Re: There's no reasoning with you Cecil and Noah

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 11:20 PM 11/10/2001, James A. Hill wrote:
>Noah opinioned:
> >...You can reasonably prove that Walker does things are ill
> >advised. But you can't prove that he's unintelligent.
>Snip...
>
>Explain the technical foul against the Sonics with the game undecided then.
>
>I sat there with my wife saying "Shut up Antoine, Shut up Antoine".  Anyone
>who thinks that he puts his team over his own meaningless ego is fooling
>themselves.

If someone has an emotional reaction even though he might rationally know 
that he'll regret the result, is he automatically stupid? For instance, 
have you ever had a fight with your wife/kids/parents that you regret? If 
you have, it doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid.

If people want to argue that Antoine has low "basketball IQ", fine, we can 
talk about it. I think maybe people aren't making that distinction very 
clear. Basketball IQ and "traditional" IQ aren't necessarily related at 
all. You have plenty of "high IQ" types at MIT who throw up ill-advised 
three-pointers in our very low-quality pickup games.

So Antoine sometimes reacts irrationally when he gets overly emotional 
about a situation that's very important to him, and he makes poor on-court 
judgement calls at times. Some people think that "he's been in the pros for 
5 years, he's never going to change." I guess I look at a guy who is 25 
years old... is he going to get more mature and develop better judgement? 
Eventually, he will, I think; he may not do it soon enough to "save" his 
basketball career. I guess some people peaked emotionally and mentally 
before age 25, so they're holding Antoine to a higher standard =)

What I really mean is, I think we all agree that the guy could do better. 
Nobody thinks that he's achieved 100% of his full potential. But I see a 
guy that wants to be a Boston Celtic, that plays harder and takes on more 
responsibility than a lot of the guys out there, that really cares about 
winning even if he doesn't know the best way to do it. Even if he's not 
playing as well as he could, he still contributes more than anyone on the 
team except Pierce, and I respect that. I want to see him play better as 
much as anyone out there. If he gets traded and it improves the team, I'll 
be happy because in the end I'm a Celtics fan much more than a Walker fan. 
In the meantime, he's got my support.

Alex