RE: Antoine

[steve knight <stevebknight@yahoo.com>]

mark, 

i'm with you on this. antoine will never be an
efficient scorer and will never be on a championship
team if that's his role. he's at his best as a 15-12-7
guy, not a 25-6-3 guy. will he ever understand that? i
doubt it. can we live with it? time will tell, but
it's definitely hard to stomach sometimes.

my hope is that he shows well in the playoffs and we
can package him and anderson or williams for a point
(miller?) and big man, then resign rodgers as our
small forward. 

by the way, having seen pierce for the third or fourth
time this year, he's a stud. still has flaws, but he's
quickly getting to the mcgrady and kobe level. has
already passed carter, imho.   

 

--- "Berry, Mark  S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG> wrote:
> Josh, I couldn't disagree more. This team is at its
> best when Antoine is
> penetrating and passing and hitting the boards. If
> you want lots of points
> from Antoine, you're going to need lots of shots.
> He's never going to shoot
> a high percentage or get to the line enough to
> justify those shots. When it
> was the Antoine and Paul show, you could excuse some
> of it. But now there
> are other options on this team. Continued
> indiscriminate bombing from
> Antoine is the LAST thing this team needs.
> 
> You speculate Antoine has been hurt. Maybe, but
> we've had no indication. He
> has been playing lousy lately. He was better
> yesterday and seemed to be in
> "passing mode" which is all I'm going to ask at this
> point. He's going to
> make so  many bad decisions on shots that I'm going
> to have to hold my nose
> and my tongue. If he just passes the ball, I'll
> settle. His rebounding
> really has dropped off. In my opinion, this
> mini-slump has coincided pretty
> closely with "ball-hogging/no-rebounding" Antoine. 
> 
> Is it fair to lump the blame on him? Probably not.
> But he's the de facto
> point guard on this team, like it or not. They're an
> undersized team that
> refuses to run, and in the half-court, Antoine is
> the point guard. He may
> not be labeled that, but he acts as that. It's his
> job to initiate the
> offense. That's why all those comparisons of
> Antoine's assists to other
> power forwards ring so hollow with me. He's a power
> forward in name only. He
> operates as this team's point guard in the
> half-court. When he's doing it
> unselfishly, it can be beautiful to watch. But too
> often his "initiating the
> offense" means jacking a three before anyone else
> touches it. He averages
> about 5 assists per game? Is that satisfactory for a
> 43 minute-per-game
> point guard in the NBA? 
> 
> Yesterday was another 7-for-21, 1-for-9 on threes,
> no free throws game for
> Antoine. That's terrible. But he moved the ball and
> the other offensive
> players (and there are plenty now) carried the load.
> Antoine should have
> seen how effective he could be in a distributor's
> role in the blowouts of
> Orlando and Detroit, but that was yet another lesson
> lost on the guy.
> 
> Boston fans appreciate intelligent basketball and
> hustle, and even the
> watered-down corporate crowds in the Fleet Center
> know a transition
> 3-pointer with no rebounders and a lane to the
> basket is a dumb, dumb shot.
> They're a specialty of Antoine's. He makes so many
> dumb decisions, even my
> wife notices. She's no Celtics fan, but she used to
> play basketball
> (all-league in high school FWIW), and when she
> watches the games with me
> she's always saying "What was that??!!!" or "Why did
> he do that??!!" You can
> guess my answer.
> 
> The sad thing is Antoine controls things so much
> that he remains the key. If
> he's in passing mode, this team can make a long
> playoff run. If he's not,
> they're a quick out. I've been discouraged lately
> because he definitely
> hasn't been in passing mode. Maybe yesterday was the
> day things click, but
> I've stopped hoping for any kind of consistency from
> Antoine.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	Celtics-Digest-Owner@igtc.com
> [mailto:Celtics-Digest-Owner@igtc.com]
> 
> Sent:	Monday, April 01, 2002 11:50 AM
> To:	Celtics-Digest@igtc.com
> Subject:	The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V9
> #103
> 
> 
> 
> Date:	Sun, 31 Mar 2002 23:52:37 -0500
> From:	"Josh Ozersky" <jozersky1@nyc.rr.com>
> Subject:	re: Antoine
> 
> This is becoming Bob's theme of themes, and may even
> be true to an extent,
> but I think Antoine's recent performances belie it
> somewhat.  Twon has
> clearly not been feeling himself, as evidenced by
> his 1-7 game against
> Dallas and his many missed open looks today. 
> Although the Celtics won,
> there is no doubt that in the long run they need
> Antoine to hit at least
> some of his shots.  His passing is key, but I don't
> see him playing
> effectively for the Celtics in a pure "point
> forward" role.  His major value
> is as an offensive player, and that means shooting
> and scoring as much as
> passing and rebounding, if not much more so.
> Josh 
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