

>From: "Berry, Mark  S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>
>
>Didn't watch this one, but looking at the stats, you see why so many of us
>are so down on Kenny Anderson. His energy level never is what I'd call high,
>but he is flat-out awful in tough stretches of the schedule like this. He
>just mails it in.

Kenny's actually improved somewhat defensively (he actually tries to 
play some) since his days in Blazerland, and I'm noticing this year 
that he will, sometimes, push the ball up the court with the pass. 
Having said that, he's also as you describe above.  At least this 
year the team has some options: instead of only having Barros, who 
was worse (as a pg), we have Brown and Herren, who are better in 
certain areas.

I'm pleasantly suprised by both.  Didn't see much of Herren with 
Denver last year, but he looks to be a capable shooter, and willing 
to take the ball to the hoop.  Brown is just a great defender and 
distributes the ball well -- he looks better with the C's than he did 
with da Bulls last year.  But, most importantly, these guys _push the 
ball_.  From watching the games, it looks to me as if the team is 
placing more of an emphasis on the fast break, outlet passes, and 
generally pushing the ball (even Kenny -- sometimes), they're just 
not that good at it yet.

>This is a bad rebounding team, but they're going to get absolutely killed if
>Vitaly plays as much as he did last night without grabbing a single rebound.
>If he's not rebounding and he's not scoring, what is he contributing?

Well, he tried hard in the last game, but that's not going to be good 
enough.  He looked like he was getting decent positioning on the 
bounds, but opposing players would either take the rebound from 
behind him (without committing the over the back) or weaseling their 
way to a better position.  V's not likely to increase his vertical 
jump, so he needs to learn to become a better positional rebounder in 
order to help the team.  Rebounding could be a real Achille's heel 
this year, mostly because V has usually been the only Celtic under 
the basket looking for the miss in the preseason so far.  If other 
guys aren't going to go for the bound, and we're left with V being 
the primary rebounder, then the team has real problems.

Regards,

Bill