Re: [Celtic_Pride] article from Globe

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

"Berry, Mark S" wrote:

> Me again:
> Think about that. He's second in the league in attempts, but 44th in
> percentage. Should someone who is so average from long range be taking so
> many 3-pointers?

Yeah, I don't disagree totally about those ten treys a game, but Antoine is
shooting .432 (345-804) from 2-point range this season and that figure might
presumably be even lower if he wasnt able to draw big defenders outside with his
bombs .371 (149-402). I'm not saying .432 wouldn't also rank him 44th among
forwards in the league, but it well might, and what becomes the argument then?

The short answer is that Antoine is another of many unique player, with an
individual shortcomings that can't always be treated separately from his overall
package of strengths. Havlicek, for example, though not great at anything in
particular was good at almost everything.

As noted before, Antoine would need to up his 2-point shooting to over .550 in
order to match the per-shot-attempt scoring efficiency of his effort to date
from out in Larry Land (since you get 1.5 as many points per field goal made out
there).

Pitino coached it into his game plans all his life, regardless of what he says.
Say you have a wide-open three early in the shot clock, as opposed to a
contested three later with the clock running down. If  you number crunch and
discover that you statistically hit your wide-open threes at a high enough
proficiency to make it worth it, then the game plan is bombs away whatever the
shot clock. It is not pretty and it doesn't always look like team basketball,
but there is a logic behind it that I don't disagree with. Why wait until the
shot clock is way down just for appearances sake, if you are open early on in
the clock and have shown you make a high percentage of wide open threes? The
downside, as Mark notes, is sometimes Toine will have a terrible night on his
three attempts, whereas it is relatively rare that you will have 2-10 nights
attempting only post-up moves and dunks.

If we aquired a guy who could be our All Star-caliber inside scorer and banger,
then great, but clearly none of the other prospects have stepped up yet so we
can't blame Antoine for playing a jack-of-all trades role. Tony Battie was
drafted 3-places ahead of Antoine. Moiso and Fortson came several lottery picks
later. Even Potapenko was a late lottery pick I think. If we had ended up with a
McDyess instead of a Paul Pierce, we probably wouldn't be having this
conversation about Antoine's game.

****