Re: Ask and you shall receive....

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

Mark Piotrowski wrote:

>Last year 5 teams made double-digit jumps in wins last year (only 1 
>team made 14 win jump, but consider San Antonio only made a 16 game 
>jump when they added Duncan and got Robinson back healthy (they did 
>add 36 wins when they added Robinson and Sean Elliott as rookies), 
>and i think the list will surprise you (it did me).

Actually, San Antonio jumped from 20-62 to 56-26 in 97-98 after they
drafted Duncan and Robinson returned from injury. You're not going to see a
team add two All-NBA centers in a season too often though.

A nice analysis in general, Mark. I would discount the Clippers'
improvement in comparison with some of the other teams because it's much
easier to improve when you start at the very bottom. That's one of the
reasons the Celtics made the leap from 15 to 36 (+21!) in Pitino's first
year but have been going sideways every since.

So what's in store for the Celtics? I agree with the idea that one of the
biggest sources of potential improvement is from our maturing stars. The
news that Walker is working out is very good, but it's only been 2.5 weeks
according to that article. Hopefully he has the discipline to see it
through. Pierce's performances in the post-Pitino era really opened my
eyes. He's developed into one of the premier offensive players in the
league. Randy Brown suggested that once he's fully recovered from his
injury, he can develop his upper body strength through weight training to
become even more dominant. On the other hand, zone defenses may take away
some of his opportunities on the inside, if we don't have the shooters to
prevent it (Eric Williams and Randy Brown are not what I have in mind here). 

Alex