RE: Did we miss a golden opportunity?

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

Absolutely Alex. You're right that it's too early to make any final
conclusions. But I think we can and should keep our eye on these things. All
we heard was how the guys the Celts picked were far and away the best
players on the board, and you should never draft for need. I just think we
need to question whether or not we got the best players on the board. You
have to admit that's open to debate. 

You know I have a special interest in Haywood because I was a supporter of
his at draft time, but my concern goes to the philosophy of Wallace and
Obie. I'm not sure they understand or appreciate big men unless they're Shaq
or Duncan type talents. They claim the league is "dominated" by athletic
swingmen and point to Kobe, McGrady and Vince Carter. Well, where would Kobe
be without Shaq? What has McGrady done without a big man? Where would Vince
be without Oakley (earlier), Antonio Davis and Hakeem? I think the greater
truth is the league is dominated by good big men, even if it doesn't show up
on SportsCenter.

I agree completely with you on Forte, and Brevin Knight may be a good
comparison for Tinsley, although I'd submit Knight's lack of size had as
much to do with his eventual downfall as his lack of shooting range (after
all, other no-shot point guards are winners-look at Jason Kidd and Mark
Jackson). I didn't like the Forte pick at the time and I still don't. But I
bring up Haywood because his type of player is so hard to find. Three years
from now, can't you just see us all on this list complaining because we have
all these swingmen but no big guy. Let's face it, when good ones come along,
they don't tend to be traded. Teams make mistakes in the draft reaching for
big guys because they're so hard to get otherwise. But they also sometimes
steal gems because other teams opt for the "sexy" pick. Big men who don't
score big aren't sexy. But they can be vital to building a good team.

You say Haywood has played two good games. I'd say he's played six. Look at
the difference he made in that team. They're 4-3 since his return, with wins
in Miami, Houston and Dallas. That's significant. He's made a difference
with defense, low-post offense, rebounding and shot-blocking. Not all of
those things show up in the box score.

I'm just raising the question. We're all operating on the best-case scenario
for our three rookies. But what if Kedrick Brown really is Blue Edwards?
Based on history, that's certainly more likely than him being Tracy McGrady.
What if Joe Forte is Trajan Langdon? More likely than Joe Dumars. Is it
early? Sure. 

Mark 





 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Alexander Wang [mailto:awang@MIT.EDU] 
Sent:	Monday, December 10, 2001 4:00 PM
To:	Berry, Mark  S; 'jason david jones'
Cc:	'celtics@igtc.com'; 'celticsstuffgroup@yahoogroups.com'
Subject:	RE: Did we miss a golden opportunity?

Mark,

Don't you think it's much too early for this? You're projecting Brendan 
Haywood into a "legitimate, upper-echelon starting center" based on two 
good games out of a seven game NBA career. Eric Montross looked pretty 
decent after a full year and his career hasn't exactly been a smashing
success.

You're also including incredibly questionable "evidence" like "Doug Collins 
can't stop raving about him." Jim O'Brien can't stop raving about Eric 
Williams either, but I doubt other teams are banging their heads about not 
trading for him when they had the chance.

The "Kedrick Brown vs Brendan Haywood" debate is basically a long ways from 
even getting started. Kedrick is clearly a project that had no Division I 
college experience, compared to Haywood who was a senior in a big program. 
He's going to outperform Brown early on, without question. It's like 
comparing McGrady vs. Van Horn; Van Horn had a much, much better rookie 
year but clearly McGrady was the better choice in hindsight. Or a more 
painful comparison can be made between McGrady and Ron Mercer, who seems to 
be basically the same player he was as a rookie.

Is it too much to ask for you to wait until Haywood has put up maybe ten 
good games instead of two before you start criticizing the braintrust for 
making a poor decision? There's plenty of evidence that suggests that 
judging drafts even after one year is wildly inaccurate, especially with 
underclassmen - all the high school kids like Rashard Lewis, Jermaine 
O'Neal, McGrady, guys like Baron Davis, Nowitzki, and quite a few others.

I think you can make a more convincing case for Forte vs. Tinsley or 
Parker. Wallace is on record as preferring Parker, I think. I listened to 
the Chris Wallace show last week and he did state that he prefers an 
offense with a true point guard, so I don't think that the "Walker as point 
forward" will stop him from trying to acquire a true point. But he said 
that they were hard to find, and he also mentioned that Jim O'Brien felt 
that a point guard who couldn't shoot would cripple the offense. Anyone 
else who caught the radio show may want to clarify or correct this because 
I wasn't paying close attention. What I wonder about Tinsley is whether 
he'll eventually suffer the same fate as Brevin Knight, another guy who was 
NBA ready due to a four year college career, posting big assist numbers. 
Brevin's lack of shooting ability eventually caught up to him and he didn't 
really have much upside after his rookie year. I was reading a comment from 
an anonymous scout who felt that Parker would eventually be better than 
Tinsley because of a Tinsley's similar lack of upside - what you see right 
now might be the best you'll ever get.

What worries me in particular about Forte is that Wallace is optimistically 
projecting him as a combo 1-2 guard, which sounds to me like the equivalent 
of a utility infielder in baseball. I guess that similar and fairly 
successful examples might be Derek Anderson, Antonio Daniels, and Larry 
Hughes, but each of these guys has far more athleticism than Forte. Still 
early, but even the GMs optimistic projection doesn't sound that great to
me.

Alex



At 02:41 PM 12/10/2001, Berry, Mark  S wrote:
>You're right. Why bother? Let fate run its course.
>
>Should the Celtics be excused for their mistakes because Portland drafted
>Sam Bowie instead of Michael Jordan? I'm not giving up on anyone the
Celtics
>drafted, but I don't think it's out of line to point out the fact that the
>two glaring areas of weakness-the two most important, most difficult
>positions to fill-could have been upgraded in the draft.
>
>The "braintrust" is going to be judged on these kinds of decisions. Two
>years from now, if we're still running Battie and Potapenko out there and
>finally admitting that Joe Forte isn't a point guard, how would you judge
>them?
>
>I'm just pointing out that Tinsley and Parker aren't the only mistakes the
>Celts made in the draft. Haywood would have solved a lot of problems right
>away, and probably turned into a legitimate, upper-echelon starting center
>in a year or two. How many of those guys are there?
>
>Look, there are a lot of ways the Celtics could have gone in the draft...
>trade up, fill needs, best player... but there isn't a lot of evidence
(yet)
>that they did any of those things. It's way too early to pass final
judgment
>on Brown or Forte, but is there any evidence that they were the best
players
>available at those spots? No. Did they fill needs? No. Kedrick Brown could
>turn into Tracy McGrady, and if that happens, great. But based on what we
>know now, I think it's worth mentioning.
>
>Mark
>
>P.S. Someone tell Obie that it takes six fouls to foul out in the NBA.
>Sitting Pierce for basically the whole second half with four fouls was
nuts.