Would this work in Boston? (I say yes)

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

Very slow lately, so thought I'd beat a dead horse. The following excerpts
are from a David Aldridge piece on the T-Wolves and their decision to move
Wally Szczerbiak to 2-guard, Garnett to small forward and stick with Joe
Smith and Gary Trent at PF (with Nesterovic at center). They went from being
a smallish, soft team, to being a big, physical team. Their record is
fantastic.

Why should we care? The Celtics could do the same thing with Antoine and
Pierce if they just added a power forward. The new rules would allow a lot
more help for Antoine in terms of chasing opposing small forwards, and we've
seen several times this season how effective he can be offensively when
posting up smaller players. Antoine is the one other power forward in the
league who could make this switch.

I know it's not going to happen, but I can dream...

Mark

Here's the excerpt:

---snip---

Everyone's made note of the fact that the Wolves moved Szczerbiak from small
forward to shooting guard. And that's helped. But moving the 7-1 Garnett
from power forward, where he was frequently outmuscled, to small forward,
where he creates prohibitive matchup problems, has turned the Wolves from
one of the league's smallest teams to one of the biggest. The reason they
can do that is because Minnesota added both Smith and free agent Trent,
who've stepped in and bulled their way around at power forward. 

And a team that always has shot the ball pretty good is now top five in just
about every offensive category, from field goal and free throw percentage
(first) to three-point percentage (second) to points per game (third). 

"I have two inches on every two guard," the 6-7 Szczerbiak says. "Kevin has
three inches on every three. Joe's a tall four. Rasho (center Radoslav
Nesterovic) is a big five. You're going to outrebound teams when you have
that kind of size advantage. That's a luxury we didn't have in the past.
With me at the three and Kevin at the four, we were undersized."

---end---