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Re: A passing fancy

At 12:43 PM 10/26/02 -0400, Tammo29@AOL.com wrote:

> From: JB <JimMetz@mac.com

> Pierce also is starting to play with his head up and again completed
> several fine passes, particularly to Battie, for some easy baskets,
> but still makes too many turnovers driving into traffic.

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive
that a doer makes mistakes." -John Wooden

People are just going to have to get over turnovers.
I've been arguing this point for both Paul and Antoine for years.
Well no we're not just going to have to get over it (man, are you trying to be as infuriatingly patronizing as you can? why not do it to someone who's asked for it rather than JB), because it's a valid complaint where too many are his own fault and eminently correctable. You 'just have to get over' things that can't be helped or can't be fixed/changed. This isn't one of them.

Nor should you bracket him with Walker in this, because one of the early signs of Walker's maturing last year was how much he had decreased the amount of unnecessary and stupid turnovers he was making. His overall numbers went down by a full 50 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/players/3112/
over the season before, while handling the ball as much or more. He still makes some dumb ones, but the fact that everyone does some of that IS something people have to live with. Still, stats don't tell everything, and from what I saw, his stupid turnovers went down a lot further than his overall turnovers.

Pierce decreased a bit less on total TO http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/players/3253/ while also handling the ball a lot more than he did. But again, stats don't tell everything and all you have to do is watch him to see he exposes the ball constantly (and gets taken advantage of for it) and has concentration lapses where he plain and simply loses the ball on the dribble without needing help doing so. While that doesn't always lead directly to a turnover, it also leads to other problems where he can't keep dribbling, setting himself up for a trap and forcing a dumb shot or other changes to the intent of the offense to compensate for the aborted drive. If he keeps passing more, that will cut down on the dumb shots because of lost dribbles, but it would be better to cut down on the bad handling. For the amount he handles the ball and the type of player he sees himself to be, he does it far too often. It's going to happen some, but too often the problems are Pierce's own correctable faults vs someone else making an especially good play on him.

Kim