O'Brien's two cents

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

    From the Herald's C-notes, Jim O'Brien explains why he is moving the
Celts back to a standard 8-man rotation and making sure his best two
players are on the floor together. This sounds sensible to me and the
results (at least so far) speak for themselves. O'Brien is proving to be
his own man which is nice to see.

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``we're practicing those eight guys together so that they're always a
unit - to be able to get to know each other better offensively and take
a little pride defensively in stopping the other team, instead of mixing
and matching all the time.

``The primary reason for limiting the rotations at the two and the three
spots was not out of disappointment in Adrian (Griffin) or Walt
(McCarty) or Chris Carr. It's just that I think Eric's the best
defensive player that we have. I think he's physical. I think he can
defend guys on the perimeter. He always understands the game plan and
what we're trying to accomplish, and he verbalizes that so he gives you
good defensive leadership. And because we were struggling for so long in
our halfcourt defense, by giving Eric more playing time, then we're
going to be a better halfcourt defensive team.''

``We know we can score at certain spots,'' said O'Brien, ``so when it
comes to me looking down the bench to see who we put in, if it's not for
Antoine, we're going to put in the best defensive option at the time -
as long as we can have Paul and Antoine on the court at the same time.
We never want them both on the bench.''

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