Herald article

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

Boston seems to be moving away from the same coaching philosophy of the 
recent past, even if senior management looks identical. The sudden demise 
of Pitino's "headless chicken outbreak" trapping system seems to be paying 
the dividends that old-school fans anticipated. To me, it was the Pitino 
system that led Boston to give up a .470FG%, all those wide open threes, 
and allow career scoring nights from one generic jumpshooter after another. 
It works great against college teams that have only one or two pro-calibre 
ball handlers, if that, and you play 35 games in an entire season.

In today's Herald, Obie confirms for the second time in a week that we are 
moving away from the Pitino-era traps. Last week Obie first hinted the 
Celtics would trap less, although I didn't save the article. Here's what he 
says in today's paper.

``By not trapping and just playing solid man-to-man defense in the 
halfcourt, we have been able to keep the other team off the glass. We're 
No. 1 in the NBA at doing that right now. We have kept the other team off 
the foul line and we're second or third at doing that. And we have limited, 
to date, the other team's ability to get good looks from the 3. We are in 
the top 10 at holding the other team to a good 3-point field goal 
percentage (.319)."
http://www.bostonherald.com/sport/basketball/cnotes11132001.htm

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In the same article, Paul Pierce has this to say about Randy Brown's defense.

``I was looking out there today in practice and you had Randy and Erick 
Strickland in the backcourt,'' said Paul Pierce. ``I was like, `Man, that's 
a tough backcourt to try to score on.' ''  When it was suggested the two 
could take an opponent's lunch money, he said, ``If they can't do it, I 
don't know who can.'' Said Brown: ``It was a good situation. Erick's a real 
good player. He's defensive-minded.''

IMO, Randy Brown and (don't laugh) Antoine Walker are the only two players 
on the current Celtics roster who IMO could someday follow in the long line 
of Celtics-players-turned-NBA-head-coaches. Off the court, Antoine is one 
of the only NBA players who's quotes actually sound like they are coming 
from a coaching mind and a mature person (certainly a very tolerant person 
given all the crap he takes). You get more than the usual platitudes and 
jock clichis out of him. At  the same age, future NBA coach/GMs like 
McHale, Ainge and Bird talked and behaved off the court like the three 
stooges. McHale was the most articulate of that lot, but Walker actually 
tends to speak to the media in "coach talk" (as after the past two games). 
He doesn't speak to NBA fans like he thinks we are idiots. So its strange 
why Antoine is such a "Jeckyl-and-Hyde" personality on and off the court. 
As for Randy Brown, he seems like top assistant coaching material already 
(or the moment he retires).

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