Re: [Celtics' Stuff RE: The real problem with 3's

[Kestas <Kestutis.Kveraga@dartmouth.edu>]

At 07:22 3/23/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>        ************
>   I am as aghast as you at the disintegration of the C's last night, Ravi,
>but I don't think it's fair to blame the coach. Do you really think that
>O'Brien was happy with Delk's missed bomb, with about a minute left and the
>C's down four? 

Well, he's just reaping what he has sown. He publicly implores his players
to take the first trey that shows - so they do. Whether he's stupid enough
to actually believe that this is the best strategy for this team, or simply
covering up for his stars who love to shoot it, doesn't even matter. It
takes a player of great discipline to not be seduced into chucking up a
three and instead expend energy to get a better shot. Most of our players
aren't mature enough to resist the Siren call of the three-shot. And, like
Chuck Barkley keeps reiterating on TNT, "that's why the Celtics are going
home early in the playoffs. That team shoots entirely too many threes." 

When the coach encourages the players to succumb to their worst tendencies,
that just makes the problem so much worse. It results in an offense where
everyone's stationed around the three-point-line, nobody's moving without
the ball, and nobody's rebounding. I'd be curious to see what the
correlation between the number of 3s taken, and the rebounding differential
is. When the players play with a sense of urgency, searching out the best
shot, moving without the ball, playing tough D - as they did in the first
quarter last night, in the second half against the Cavs, and usually do
against the best teams - they can roll over Eastern Conference teams, and
stay in the game with or occassionally beat the best Western teams. But
once Iverson was out, it was Obie offense - three-point-city, baby, which
gives rise to all kinds of other problems. Pierce summed it up best:

''We didn't play with a sense of urgency [when Iverson was not in the
game],'' said Paul Pierce (26 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists). ''We didn't
have a war mentality in the second half. We must have thought we could just
cakewalk with Iverson not playing the second half. We just sat back and let
them dictate the tempo and dictate the game for some reason. Why, I don't
know.''

Kestas