Re: musings

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 01:59 PM 5/21/01 , Berry, Mark  S wrote:
>Good points Joe and Kestas.
>
>The combination of physical ability and drive is the perfect formula when
>drafting where the Celtics are, Kestas. I agree with Joe that if you can add
>in productivity, that's great, but if the guy has the physical ability, the
>drive and the proven numbers, he's probably long gone by 10.

This is a very interesting discussion. In addition to Mark's point here,
I'd note that there are also tradeoffs within these categories. At 10 and
11, you're going to find several guys who have some amount of physical
talent and some amount of drive. I assume that Kestas is talking about
finding the right balance here. It's probably not going to be a case of
selecting between either/or (like Moiso/Potapenko) but rather a more/less.
Personally, my feeling is that the Celtics will still lean towards the
athleticism criteria, and hope that the motivation comes with the new
environment. I remember watching McGrady early in his career and thinking
of him as a lazy-looking pouting brat.

>As for Bird... the idea that he didn't have a physical advantage is only
>partly true. He wasn't as fast or quick as most guys who guarded him, but he
>almost always was bigger and stronger. And that's really the bottom line in
>the NBA. Teams and players can compensate for speed/quickness, but if you
>have a size advantage, you're halfway there. Isn't anyone else tired of the
>Celtics always being undersized? Make Pierce your SG, Walker your SF and
>Randolph/Gasol/Moiso your power forward, and you're well on your way to
>physically dominating the other team. Throw in a Brendan Haywood at center,
>and that's a pretty physical team.

I agree with the idea if we get an upgrade at PF/C, but not with the
current personnel. In particular, Pierce spends a lot of time in the post.
Walker, though he spends a lot of time behind the three point line, is
still one of the major sources of low-post offense for the team (behind
Pierce). If you have a team where the SF and SG get most of your team's
post offense, for spacing reasons you need a good outside shooter at PF/C
at all times. Right now we don't really have the ability to do that. Now if
we draft/acquire a PF/C that is either strong in low post scoring (so
Walker and Pierce aren't our only options down there) or who can shoot 3's
as well as Walker, then I agree with the idea.

We've seen a couple of teams try this approach without much success:
Vancouver with their Reeves/Harrington/Shareef front line and Washington
with Ben Wallace(can't remember their center back then
actually)/Webber/Howard. They never seemed to really perform well, and in
particular one of the forwards' rebounding numbers would suffer. I'm not so
sure that our rebounding numbers don't get worse if Walker moves to SF and
you plug in Moiso, say, because Walker's not going to get nearly as many
defensive rebounds guarding the small forward from the perimeter, and Moiso
hasn't shown historically that he can rebound more productively than Pierce
does from the small forward position already. 

I think the comparison with Boston's old front line doesn't fit right now
because we don't have the personnel to pull it off. Put Walker next to
McHale and Parish and I'd feel comfortable with the idea, but with
Potapenko and Battie, who don't have the low-post and defensive ability,
no. If we get a solid starting PF/C, yes.

One thing I haven't figured out is how the zone is going to affect all this
too. My initial feeling is that moving to Walker at SF, without upgrading
the PF/C position, is an even worse idea because we can't use illegal
defense guidelines to isolate Pierce as well; opponents would just sag off
Battie/Potapenko, who are only good to about 17 feet.

My hope is that they get that PF/C and we can all be in happy agreement. Of
course, I could see them taking a freakishly athletic small forward (Shawn
Marion type) which is an idea that has its merits for this team too. I
could conceivably imagine a Walker/freak/Pierce 4-3-2 combination
outrebounding a PF/Walker/Pierce combination because I'm not convinced
Walker's going to be a good rebounder from the SF position, the way he
plays nowadays (distributing on offense rather than hitting the boards) and
we could use a freelance athlete at swingman. But if we can get a solid
interior defender, it'll definitely upgrade our defense. 

Anyway, I guess the idea is that we should take the best player regardless
of position, without our opinions of Walker as a PF or Walker as a SF
influencing us to pick an inferior player because of need. Right now, none
of our players are fixed enough in their positions for us to avoid drafting
someone due to positional conflict.

Alex