Re: Knicks

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

Dan Forant wrote:

> Knicks have the balls to make the moves. The same could have been done
> years ago with the aging Celts. The Knicks are a better team without Ewing
> and will rule the East with a coach that knows how to use talent.

That's always one thing I strangely don't regret: not rebuilding by moving
Parish or McHale once it became clear that the Bird era was over.  It seemed
to be the right thing to do to keep them around. Those guys BTW were
productive for us until the very end, which in the case of Parish was many
years past the normal shelf life.1987-95 was a snake-bitten period for the
Celtics considering they had made the seemingly right moves and choices to
achieve continuity with Len Bias, Reggie Lewis and drafting a pointguard like
Tim Hardaway or power forward like Shawn Kemp (instead of BYU's Michael "The
Vegetable" Smith).

The ironic thing is that Boston did well in light of their draft position
during the early to mid 1990s, when you compare them to the many dry spells of
the 1980s, 1970s and 1960s. The difference is that they never quite hit the
jackpot.

In 1990 Dee Brown was picked by Jan Volk two spots ahead of Jayson Williams,
but then again Dee made All Rookie and slam dunk champion so he still
outperformed many of the 19 players picked ahead of him. Can't complain.

In 1991 (Kenny BTW went 2nd overall between Larry Johnson and Billy Owens),
the Celtics again got by far the best available player at the 24th pick with
Rick Fox. Some of the names that went ahead of him were John Turner, Victor
Alexander, Kevin Brooks and LaBradford Smith. Immediately after Fox came Shawn
Vandiver, Mark Randall and Pete Chilcutt. So again, Jan Volk did well.

In 1992 Boston clearly blew the choice in terms of NBA ability between Latrell
Sprewell and Jon Barry on the 21st pick (Sprewell went two picks later). The
next season, Boston passed on Sam Cassell to spend a need pick on Acie
"Duchess of" Earl (who many thought had fallen further than projected). The
same pattern followed the next year when Boston invested its pick on another
big man at number 11, Eric Montross (The Lakers nabbed Eddie Jones with the
next pick and Jalen Rose followed two picks later). But at least Montross made
All Rookie and eventually landed us Antoine Walker.

Eric Williams was also a productive rookie picked 14th the following year,
although some surprises were available further down into that draft (Theo
Ratliff, Michael Finley). You can't really blame the Celtics for missing those
guys, though, since so many other teams did too.

Then you had the banner 1996 draft, where the Celtics were actually lucky to
be in a position to draft Antoine Walker, since the next six teams were forced
to settle for generic players (Wright, Kittles, Samaki Walker, Dampier, Todd
Fuller, Vitaly Potapenko). Of course all six GMs passed on Kobe Bryant, and
the Lakers had the smarts to trade up and grab him.

The next year Boston faced a horrible draft and Pitino could have as easily
ended up worse-off with Antonio Daniels and Adonal Foyle (who no doubt would
have been long gone by now because he has been so slow to develop) instead of
what they ended up with. You can say they blew two chances at Tracy McGrady
though, and it seems obvious that overlooking Kobe and McGrady in consecutive
years now weighs heavily on Chris Wallace and is something he'll probably
avoid in the future.

1998 was a great year. There was no one close to Paul Pierce in talent that
was drafted after. We were also lucky to have avoided some of the players who
went ahead of Pierce (like Traylor).

So overall, I guess you had two drafts (1996, 1998) where the Celtics pretty
clearly walked away with the best player available, balanced by the disastrous
Acie Earl and Jon Barry picks in consecutive years. Everything else was more
or less a wash.

You can give Jerry West the credit he deserves for Kobe and Eddie, but many of
the Flakers' picks this decade were forgettable (Sam Jacobson, Devean George,
Travesty Knight, Anthony Peeler with a 15th pick, George Lynch with a 12th
pick). Which pretty much illustrates how one great draft  (like the
Heinsohn-Russell-KC Jones draft) is all it takes to separate a "genius" GM
from a fireable one like Pitino. Red made a few dumb picks in his lifetime,
although to be fair he had next to no scouting.

I guess you just have to have faith that good things will happen.

Someone just mentioned on this list that NBA camps open in two weeks. Is that
true? That news got me suddenly riled up and excited for next season in a big
way. The Celtics will be back someday.


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