You're all wrong.....

[Ryan Lee <rlee_at_channing@xxxxxxxxx>]

  This whole Lance against the List thing is funny.  Sure the guy is obstinate and persistent with his view of Pierce, but it doesn't make him any worse than then some of the other members.  The Celtics Peanut Gallery - Bird and  Cecil are notorious offenders of lambasting someone who doesn't agree with their views but noone singles them out because they put up the majority of the postings on the group (like 5 posts a day).  The only thing I don't like is that neither Lance nor the Peanut Gallery are taking their discussion private (off the list) when it starts to get heated.  It's like a pissing match trying to show who the most right one is.  Guys, if it goes past 2 messages, go duke it out in private.
  As for Pierce being a crappy defender, he does slack occassionally off his assignment but who doesn't in the NBA?  The outside shooting is so horrid as a whole in the league, it's been ingrained in every players head to lay off the shooter if he's standing more than 20 feet from the hoop.  Also since there are fewer kickouts to the shooters, there's no need to stay out there on defense.  Just slack off the shooter and collapse on the penetrator.  In my opinion the lack of hitting the open shooter is due to the mindset of today's American player.   Taking it to the hole is suppose to be measure of how good and "tough" a player is.  By doing this, it's suppose to show that the player is not afraid to take it in on the defense.  Iverson is a prime example of this.  How many times has anyone see AI kick out to a shooter (granted his team has no shooters but an open shooter is still a better shot than some of his crazy shots)?  And so AI has this image of being a tough little fearless man when in fact he's just a ballhog.  And what do the good shooters in the league who go with the more conservative open shot get labeled as?  Soft is the term I believe.  Case in point Ray Allen.  That guy can flat out shoot the lights out but because he'd rather go for the open jumper than crash in to 3  defenders, people call him soft.  So my main point is that Pierce is not the only culprit who has this "poor" defense.  It's the norm.   
   If I had to pick a culprit in the US loss (besides the crappy team defense) , it would be point guards.  How the heck did Andre Miller and Baron Davis end up in the top 10 in assists in the NBA?  All I saw them do was drive into the heart of the defense like a kamikaze pilot and put up contested shots repeatedly.  The weakness of  American point guard play was finally exposed when Dre' and Baron failed to hit their shooters each and everytime and instead decided to take it upon themselves to carry the team.  Meanwhile the Yugos, Argentenians, and Spaniards picked apart the D like a vulture on carrion.  The lack of ball distribution could have attributed to the straight up zone that congested all the passing lanes in which case it was George Karl's fault for not setting up some zone busting plays for the entire team. 
R
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes