RE: Sporting news article on Pierce

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

First of all, I'm not saying Antoine is a shoddy basketball player. I'm
saying that he's not as good-especially in his role on this team-as many on
the list think he is. I'll give you an example-Antawn Jamison put up numbers
somewhat similar to Antoine's last year (24 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 44 percent
shooting), but I don't think Golden State considers the guy the foundation
for a championship team. He's a nice player on a bad team. I think you can
say the same thing about Antoine. I don't think it's a coincidence that both
players are considered 'tweeners.

As for the 3-pointer, the Reggie Miller comparison, etc. We're probably just
going to have to disagree here, but a few points... The important difference
between Miller and Antoine is the fact that Miller is a shooting guard and
one of the best 3-point shooters in NBA history. Antoine is a power forward
and an average 3-point shooter. Like it or not, there are certain roles a
power forward simply has to play-especially a power forward playing
alongside centers named Battie, Potapenko and Blount. That PF has to rebound
and he absolutely has to get some high-percentage offense. Antoine had one
season with a decent two-point shooting percentage. That's it. And you can't
just throw out that 3-point percentage when talking about his overall field
goal percentage. IF he averaged three three-pointers a game, maybe... but he
averaged close to 10 a game in the second half of the season. As for the
argument that he has to shoot 3-pointers to protect Pierce, who posts up...
come on, Alex. The 1980s Celtics were one of the great post-up teams of all
time and that team rarely attempted as many 3-pointers as a team as Antoine
does alone. There are so many holes in this argument... As for 33 percent
being as good as 50 percent... it's simply not true. The points work out the
same in theory, but that means two out of every three trips, your opponent
is getting a rebound and fast break opportunity. Also, you're not getting to
the line when you fire away 3-pointers, so you're definitely going to score
more "hidden" points when shooting those two-pointers. So shooting 33
percent on threes is not the same as shooting 50 percent on twos.

The idea that simply being able to get the shots off excuses the low
percentage... the great players do both. Shaq, Duncan, Kobe, McGrady... even
Vince and Pierce, who are a notch below. Iverson probably is the one
exception, and I'd say that's a pretty unique case. That team was built
around a 6-0 shooting guard who shoots 41 percent, yet somehow they won.
How? Lots of big bodies on the front line to rebound his misses (the Celtics
don't have that), good defense to keep the opponent close when he struggles
(the Celtics don't have that), and necessity-they don't have another scorer
(the Celtics do, one of the best in the league). Plus, Iverson attacks the
basket and gets to the line, so his 41 percent is a little stronger than
Antoine's 41 percent.

You say Kenny got Antoine some easy shots... maybe a few, but be honest.
Antoine isn't a guy who relies on others to set him up offensively. He takes
the ball at the 3-point line, shoots, drives or posts up. He's not slashing
to the basket waiting for the pass. He's a one-on-one guy. But your point
about Kenny is right in that at least Kenny was handling the ball and
initiating the offense. Toine at least occasionally started the offensive
set in the post, and certainly had more offensive rebound opportunities
(which lead to high-percentage shots).

Anyway, Alex, I'm not sure we'll ever agree. Plenty of people on this list
look at Antoine's 20 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists and say that's all
that matters. I don't believe that. I watch the games, and Antoine can have
some of the ugliest "good games" (stat-wise) of any player in the NBA. It's
about more than stats. That's why you can look at the stats for Walker,
Garnett and Jamison and wonder what the difference is. Watch the games and
you know.

Mark


 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Alexander Wang [mailto:awang@MIT.EDU] 
Sent:	Friday, August 03, 2001 1:02 PM
To:	Berry, Mark  S; 'j.hironaka@unesco.org'; 'celtics@igtc.com'
Subject:	Re: Sporting news article on Pierce

I agree with the part where you say that Antoine is not going to become 
Kevin Garnett or Chris Webber. But there's a lot of room between those 
all-NBA superstars and the shoddy basketball player you describe in your
post.

At 10:32 AM 8/3/01, Berry, Mark  S wrote:
>What about the 41
>percent shooting for a power forward? The complete and utter inability
>(unwillingness) to play physically and get to the free throw line? The
>continued reliance on the 3-point shot when he only this season shot even a
>semi-respectable percentage and when he knows those shots take the team's
>best rebounder out of rebounding position? The assists? Antoine dominates
>the ball, by demand. He hasn't gotten along with any of the Celtics'
>admittedly below-average point guards during his career, probably because
>Antoine's idea of offense seems to be to give him the ball at half-court
and
>let him either shoot a 3 or drive to the basket. In short, the numbers are
>deceiving, and worse yet, you get the feeling that Antoine is satisfied
with
>the numbers.

I agree that the numbers are deceiving, but I have a different 
interpretation on most of them. A key principle of stats are that they're 
not scalable. If someone shoots 50% FG and scores 5 ppg, that doesn't mean 
you can give him six times the shots and he'll be a 50% FG shooter with 30 
ppg. More likely he won't even be able to get that many shots off, and his 
FG% will drop close to zero if he really has to take the shots. I've read 
arguments about how Iverson doesn't help his team because of his poor FG% 
and they're missing this key point.

It's also important to separate 2 pt FG% from 3 pt FG%. Antoine shot 44% 
from 2 pt range, which isn't stellar but is a lot better than 41%. Let's 
use this number from now on when we complain about his offensive
inefficiency.

Finally you have to take into account the context of the team around the 
player. A little known fact is that Antoine shot 47% from 2 pt range in the 
1999-2000 season, because he butchered his overall percentage with poor 3 
pt shooting that year. How come he shot that well? I actually think that 
the explanation is Kenny Anderson. Two reasons: First, as annoying as 
Kenny's point guard play is, he's the only PG on our team that actually has 
any court vision. Some of those 5 apg that he had were nice passes to 
Antoine that gave him very high percentage shots. Second, Kenny can 
actually score a bit, which meant that Antoine didn't have the burden of 
trying to score 23 ppg.

1. Reliance on the 3 pt shot: Antoine shoots a good percentage, period. 
Shooting 33% from 3 pt range gives you one point a shot, shooting 50% from 
2 pt range gives you one point a shot. There are side effects that you 
mention and I agree with: he doesn't get to the line shooting 3's. He's not 
in position to rebound offensively. On the other hand, he needs to shoot 
the 3 to protect Pierce down low.

And 37% is a high enough percentage to justify a lot of side effects. The 
fact that he can get off as many 3 pointers as he can at that percentage is 
a positive, not a negative. Reggie Miller actually shot the same percentage 
as Antoine. Is it because Miller's accuracy is the same? No, the reason is 
because Miller has to scratch and claw to get every attempt. He'd love to 
get more attempts at the same percentage. The reason teams don't shoot more 
3 pointers given their higher percentage is due to scaling effects: they 
won't be getting high percentage opportunities.

One negative side effect in general about shooting tons of 3's is that they 
are higher variance shots (in the technical sense of the probability 
distribution of points). Bad teams want higher variance, good teams don't. 
We're going to want to reduce our volume of 3's once we're better than a 
.500 team but until then, bombs away.

2. His low 2 pt percentage: As I noted above, he shot a decent percentage 
when he actually had a healthy Kenny for a whole season. I'm not saying 
"give Kenny an extension" here. But his low percentage is at least 
partially explained by having to initiative the offense. He's rarely on the 
receiving end of a good assist. And there's the fact that he's surrounded 
by a bunch of offensive incompetents (everyone but Pierce) so that if he 
and Pierce don't combined for 45 points, the team probably loses. Of 
course, this team-induced ballhogging probably fits his somewhat selfish 
personality well.

Now, hopefully with the addition of some credible offensive talent in Joe 
Johnson and maybe Kedrick Brown, and the return of Kenny Anderson (maybe), 
Antoine can cut down his bad shots, receive some assists, and shoot a 
higher percentage - maybe even higher than the 47% from 99-00.

3. His assists: you can't just disregard them because he was the primary 
initiator of the offense. Just because someone fills a role where certain 
production is expected doesn't mean it's not valuable. If he takes over 
this role, he allows us to play someone at PG that doesn't fit this 
traditional role. For instance, you can play $1.4M point guard Milt Palacio 
who gives you decent defense because he doesn't have this pressure on him. 
Again, I'm hoping that we get a real point guard some point down the line 
but his passing and ballhandling is valuable nonetheless.

Now, I agree with much of the rest. His lack of commitment to All-Star 
conditioning is frustrating. His defense is a definite liability for our
team.

I don't know if there's clear evidence that he's satisfied with his game, 
like you seem to perceive. We haven't heard much this offseason about his 
work with Tim Grover since that initial mention, which makes me really 
curious. And he has made gains in various areas in recent seasons.

Much of his play last season was dictated by team needs - the additional 
scoring, the assists, 3 point shooting. My hope is that with the 
composition of the team changing - Joe Johnson, perhaps the return of Kenny 
Anderson - that his game will improve in the direction that we all seem to 
agree on: fewer forced shots, higher percentage inside offensive play that 
gets him to the free throw line, more offensive rebounding, creating for 
his teammates but not as the primary distributor. I still think he's going 
to be shooting a lot of 3's because Pierce is going to need a spread 
offense even more than before if he's going to work inside with the zone 
defense.

Alex