Re: Charley Rosen on the State of the Celtics

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kestas wrote:

Did anyone catch Charley Rosen's evaluation of the Celtics a couple of weeks
ago on Page 2? Given that he's Larry Brown's buddy and Phil Jackson's
mouthpiece, I wouldn't expect him to give a fair shake to the Celtics, but
this
is probably the worst evaluation of any team other than the dregs of the
NBA.
It sound pretty Vescian to me. What do you think?

--- --- ---

I've been enjoying Charley Rosen's stuff. I don't agree with all of it, but
I've enjoyed reading it.

As for his take on the Celtics, there are two things I don't agree with is
the "talk about playing defense" crack and the other knocks on their
defense. Now, if he has only seen certain games this season, it would be
easy to draw the conclusion that the Celts don't play defense. But when they
put their minds to it, they're one of the most disruptive teams in the
league defensively. They don't do that as consistently as they did a year
ago, but they still do it on occasion.

The other nitpick is the line about not being taken seriously in the
playoffs. These guys went to Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals a year
ago. Sure, the East stinks, but if the measure of being taken seriously in
the playoffs is challenging for the championship, then none of the teams in
the East should be taken seriously. Come playoff time, if the Celts
consistently play the kind of defense they're capable of playing, I still
like their chances against any team in the East other than New Jersey and
maybe Philly. At the same time, they could lose tomorrow, fall into sixth in
the East, maybe even fall behind streaking Orlando and end up losing in the
first round to Jersey, Detroit or Atlanta.

Mark