Re: Nazr vs. Battie.

["Jim Meninno" <jam@london.com>]

Hi there folks.  I've been out of the country since about a week before the
draft until now, so I'm still scratching my head and saying "Kedrick who?".
I'm way behind the curve on the whole draft thing, but I wanted to weigh in
on the Nazr Mohammed debate.  I'd say the debate's only worth having if you
can say with reasonable certainty that Mohammed is significantly better than
Tony Battie.  My good friend Joe certainly thinks so...

----- Original Message ----- From: "j.hironaka" <j.hironaka@unesco.org>

> At some point, I think one really has to "care" about production,
> consistency and heart. There has to be a balance at least with pure talent
> which Battie has.
>
> Check it out, Batgirl played in 40 games last season and garnered 2 or
> fewer rebounds in nine of those games (he hauled down 3 boards in three
> other games). As the Boston Celtics pivot man, he also managed 26 games
> with zero assists (0.4 season average). That's actually a lot of games to
> take off, if your team goal is to get into the playoffs.

Well, I did check it out, and most of those 2 rebound games came in March
and April when he played 5, 4 or even 2 minutes.  It seems incredibly harsh
to hold these figures against him as he was coming back from his ankle
injury at the time.  Before the injury, he had 2 such games out of 30 and
was averaging over 7 rebounds in just 25 or so minutes a game.  If there was
one encouraging sign from the early part of last season, it was that Tony
Battie was playing well, and playing hard on the vast majority of nights.
He was also scoring over 8 points a game on about .550 shooting and blocking
1.9 shots in those 25 minutes.  So, he was having a pretty fine year before
the injury.

I don't remember much about seeing Mohammed play, but he was certainly
scoring and rebounding more, even allowing for his extra playing time.  He
is not a shot blocker at all, according to the numbers.  But he also had
much more opportunity to score than Battie and he was playing for his
contract, whereas Tony had already signed his longterm deal.  I'd say that
Mohammed's only clear advantage is in rebounding, and even that's not
overwhelming.

Last year I noted that, of the Celtics centers, only Tony Battie could
score, rebound *and* block shots.  You could add Mohammed to that group as
well and it would still be true.  I can't offer an opinion on his general
defensive skills, but those that have argued that the Celtics should go
after him because "the championship still must go through L.A. (i.e. Shaq)"
have got to be kidding.  He's 6'10" and 240 lbs.  He is not any more of an
answer to Shaq than is Battie or Potapenko.

One thing that I haven't heard mentioned is that O'Brien and Wallace might
not *want* Antoine's best friend on the team.  In the same way that the team
had to get rid of Rick Robey for the sake of Larry Bird, this might not be a
good idea at all.  Then again, Battie and Pierce have gotten into their fair
share of trouble together, so let's call that a wash.

I also got a kick out of Joe's vestigal admiration of Danny Fortson.  I have
to admire your loyalty to the guy, Joe.

> I don't really know if Dave Cowens can cover Fortson's shortcomings in a
> zone defense, but I'm sure he doesn't mind having another season with 17
> points and 17 boards per game.

Probably, but I guarantee he's hoping that his "season" consists of more
than 6 games this year!

Jim Meninno (now jam@london.com)