Kedrick is tying Danny's hands

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

This is going to be all over the place...

One of the big chips Ainge had at his disposal this season was Eric
Williams' expiring contract. The thought was, with an emerging Kedrick and
the addition of Jumaine Jones, EWill would be expendable. Now, I'm not so
sure.

Kedrick, as most of us must now admit, just isn't getting the job done. We
can hope that will change, but right now he's killing them when he's on the
floor. They're playing four-on-five on the offensive end, he isn't doing the
little things (passing, rebounding) and has been average at best
defensively. When Jones and EWill are healthy, is there any doubt that
Kedrick will be the odd man out of the rotation? Unless something drastic
happens to Kedrick between now and then, I don't see any other outcome. In
fact, I wouldn't be shocked to see Welsch start eating into Kedrick's time.
Welsch is the anti-Kedrick. He's clearly not an athlete, but he is a
basketball player. In fact, I'm hoping he catches on to the point guard spot
and becomes part of the solution there. But if not, I won't be shocked to
see him eating into Kedrick's minutes.

But without Kedrick producing, can Ainge afford to dangle EWill's contract
at the trade deadline? The thought was he could use EWill alone or packaged
with Mills to bring back an impact player from a team trying to create cap
room. Kedrick's struggles make that a little more difficult, although not
impossible. But Ewill is valuable at the ends of games because he actually
remains pretty calm in pressure situations and is one of the few Celtics who
can almost will himself to the free throw line. Pierce can't do it alone
down the stretch.

The position where help is needed the most is point guard, but I'm not sure
what's out there. I'd actually like a Brevin Knight deal, but not at the
cost of Battie. Say what you want about Knight, but he can run a team. It
won't take much to see a real upgrade over James (a perfect backup - a poor
man's Darrell Armstrong) and Banks (not giving up on him at all). But again,
subtracting Battie just seems like a mistake unless a real impact player is
coming back. You dump Battie and you're relying even more on Baker and
Blount. Talk about a shaky foundation.

Finally, I'm going to give Obie a mulligan on the NO game, but I'd better
see a trend toward the style of the opening game tomorrow night, and not
toward the style we saw in NO. I know Josh was encouraged because it was a
close game, on the road, and the third game in four nights. True enough. But
watching it was discouraging because they went back to last year's style of
trying to force it to Pierce, who then started forcing shots. There wasn't
much ball movement. They didn't recognize any mismatches. And the rotation
was shortened quite a bit with the emphasis on Blount and McCarty (Walter
looks as bad as he ever has right now). BUT... it was the third game in four
nights. The players, I'm sure, were tired mentally as well as physically
(although that's no excuse for Obie). It's only natural to see some sloppy
play.

But they have to find ways to handle this pressure. I was really
disappointed to see less and less of the high-low offense in the last two
games. They have big men perfectly suited to that attack, but a little
pressure on the ball seemingly took them out of that altogether. And the way
they were trying to force it to Pierce when he was being overplayed was
embarrassing. What about a down screen? Or using Pierce as the pick man on a
pick-and-roll? It's like Obie forgot Basketball 101. There are plenty of
ways to get a guy the ball when the defense is overplaying like that.

OK... maybe I'm not giving him a complete mulligan. I thought Obie was
terrible in that game. I'm expecting DRASTIC improvement tomorrow night.
We'll see.

Mark