Re: ESPN Insider Power Rankings

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

Kestas, you missed my point.

I'm not saying this is right. I'm just saying we all tend to look only at
the Celtics and lose sight of the big picture. Here's someone trying to look
at the league as a whole, seeing the Celtics and still seeing a team with no
center, no point guard and a lot of players who play the same positions. You
say there's no reason to believe the Celtics will be worse, and that's true.
The point is, there's significant reason to believe other teams will be much
better. There are a couple of teams-Atlanta and Detroit, and maybe
Washington and New Jersey-who have improved their teams in the short-term.
I'd still take the Celtics' roster over Detroit's, Washington's or Jersey's,
and probably even Atlanta's-but that's based on the future. Going into this
season, if you look at it objectively, there are a lot of reasons to believe
the Celtics could have significantly more talent and not make a real move in
the standings at all.

Joe's last post said it much better than I have. The Celtics have done a
great job adding talent, but why not add around the edges to improve in the
short-term as well? There are ways to do it without trading a piece of the
core or any of the draft picks. Like Joe says, this team needs to start
winning or guys are going to fall into some bad habits and start to wish for
greener pastures. Right now, they look like a team that basically will tread
water from last year to this.

Rankings like this are meant to spark discussion, and that's what I was
trying to do. I wanted to enter some non-Celtic perspective into our
discussions of the team's offseason. It's certainly not the gospel, but it's
no less credible than our green-tinted perspectives.

Mark