Re: Walker stinks.....period.

[Noah Evans <ishbak@forest.STUDENT.cwru.edu>]

On Sat, Nov 03, 2001 at 09:00:44AM -0800, Ryan Lee wrote:
> You just said that Walker either misses his shots or
> gets rejected regularly and yet you still support the
> number of shots he takes?  That's ludicrous.  Keep in
> mind that everyone who makes the league was a college
> all-star at one point or another so they are all
> capapble of hitting shots.  

That's not true at all. Plenty of "college all stars" relied on
superior athleticism and physical skills. The ability to score in
college does not necessarily translate into the ability to score in
the NBA. Just watching the NBA and college you can tell that the
degree of difficulty on shots in the NBA are much higher than their
college counterparts.

But that's not really the issue. The issue is the ability to create
your shot against NBA level talent. There are very few college players
that can do that. That's Antoine's primary advantage over the other
players on our roster. For all of his flaws in terms of actually
finishing shots Antoine is quite good and spinning around his man or
breaking his man down off the dribble.

That's really the key to what makes Antoine special on the C's. Aside
from Pierce we don't have anyone on the team that can create their
shot with same degree of ability. By being the center of attention
Antoine opens up the offense for other players who normally wouldn't
have any offensive opportuinities at all because the other team would
be able to guard them more closely otherwise.

> They just need the
> opportunity to make shots and it's rather hard to do
> so if they never get the ball.  

That's not something you can assume. Most of the players on the C's
are unable to create shots on their own. Williams and Kenny have some
ability, but neither of them is even as efficient as Antoine.

The rest of the Celtics players have yet to show the ability to
manufacture their own offense. You might say that this is because they
are out of their shooting rythm, but from what I've seen of the
celtics players in limited time none of the other Celtics has the
*moves* to get a decent shot. Johnson and Forte might be able to in
the future but right now they seem limited to getting their offense
from the attention paid to Antoine and Pierce.


> And if you ever played
> basketball you would know that it's pretty damn hard
> to hit shots consistenly if you don't get the ball
> enough to get into a shooting rhythm.  So please stop
> using couch potato statistical arguments and
> apologizing for Walker's faults.

I'm hardly apologizing for Walker's faults. I'm saying that right now
Walker is the best we have in a bad situation. If the celtics actually
put the offensive talent around Walker and Pierce so that Walker's
domination of the offense becomes a hindrance to the team I'll be
quicker to criticize. But given the current dearth of talent it's hard
to criticize Walker even in light of his deficiencies.

Noah