Re: Madness...madness

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

On Vin, my question is why its so much easier to make 
entry passes to Eric Williams than to Baker? Obviously 
its a timing issue with enough blame to spread around 
evenly. But from Vin's perspective, you would think he's 
accustomed to better entry passes than the botched 
efforts he's getting from the Celtics guards. We are 
talking about some terrible passes, the kind that get 
picked off or bounce directly out of bounds 5-feet away 
from him.

On Kedrick, we needed comeback points more than we needed 
defense and bricks. Detroit didn't have anyone worth 
trying to shut down defensively in the first half. I 
would have sat Kedrick and gone with Walter too. On 
Friday, maybe he'll see more time against Rip Hamilton, 
who eventually hurt us.

As for Detroit, we'll first see how things go on Friday 
with Delk (and maybe Walker) back. But I fully agree that 
the Indiana and Detroit results this month have been 
cause for infinitely greater optimism regarding the 
playoffs than what I felt around Christmas time. 

Still, I'll say this about Detroit's defense. I felt they 
contested a high number of our misses, whereas a lot of 
the Pistons' bricks were relatively uncontested last 
night. And this was a textbook case of defense (Curry and 
Billups as much as Ben) being more valuable than offense. 
Once Pierce got locked down in the 1st half, I got a 
sense it might not be our night.

Morover, our so-called pointguards couldn't get the ball 
into anyone's hands. The shot clock was a factor, the way 
Detroit harrassed them. And Pierce got swallowed up in 
the first half, until they switched Corless onto him.
 
If Detroit's physical defenders can continue to knock 
Boston out of synch, we might not have such an easy time 
of it on Friday. Battie's offense will be key, as far as 
neutralizing Ben Wallace. 

But in general, this game made me confident that Boston 
is still 4-1 better than them in a playoff setting.

As someone else aptly put it, teams like Detroit just 
don't seem built for a 7-game series. Its hard to picture 
Rip Hamilton leading them to the promised land. 

Joe H.

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