Re: killing Minnesota

[Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
A sparkling all around game from Pierce; solid contributions from Vin (double 
digit boards!) and Blount; Raef was impressive in his debut taking a couple 
of charges; EW will brilliant inside the paint and from the FT line; Kedrick 
again played well; Banks is getting more and more comfortable; etc. 

Just lots and lots of positives to build on tonight. But I thought Pierce was 
dominant without trying to dominate and that was a vintage Bird-esque like 
game tonight by him. He set up his teammates and passed extremely well out of 
the teeth of the defense and found the open man time and time again.

A most impressive all around game by him and a total team effort. If I'm not 
mistaken, everyone scored.
--- end of quote ---

You summed it up very well. Pierce showed very clearly tonight with his play
what he thought of the trade. He really is amazing. And his teammates just
seemed so...liberated. A totally different brand of basketball. It's so nice to
watch the transformation happen immediately, sooner than even the biggest fans
of this trade had hoped for. Notes on some individual players:

Baker: 
comfortable with the starting role, dominant on the boards, active on defense,
alert and efficient on offense. A lot of the efficiency due to Pierce, as it
basically went like this: Pierce drives, draws the defense, dishes to Baker,
dunk, over and over.   

Lafrentz:
smooth, efficient performance on offense, gave up his body several times on
defense, a monster block that wrongly got called as a foul, showed some nice
passing skills. He's a player. 

Eric:
the best offensive performance since ?? How does 18 points in 18 minutes on 5-7
and 8-8 shooting grab you? Seemed to relish his new role as the designated
bench scorer and leader.

Banks:
looked much more at ease, pushing the ball a lot more and dishing off some nice
passes. 

Welsch:
looked pretty good in his limited minutes. Had a nice crossover, seems to have
a good stroke, and showed good passing skills. 

Pierce:
simply a brilliant performance, controlling the game without trying to score a
lot. That told me a lot more than anything he might've said  about the trade. 

It's a preseason game, but they blew out a Minny team that's supposed to really
compete in the West this season and played its three big guns (KG, Spree and
Sam) 30+ minutes each. They also killed Minny inside and controlled KG (most of
his makes came from fadeaways around the foul line when the game was already
decided). That's pretty impressive, preseason or not. Keeping two or three
active 6-11 guys on the floor at the same time certainly helps. We'll see if
they can sustain this against NJ. 
Kestas