[no subject]

DJessen33

<toecutter
Assistant GM



Joined: 20 Feb 2002
Posts: 1446

 Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 11:15 pm    Post subject:     

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My gripe with Walker and his play with our previous point guards is that he 
absolutely stymied their ability to do the job. As a result, a lot of folks 
have succumbed to a sort of tunnel vision--Walker vision, as I like to call 
it--which misleads one to believe that no one is fit to do the point guard's job 
unless they're a "true" point guard. Tyronn Lue is light years beyod Walker in 
terms of playmaking and fast-breaking, but his game would suffer tremendously 
in Boston. 

Walker's playmaking ability is over-rated by fans. In comparison to other 
power forwards, he's nowhere near as advanced as Webber, Odom, or even Anthony 
Mason when passing the ball. A byproduct of his overrated playmaking has been 
this attitude that decent guards like Shammond Williams and JR Bremer weren't 
fit to push the ball up the court and dictate the offense, even though they were 
perfectly capable and more qualified than Walker. Last year, Bremer had a 
nice play where he split a trap in the backcourt against the Memphis Grizzlies 
and initiated a fast break. Last year, the only thing Walker split was the seat 
of his shorts whenever he'd do the wiggle. And is it any surprise that 
Shammond Williams' assist numbers jumped considerably once he was traded to Denver? 
If Williams' passes were finding capable scorers on the freakin' Denver roster, 
for chrissake, why the hell couldn't he find anyone in Boston? I'll tell you 
why: because Walker took the ball out of his hands and relegated Williams to 
the corner three. Williams alluded to this in a comment he made to Mike Gorman 
last year during during a post game interview after a Celts-Nugs matchup. 

Shammond Williams, Joe Johnson, and JR Bremer are all having better 
preseasons than they had playing in Boston with Antoine Walker. Predictably, all three 
of those players have legitimate playmaking/passing/point-guarding ability 
that was squandered during their breif visits in Boston. And all three will most 
likely put up surprisingly better overall numbers with their respective teams, 
mark my words. 

I'm not saying that the trades involving Williams and Bremer were mistakes 
(though the Williams deal was questionable). I'm just saying that certain 
talented and qualified players suffer under Walker and O'Brien, and that it 
shouldn't be that way. 

Here's some food for thought: last preseason, we were just as excited about 
Shammond Williams as some are about Mike James. Go back and look at the old 
threads if you don't believe me. The circumstances were eerily similar. I found 
it quite amusing that there's actually a thread on our board this very minute 
about Mike James' wack-ass knick name. Around the same time last year, I 
remember a thread discussing knick names for Shammond Williams; someone came up with 
Sham-rock, which was pretty nifty. Even more disturbing is that Williams is 
actually more athletic and has much better dribbling and shooting skills than 
Mike James. And he put up more impressive numbers than James in preseason as 
well. Williams is, in fact, a better basketball player than James. He was better 
at UNC, and he's still better than James today, folks. 

The writing is on the wall, my friends: Wether you admit it or not, Walker 
and O'Brien have a history of suffocating some decently talented players in the 
past. Kedrick Brown didn't just "get it" all of a sudden. Same with Mike 
James. I have my doubts this trend will continue into the season with Danny closely 
monitoring the games. People know he's watching, and they're trying to do the 
right things and keep their jobs. If it happens again, he will nip it in the 
bud before it become a nuisance.