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Re: An opposing scout on the Celtics

At 07:10 PM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote:

Kestas, it's true that the glass is half full or half empty depending on
your perspective.  You just can't change sides in the middle of that
argument.

Sure I can. I've been on both sides of many an argument :)


Swill can shoot and dribble.  His defense is suspect.  He's not a point
guard, and doesn't see other players.  He drives in traffic and against a
real center, he'll be eating a lot of basketball.  It's a wash regarding
Strick vs. SWill right now.
They're just different players with different strengths. Strick was quite similar to Delk and they could only keep one, the one with the contract. Sham is not a PG by inclination, but I think he has pretty good court vision and could be turned into one - if Obie wanted it, which he doesn't. Obie sees that Sham's best quality is scoring, so he's encouraging him to score. With Strick, scoring was secondary or tertiary. His thing was taking charges, playing hard-nosed D, and providing a measure of toughness.


Oh, and don't think that SWill will lead us anywhere next year.  He's not
Tony Parker, Jay Williams or Travis Best, won't become one.  Here's the rub:
we can get better scoring from this guy than Kenny gave us, but everything
else suffers.  You know, those "intangibles" that you so easily pass along
to EWill.

Maybe, but what would we getting from Kenny next year, or even this year? The Celtics would've been betting that he can maintain that level of performance, and given his history, I don't think it's a good bet. Sham is young, athletic, and in excellent shape. There's no reason why he couldn't eventually play D at least as well as Kenny. Heck, nobody thought that Kenny would ever play a lick of D.


Pierce's defense comes from sagging more than a three-term Boston's
politician's chins.  I'll tell you right now, he doesn't steal the ball from
his man, he picks off junk in the lane.  That would be nice, except HIS man
is burning the Celts all night long.  All day long, too.  As to blocks, I'll
ask you just once to tell me the last game in which he guarded someone
taller than he.   What's wrong, you threw out all your Day-Timers from '98?
He gets the cushiest job in the NBA next to Wallace's.

You could say the same thing (picking off "junk" in the lane) about Bird. I'm guessing that most steals occur "picking junk off in the lane". It's not very easy to strip the ball from most NBA players. As for guarding taller people than he, it was last night. Finley is 6-7. Before that it was MoPete (6-7) on Sunday. At 6-6, Pierce is about average height for his position, but his bpg is above average.


Baker's soft.  Playing soft.  Won't cut it here, and he'll get hounded into
a tougher 10 minutes before he gets more time.  That's all.

Oh, and Charlie Pierce's article on Kedrick sweating in an LA gym flipping
balls off his fingertips while a PERSONAL CELTIC COACH says "Once again,
Kedrick" isn't impressing me with the kid's talent.  It's impressing me with
the investment that the BT has made in this guy SINCE BAKER'S CONTRACT HAS
LOCKED THEM OUT OF CHANGES FOR 4 YEARS.  Are you going to post an excerpt
from Mark Twain next?  This kid will have potential until we see something
for real.  Hope you weren't promoting dot com companies 3 years ago, Kestas.
The upside was all they could talk about as well.

Tell you what.  You talk about Kedrick the Savior, and I'll point to
Jefferson the Doer, Murphy the Player and Radmanovic the Contributor.
Look, no one's calling Kedrick a savior. All I said was that he could contribute some D, rebounds, and a bit of scoring in limited situations now. I didn't post any excerpts about Kedrick that I can recall. I didn't say that the Globe Magazine piece indicates to me that Kedrick has talent; I need a little more than that. All I said is that the kid seems to be working hard on improving. And he seems to have his head on straight, which is more than you can say about Radmanovic who was so intolerable that he was kicked off his own national team. Which, I might add, didn't need his services to win the World Championship.
In any case, whatever the motivation for the investment in Kedrick, there's nothing wrong with trying to extract the very best from the players you have, especially if they are young and have oodles of athleticism. I'd be really concerned if they just left Kedrick to his own devices. He needs coaching and guidance more than anyone on our roster.Assistant coaches' time is cheap compared to what you pay to get established NBA talent. What do you expect Chris Wallace to do - admit that they blew it by not picking up Jefferson et al. and ship Kedrick out of town a la Moiso? They made their choices whom to draft and whom of the draftees to keep, so they might as well make the best out of this situation.
Kestas