Re: The Bottom Line

["Dan Forant" <dforant1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is all too gloomy. If Vinny reads these posts he'll be in for therapy
before the season starts. If you want a Championship team it's going to take
time and patience. I don't see the West giving up the Throne for a long
time. In the meantime we have to be respectable and wait for something to
break. Someone else has to step up. This could be Battie's year. Anderson
did only what any average point in the league could have done.  He broke his
butt getting us where we got last season.

It will be hard for Pierce to top last season, not counting the crash at the
end.

Walker is Walker and I don't see improvement coming from him, he's maxed
out. Unless Baker's arrival let's him do a reverse and becomes the effective
player he can be.

Kedrick, can't imagine him as a starter, not that I'm down on him but he's
as green as clover. Many college teams would give our bench a run for their
money.

Point guard is the question mark. Otherwise I see us making the playoffs
without Anderson, Pots, and Forte. I don't crave another banner at this
point. Just a little respectability till the opportunity arises.

DanF
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob McChesney" <rwmcches@uiuc.edu>
To: <celtics@igtc.igtc.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 11:34 AM
Subject: The Bottom Line


> The Bottom Line for this deal is clear: if this deal puts the Cs in
> position to be legitimate contenders for the NBA title, it can be
defended.
> (The Cs may have overpaid still, but that is quibbling.)
>
> For this deal to make the Cs legitimate contenders, all or almost all of
> the following must happen:
>
> 1. Vin Baker has to pull his head out of his butt, bigtime. He is going to
> have to become a 6th man of the year finalist, if not winner. He is going
> to have to play like he did five years ago.
>
> 2. Kedrick Brown has to emerge as a quality NBA starter. Sorry, guys, I
> like Eric Williams' attitude as much as the next guy, but he is not a
> starting caliber NBA 4 on a championship team. Kedrick needs to become a
> defensive stopper and a guy who can finish the break and bury open Js. If
> he doesn't, Paul is going to have a much harder time when defenses stack
> against him as in the NJ series.
>
> 3. Delk and/or Williams have to have career years. Someone is going to
have
> to play well at the point.
>
> 4. Walker's game has got to grow dramatically, to second team or third
team
> all-pro levels. That means fewer bonehead shots, a higher shooting %, and
> more assists. A lot more. When Antoine gets 6 or more assists, the Cs win
> 80 percent of their games. He becomes a genuine superstar. at 3-4 assists
> per game, with a sub 40 fg %, he is a mixed blessing.
>
> 5. Paul Pierce has to continue to improve. History is cruel but clear: to
> win an NBA title you need to have one of the three or four best players in
> the game on your roster. It has been that way in 21 of the last 23 years
> (Detroit in 89 and 90 the exception), and all but four or five years in
the
> thirty years prior to 1980. Paul needs to make first team all-NBA. He is
> close, but he is not there yet.
>
> Now the chances that all of this will happen, in my view, are well below
> 50-50. Indeed much closer to zero. My problem is that we could run this
> type of speculation for a good 20 teams in the NBA and get them to the NBA
> finals as well. So the question then becomes, if the Cs hit on all
> cylinders, and every other team hits on all cylinders, who wins? I think
> the Cs general talent level is no better and probably worse than several
> teams in the East, and possibly half or more of the teams in the west.
That
> is the cold hard truth and why this is such a dubious strategy.
>
> For those content with a playoff appearance or two, and maybe an advance
to
> the second or even third round, the chances are quite a bit better,
> especially due to the weak quality of the east at present. But that is not
> my standard, and it has never been the operating logic of the Cs or any
> other championship team in NBA history.
>
> But this is the path Wallace has chosen. It leaves us no cap room for four
> years, and an environment where there is no patience to develop young
> players. It is, to be frank, a recipe for mediocrity and decline, unless
> most or all of the above five conditions are met.
>
> Bob McChesney
>
>
>
> Robert W. McChesney
> Your Man in Urbana
> Institute of Communications Research
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> www.robertmcchesney.com