Bird's pet peeves

["Jim Meninno" <jam@london.com>]

----- Original Message ----- From: "bird" <birdwl@earthlink.net>

> Like I said, I'm not so sure why we need to bother the
> guy with the ball on the pick and roll such that we leave people open,
but,
>   if the players on the court rotate well, this mitigates any damage that
> may result.  Maybe they just need to get better at it.
...
> However, the team needs two things
> (other than to quit trying to make Tony Battie, Vitaly Potatpenko, and the
> ersatz Mark Blount into UCLA high post passers) that I can see:

If anyone can explain the logic behind either of these plays, I'd love to
hear it.

Often it seems to me that they don't rotate to cover the player who set the
pick at all, they just let him drift to the corner unguarded while Antoine
or Vitaly chase some guard around.  When that big man can hit an open jumper
it's suicide, as we saw with Christian Laettner.

And I can't remember the last time anything good happened when Mark Blount
held the ball above the foul line.  Vitaly is nearly as bad out there.  Only
Battie has any kind of passing or dribbling ability, and he's not exactly
threading passes to cutting players either.  They seem to be out there
simply to swing the ball from one side of the court to the other.  Am I
missing something?

Jim