Re: Pre-season schedule 8 games

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

At 21:37 15/09/01 -0400, CeltsSteve@AOL.com wrote:
>Wednesday, Oct. 10
>
>Charlotte at Boston FleetCenter 7 p.m.      Boston

Wow, that's like three weeks from now !!! Thank God for basketball.

We've got a fairly tough pre-season schedule that ought to give our rookies 
a good idea of what's coming.

When you get right down to it, in order for the Celtics to get to the All 
Star break at .500 or better, Joe Johnson (or Kedrick or Forte) is going to 
have to at least replicate the outstanding first half contributions 
of  Adrian Griffin in 1999 and Bryant Stith in 2000. That's no easy task.

Of course, if Antoine and Paul come into their own--or even pick up where 
they left off--they might be able to carry the team until the rookies are 
ready to step up.

My chief concern with training camp is Antoine Walker. I doubt he expected 
to show up in camp as the only true power forward on the roster. There's no 
question now that Boston needs him around the paint nearly fulltime getting 
boards and scoring at a more reasonable 2-pt FG%. I doubt that aspect of 
his game was his chief focus over summer. Moreover, I'm not sure he'll be 
thrilled to embrace a more traditional power forward role to make room for 
our new shooters on the perimeter. I mean this is a guy who was averaging 
something like 10 attempts per game from beyond the Fleet Center parking 
lot last season. It will be hard for the coaches to break down old habits, 
or to tell him the whole "point guard" experiment was a mistake. If he's 
going to play PG with all the athletic runners on the wings, so be it. But 
someone's going to have to rebound and score inside.

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