Celts-Bulls

[Kestas <Kestutis.Kveraga@dartmouth.edu>]

The good: 
We won. Kenny's renaissance is continuing. We got 23 pts, 60% shooting,
and 14 rebs out of our three-headed center. Erick Strickland appears to be
as advertised*. JJ is smooth  as always and one helluva dribbler. Milt's
still shooting well, and even making some nice passes. McCarty drew a DNP. 

The bad: 
We got outrebounded and outshot. Guess who, again,  played a big part in
the latter statistic?

Surprise, surprise ... Before Toine's defenders commit assault and battery
on me, let me just say that his stat line tonight is really deceiving as an
indicator of how good a game he's had.  Yes, he  nearly had a triple
double. In fact, he easily could've had a quadruple double, with turnovers
as the fourth double-digit stat.  Despite all the encouraging signs in the
offseason, he's still pig-headed and puerile when it comes to offense. It's
all about pulling a move on an iso for him. He gets someone like Tyson
Chicken or whoever else he wants to show up on an iso, and starts doing
that between-the-legs hotdogging crap, and everybody in the building knows
he's gonna take the shot (and miss, most likely). And his driving into
traffic and getting stuffed/stripped? How many times did Oakley and others
do that to him tonight? 
 I'd almost rather he'd stick to 3-pointers - at he least he's open on most
of them, wastes little energy to get the shot, and usually shoots a decent
percentage (unlike his 20% shooting from the 2-point land). I know he had 8
assists, but he should be passing more. Much more. He has no business
taking 20+ shots per game right now, if ever. It's OK to be in a shooting
slump. It's NOT OK to be averaging 23 shot attempts while in a slump. 

Kestas

* If this game is representative of what Erick Strickland can do, I have to
admit Wallace was right to sign him. However, I'm still pissed about their
stashing Forte on the IL in lieu of McCarty, and not getting another big
man.  
His comments, as reported by Josh in his column, are exactly what I was
afraid of, and sound downright Pitinoesque, with all the "clarifications",
about-faces, and general BS, like 'Walter is a proven veteran...and he can
shoot the ball' (more like '...proven to be clueless' and '...shoot himself
in the foot') . And the argument that they can't play the rookies because
they have to win games right now is specious, because at least two of the
rookies can contribute more than some the veteran bench warmers ahead of
them on the depth chart.  They want to have it both ways - they didn't want
to bring in any big guys because they didn't want to take minutes away from
our 3-headed PF/C combo so that they can develop. But KB and JF apparently
don't need playing time to develop - they can develop on the bench or IL
just fine. Also, Wallace says that another reason they don't want another
PF-type is because our centers can play PF. But they never do, because Obie
doesn't want to have two of them in at the same time! So we end up with
Eric Williams playing PF, a role for which he's even less suited than
playing SG. He can't stop PFs any more than I can stop a Shaquile dunk.
Fizer, not exactly an ALL-NBA selection at PF, was beating him like a
rented mule tonight. 
Oh well, enough venting. I wish I could talk to Wallace, but that proably
would be the last conversation we'd ever have.