Re: Magic game

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 01:58 PM 10/26/00 +0200, Hironaka wrote:
>>I guess two fair questions raised in this debate are 1) will more
athleticism make
>it finally work at the NBA level? and 2) would it also work better with more
>experienced NBA players? Those seem to be Alex' litmus test as I
understand it,
>although he raises other questions too.
>
>The first question is open to our interpretation of facts. Pitino didn't need
>shotblockers or even great system athletes at every position to make it
work in
>college (and boy did it ever work in college). He also was able to win with
>inexperienced underclassmen. So it becomes a good question and one worth
raising
>whether more funky chicken additions in the Moiso/Carr/Brown mode is
heading us
>still deeper down a hopeless/failed path or will bring us to the light at
the end
>of the tunnel. We all, including me, hope it is the second.

Good points. I believe that in college, he managed to take relatively
nonathletic types and put them through an incredible amount of
conditioning. The story of Billy Donovan losing thirty pounds to play for
Pitino is an example. And that turned guys where were not great athletes
into guys who could outrun and outpress the opposition. The problem in the
NBA right now is that the average level of athleticism and conditioning is
higher, and the opposition might have ten years of pro experience rather
than two or three of college. You can't beat them with guys that are less
athletic. Whether you can beat them with more athleticism is still to be seen.

>Back to my point, I do think that there are many teams with no length, no
>athleticism and no shotblocking etc. that play better defense than Boston.
Is it
>coaching? Is it luck? If it is mostly about player experience, then would
those
>guys run our headless chicken any better than Pitino-veterans like Walker and
>McCarty do?

Actually, I don't agree that there were many teams like that -- unless
you're talking about historical teams. Boston was close to the bottom of
the list in these categories last season. The historical teams you cite --
they were a different era. Pitino's Knicks teams were averaging something
like 117 ppg. Clearly the whole league played offense and defense
differently back then.

>If you add up the defensive +/- scores of the Sacramento frontline--much less
>their entire starting lineup in general--it really comes down to a
judgement call
>how much better they really are than us. Granted Webber is probably an
awesome
>defender (not against Walker, that's for sure) but I think Divac and Corliss
>Williamson would stink if they played the Boston Chicken system. The
Sacramento
>team last year held opponents to .452 shooting in a tough conference.

My point is not that teams like Sacramento, or the Knicks, should play
headless chicken defense. My point is that teams built like ours, without
length, athleticism, shotblocking, and experience, are going to be bad
defensive teams no matter what. I mean, you add Chris Webber to our team
and suddenly we don't even need to double team their top inside player.
That's a huge difference. Sacramento blocks 4.64 per game, we block 3.48,
and they get it from their frontline. We get it from Paul Pierce on the
perimeter. Even without Ewing, New York has Camby in the middle. If he gets
starter minutes he probably blocks as many shots as the entire Celtics
team. They have a top defensive player in Sprewell on the perimeter and
tough defensive oriented point guards. They have Kurt Thomas who is a solid
defensive player; he generally frustrates Antoine. And yes, they have
experience. I'm not saying that they should play headless chicken. Because
they don't need to. They have the players to play straightforward
man-to-man defense. It's a mistake to say, "They were unathletic and good
at defense" (which isn't even true) and translate it to say, "We can be
unathletic and good at defense." Because they have different, defensively
better, experienced personnel. If we want to play like the Knicks, it's not
enough just to get nonathletes like Vitaly and Fortson and say, "Play like
the Knicks." We'd have to get older and better.

That is why I don't blame the headless chicken for our downfall. Clearly it
was not an aspect in the plus column. Except for Detroit (another
horrendous defensive team), every other team in the league blocked a
significant number more shots than we did. We had definite defensive issues
at the point guard and backup point guard positions, as well as center and
power forward. I simply am not convinced about that the idea that the
headless chicken was the factor holding our team back from being a good
defensive team. I just think we had the personnel of a bad defensive team.
The headless chicken did not help; it's supposed to compensate for
inexperience and lack of interior man-to-man defensive ability with
athleticism and team execution. We didn't have either last year.

By the way, it's interesting that you mention how good an offensive and
rebounding team the Celtics were last year. Pitino doesn't get coaching
credit for that from anyone, as far as I can tell. By my argument, he
shouldn't, because I think he specifically built a team with personnel that
had good offensive and rebounding talent and poor defensive talent.

Alex