Mike Fine article

["hironaka@xxxxxxxxx"<hironaka@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've often felt that the Patriot Ledger's Mike Fine is 
one of the best guys on the local beat. Pasted below is 
his take on the "run, run, run" Celtics. 

(But Fine does fail to note that one reason the Celtics 
considerably upped their scoring in the last 26 games was 
because of the Rogers acquisition.) 

Importantly, Obie finally clarifies his position on when 
Antoine should be saving his energy. Yesterday's Globe 
quote implied Obie would encourage Antoine to catch a 
breather on defense, which freaked a lot of us out of our 
minds. But today he breezily tells Fine the opposite. I'm 
hopeful that that's what he meant all along. It was a bit 
ambiguous.


http://ledger.southofboston.com/display/inn_sports/sports0
3.txt

We'll have more opportunities now because he (O'Brien) 
has basically taken the point guards out of the break,'' 
Antoine Walker said of the revived Boston attack. If 
myself or Paul (Pierce) get the ball on the rebound, he 
told the point guards to run and let us handle the ball. 
Sometimes you had to outlet it and get it to Kenny 
(Anderson), but now we can get it out ourselves and run 
and try to find those guys for shots.'' 

That's going to be the difference between this break and 
traditional fast break. This isn't Russell hauling down 
the rebound and outletting to Cousy, or Kareem to Magic. 
In this offense, with point guards who aren't true point 
guards - you'll be hearing that a lot - O'Brien is fully 
content to let his top forwards do some dribbling. 

In reality, if he can pull this thing off, O'Brien won't 
have to watch much dribbling, anyway. A strong break is 
dependent on quick passes and foot speed. He thinks he 
can do it. 

I think it'll be noticeable,'' he said of the running 
game. I don't think we got enough out of our offense 
last year when you consider we were third in the league 
in field goal defense (.425), tops in steals (9.7), 
fourth in defensive rebounding percentage (.729), had the 
best turnover differential (+2.4). That should translate, 
hopefully, ideally, into a higher percentage shot, easier 
baskets, down the other end. That would be the thing we 
hope for.'' 

Why didn't the Celtics run regularly last year? We 
didn't practice it,'' said O'Brien, who's been doing just 
that through the first five workouts of training camp.

The Celtics did start to get the message later in the 
season, when their performance began to pick up 
measurably. In the final 26 games of the season, for 
instance, the Celtics topped the 100-point mark 
offensively 13 times, with three others of 97, 98 and 99 
points. It enabled them to win 18 of those games and roar 
into the playoffs, beating the Sixers and Pistons before 
being stopped by the Nets - the same Nets who ran them 
out of the gym. 

The Celtics topped 50 percent shooting four times in 
those 26 games and 45 percent five other times. That's 
not exactly earth-shattering news, but they shot only 42 
percent for the season. 

Over the last 24 games of the season we shot a much 
higher percentage,'' O'Brien said. We averaged close to 
100 points (99.0, compared to 96.4 for the entire season) 
a game. It's not that we didn't take advantage of the 
defense. When it did get better toward the end of the 
season, we started scoring more points. So that started 
to come a little bit last year. 

It's tough to play great team defense, especially when 
you're playing two guys (Walker, Pierce) 40 minutes and 
then ask them to run all the time, also. Over the course 
of a 100-game season that's a little tough and if anybody 
needs a blow I'd rather see them take it on the offensive 
end when we're fast-breaking. You can't take it on the 
defensive end.'' 

The Celtics gave themselves a nifty head start for their 
running goals by coming into camp Tuesday well prepared, 
too. O'Brien couldn't be happier in his players' 
conditioning, which enables them to run themselves 
ragged. 

At this time of the year, since I've been with the 
Celtics (six years), we're in the best condition by far 
of the people who are under contract,'' he said. If 
there's one thing I'm pleased with, it's the conditioning 
of our players. During the summer that's all on them. You 
can jump up and down until you're blue in the face and 
talk about being in shape, but it's up to them.

The best indication I've seen is they've come in in very, 
very good shape. That helps their skill development 
because you're going to push them in training camp with 
the fundamentals, and if they're in great shape, they can 
do that as well as practice 5-on-5.'' 

It helped that practically every Celtic was on the court, 
not just in the weight room, during the summer.

Our guys played a lot of basketball this summer, to a 
man,'' O'Brien said. Ruben (newcomer Wolkowyski) did 
because he was in the World Games and Paul did. Paul and 
Antoine play every day no matter what is happening. 
Shammond (Williams), Tony Delk and JR (Bremer) are gym 
rats. Shammond practiced in Seattle in the morning and 
would go and play pickup ball at the University of 
Washington in the afternoon.

Eric Williams worked harder this summer than probably 
any other time in his pro career. And he looks it. Tony 
Battie worked out with the 76ers a lot. Bruno (newcomer 
Sundov) is very hungry because he was not happy with his 
playing time (in Indiana). He came in in really good 
shape and great condition. Walter (McCarty) is Walter. He 
can run all day. 

We're in great condition, which will help our ability 
to play the game.'' 

So, even though the Celts picked up big Vin Baker for his 
inside work, and even though O'Brien is enthused with the 
progress of Battie under the glass, running will be the 
thing. 

That would be the ideal thing, but we're bigger now,'' 
said Walker. We've got a lot of size now. With Bruno, 
Vin and Ruben we have size inside now for the first time. 
We got guys who can get inside banging, so that's going 
to be a different look, as well. We can go big on teams 
now and that's a luxury we didn't have in the past. 

If we control the glass and get out ... that's the 
emphasis right now, to get out and get easy baskets, guys 
sprinting the floor and not really having a set play ... 
just getting to the basket on the break. So that's going 
to be up to our wing guys, Paul and Eric, to get out and 
run ... and attack the basket.'' 

And make no mistake about it, they'd love to run. 

Who wouldn't?'' said Walker. We'd love to run and get 
easy opportunities. That's what every team dreams of. And 
we saw the New Jersey Nets live off that. We have to take 
that type of mentality, but also have the type of 
mentality where we got to clean up the glass, too.'' 

By design, the Celts practiced only once yesterday, going 
about three hours. They'll go back to two-a-days for two 
days and work out just once again Sunday ... This from 
New Jersey's training camp, where ex-Celtic Rodney Rogers 
is still settling in and trying to get over the sting of 
Boston's inability to re-sign him: It's over with, but 
I just felt for what I did and what I brought to that 
team, they would try to do the best they could to re-sign 
me. Now when we play Boston, I'm going to want to beat 
them. It's nothing against their players or the coaching 
staff. They tried to do everything they could. The 
general manager, too. It was the owner. I guess he had 
other plans - which was selling the team..'' ... Red 
Auerbach attended yesterday's workout. 

Mike Fine may be reached at mikefine@ledger.com. 

Copyright 2002 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Friday, October 04, 2002

-------------------
L'e-mail gratuit pas comme les autres.
NOMADE.FR, pourquoi chercher ailleurs ?