re: Rumors and other stuff

[bird <birdwl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: "Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Finally, I wanted to  touch on this Pierce-Andre Miller thing. I think
> Miller is getting unfairly attacked. All we know is he had a dust-up 
> with
> Pierce. Nothing wrong with that for either guy. We know Pierce is an
> emotional, confident guy. He wants the ball and says so. [...]
> I'm not going to suddenly consider him [Miller] a selfish loser 
> because he had a
> disagreement with Pierce. And the Bucher blurb about anonymous 
> teammates
> hating Pierce... it did say "teammates" and it didn't single out 
> Miller. I
> think anyone criticizing Pierce for his play in that tournament needs 
> to
> take a long look in the mirror, but I'm not ready to hang Andre Miller 
> for
> those comments. As for the criticism of Miller's play in the loss to
> Yugoslavia... he and Pierce were the only guys on the team with the 
> guts to
> shoot down the stretch. Was every decision perfect? Of course not, but 
> he
> wasn't afraid. Same with Pierce. I'll take both guys on my team.
Aye, so would I, if I could be assured they could get along well 
enough.  Seems they may not care for each other, which is fine.  I was 
only pointing out that Miller is the only one identified one the team 
as thinking that Pierce is selfish.  The next best piece of evidence is 
George Karl's comments, which you really have to read in a sort of 
skewed way, or his refusing to play Pierce in the fourth, which after 
he admitted was probably a mistake.  "Anonymous" teammates, sources, or 
what-have-you aren't even as convincing as "well, he said that she said 
that the other guy knew a guy who heard from a guy that knew that ...".

Agreed that Miller and Pierce were the only ones with enough gumption 
to be taking the big shots in crunch time, and that counts for a lot, 
but if you're going to criticize a teammate for hogging the ball, it'd 
probably carry more weight if your behavior on the court wasn't a 
little ballhoggedly yourself, that's all.  It's too bad the 
second-worst shooter on the team was one of the guy's who had to try to 
step up late in the game.  The team ought to have put plans in place to 
where guys were getting more open via cuts and picks, but that was 
their whole problem throughout the tournament.  I don't blame Miller 
for losing or Pierce either.  It's a team game.  You win or lose as a 
team.  Where Miller could be criticized for a little ball-hogging, I 
didn't see many other people (other than Pierce) trying to get open, 
either.

Bird