Was: Sporting news article on Pierce

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

Hi Mark, Alex:

In some ways the "Antoine Walker is not improving with age" and the "what 
you see is what you are going to get" notion is partly myth. Or at least it 
is an assumption quine prone to overstatement.

For instance, Walker's FT shooting has progressed from .559 to .699 to .716 
while Shaq has stayed put. Walker's 3ptFG% dipped to .256 a year ago but 
climbed back up to .367 last year.

Not to state the obvious, but that kind of improvement from year to year 
doesn't just happen from playing in pickup games all summer.

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Onward to other misc. Antoine stats good and bad.

-His Steals+Assists+Blocks advanced from 5.2 to 5.5 to 7.8 in the past 
three seasons.

-Antoine's defensive rebounding last year increased by a whopping 1.5 over 
the previous year.

-On the other hand, the most noticeable Toine trend is a sharp decline in 
offensive rebounds. Toine averaged a career low 1.9 per game last year, 
continuing a fifth consecutive season of steady decline from a high of 3.5 
as a rookie under ML Carr and 2.4 in the previous season.

Were I a betting man, I'd wager that this number may rise again this 
season. For one thing, the last ML Carr roster had a lot of guys (Fox, 
Wesley, Brown, Day) whose roles were similar to that which JJ, Kedrick and 
Forte are expected to fulfill. Basically, I imagine Joe Johnson is going to 
start out with a Rick Fox type of impact next year, and hopefully get 
better from there on.

I must say I somewhat regret Obie's late season Walker as PG experiment, to 
the degree that it leaves Toine not quite knowing what to focus on 
improving this summer. Unless you are Bird or Magic, this 
jack-of-all-trades approach may lend itself to weaker play in any given 
skill.

For instance, when Walker became a 3-point "specialist" last year he 
actually excelled by any fair definition (led the league in makes, for one 
thing). But his 2-point FG% plunged from the previous year.

You had the mirror image of that phenomenon the previous season. That's 
one, incidentally, that I'd prefer to see in the future.

Who knows, Walker might be talented enough to be a pretty good 
"two-dimensional" player if he focuses on only several things at a time.

Hard to say.

If you chose to compare his strengths and weaknesses to that of Iverson 
(instead of Webber) prior to their breakout seasons, I'd say Walker still 
surely projects as another young and competitive player nearly in that 
class with significant upside to his game, as opposed to zero.

But no, I agree with Mark he'll never be a Webber or a Kevin Garnett. But 
look I think we can all live with the next Iverson-caliber impact leader 
(in a much nicer package), and frankly it's not really Walker's fault he's 
our only power forward and low post threat or that the coaching staff seems 
intent on wanting to keep it that way.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Joe

p.s. BTW that guy from TSN actually wrote me a long, thoughtful reply. Did 
you guys get it? I'm not sure if he clicked "reply all". If anyone's 
interested I guess I can post it. I plan to reply.

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