I'M A HOMER!!!

[Jeremy <jwarren@eecs.tufts.edu>]

54 wins!

There, I said it.  I'm a naively optimistic, local yahoo, anti-fellowship
of the miserable, bleeding green Celtics fan.

The depth and talent on this team is better than it has been in the entire
decade of the 90s.  Well since Bird and McHale retired anyway.

The eastern conference is weaker than at any other time in history.
Orlando and Milwaukee look like they have good teams.  Everyone else has
issues.

Look at our backcourt bench compared to last year.  Assuming that Kenny
and Adrian start (I'll get to that later), we have Herren, Brown, Carr,
and Stith compared to Barros and Cheaney.  (Can you say insurance?  'Cause
I could say I told you so.)

Moiso and Blount give us the athleticism in the frontcourt that this team
was screaming out for last year.  Are they raw?  Sure, but we don't need
them to start and play 30 minutes every game.

Now on to the starting lineup / rotation / minutes issues.  This is my
only real area of concern.  The main thing is that Pierce is a 3.  Pitino
needs to get his head out of his ass and realize this.  Sure, he's a good
enough player to play off guard and not suck, but he is much better on
both ends of the court as a small forward.  I can see playing Pierce at
the 2 spot at times to give Antoine some minutes at small forward, but for
Eric Williams?  WRONG.

I think the Eric Williams in the starting lineup experiment was worth
trying.  He's a high energy player, who is also a scorer.  But he's also
somewhat of an anti-chemistry player.  The starting lineup has plenty of
scorers.  It needs chemistry and athleticism.  So here's my starting
lineup:  Kenny, Adrian, Pierce, Walker, and Battie.  Now we all know
Battie isn't really consistent enough or big enough to be a real starting
center, but again this is the eastern "weakest of all time" conference.
The all star centers this year will probably be Dikembe, Elden,
and maybe Jermaine.

The other problem with Pitino's rotation that we're all familiar with is
his moronic obsession with having a pure second unit in there with no
starters or scorers.  This year it won't be as bad because Eric Williams
and Chris Carr can provide offense.  While Herren provides chemistry and
energy.  Vitale gives you muscle and inside scoring and Moiso gives you
help defense and "length".  But if we do get into the situation where the
second unit can't find the general region where the hoop is located, put
one of your top three scores in with them.  Technically you could always
have two of Pierce, Walker, and Anderson in the game at all times, with
each of them playing at least 32 minutes each.  But you could easily have
onr them in the game at all times.  I'm almost in favor of putting Kenny
Anderson in the second unit (while still playing him at least 25 minutes a
game), but I'm concerned that would lead to some unrest and distraction.

Either way, you keep Adrian with Kenny.  Adrian offsets Kenny's shoot
first, "were you open?" later mentality.  Our two main chemistry players
are Herren and Adrian.  One of them should be on the court at all times.

So there it is.  54 wins.  Top that.

Jeremy