Re: Good win

[bird <birdw@teleport.com>]

>From: "I am. . . Anonymous" <ktoreed@yahoo.com>
>
>Hey Cecil,
>
>I have a question for you, man.  Why are you on this
>list?  I mean, you clearly are NOT a Celtics fan.  .

What we've got here is ... failure to understand.  You've completely 
missed the point here, Mr. Anonymous-Person.  Perhaps you should 
stick around longer and look around a bit before posting.  Sort of 
get the lay of the land, so to speak, because you've attacked (in 
public) the guy on the list who, more than anybody, defends Walker to 
the knee-jerk Walker bashers (and has interesting debates with those 
who bring up good critical points about Antoine, as well, it should 
be mentioned.)  In short, you've behaved like something of a fool.

On a better note, that _was_ a good win: Walker and Pierce played 
poorly, and we came away with the win.  Sure, it was against the 
Hawks, but the Hawks have a decent inside presence (Mutombo, Wright, 
and Henderson) which can hurt us.  It didn't hurt that Knight had to 
leave and Terry took over the PG responsibilites, though.  Jason 
Terry is not comfortable at the point.  Anyway, this might give the 
other players on the team other than PP and AW some confidence: they 
tried to depend on those two offensively, and it didn't work, but a 
good result followed.  Can't hurt.  And, when the team really needed 
them, Pierce came up with a big basket, and Walker with a good 
defensive/great hustle play to help nail it shut.  Are these the 
usual flahes of good play that we've seen before?  Perhaps.  Time 
will tell if it's another flash or a trend.

I thought the real story was our PG's: Brown and Palacio combined for 
13-17 from the field.  Nice.  We needed them to, as the plan against 
Atlanta is apparently to take it to the interior D and pass out again 
to the open guy.  Often this will be the pivot, but although 
Potapenko's numbers were decent, he was hampered by fouls, and Blount 
really had a bad game.  So our points were open and they nailed 
shots.  Good to see.

As for Walker's POTW miss, I thought he had a good shot at it, but 
it's probably about the record, which I can't refute.  In the end, 
it's all about wins.  Webber led his team to a 3-1, Walker's team 
ended up with 2-2.  The way this season is going, 2-2 on the road was 
damn fine, indeed, and Walker's numbers were outstanding, and so was 
his play (Way/Ray/kai's opinions notwithstanding -- anyone notice how 
we don't see a lot of him when he gets called on something?), 
sandwiching a 47 pt, 13 assist meaty game with some Triple-Double 
Bread.  Sweet.  Except for the inevitable stretch in the second half, 
Walker's game against the Hawks still showed his willingness to pass 
the ball (i.e. "get touches").  There's always at least one stretch 
during a game where he feels the need to take the ball to the hoop 
against 2-4 defenders, though.

Regards,

Celtic "Tird"

P.S. Is anyone going to the Celtics game here in Portland on 17 
February?  Email me if you are planning on it; I think a few of us 
might meet up at halftime or something, grab a beer or two and gossip 
about y'all behind your backs.  Is Ken Mattine still on the list?