Notes for Carroll (too long)

[Ryan W <ubiquitous_am_i@xxxxxxxxx>]

John, 

Your team sucks right now.  It's not all your fault,
but if you want to extend your career with the
Celtics, you need to start winning.  These notes are
designed to help you accomplish that end.

First, you can't just do what O'Brien was doing. 
You're not O'Brien and if you continue ventriliquizing
his maxims, your players are going think you're an
idiot, have no ideas yourself, and are unworthy of
their respect (because grown-ups and men of
intelligence just don't repeat what others have said;
instead they think for themselves and assert their
autonomy).  (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.)
 You need to win their respect.  You do that by
putting yourself on the line, by taking chances, by
showing them that if you're going down, you're going
down with a fight.  Right now, the team has lost its
will to fight, and that loss of will comes directly
from you and your maintenance of the status quo.  Live
a little!

But how to break the status quo?  First, you need to
truly evaluate your team over this All-Star break. 
But before we get to the difficult evaluations, let's
start from the top.  Pierce is your best player, that
much is obvious.  This much is also obvious; if you
want to start winning, Pierce needs to be playing
well; having fun, being loose and free.  Now, the past
6 games of so, you've started to free Paul up a bit,
but we need to do it more.  He's still doing TOO MUCH.
 What is too much?  He shouldn't ever initiate the
offense.  It's a waste of his skills and it just
causes the team to rely further on Paul to do it all. 
We need to break that chain.  Of course, you may be
saying, like many on this list, that it would be so
much easier if we had a point guard.  That is true,
but we don't have one now and assuming Danny doesn't
trade for one, we're not going to have one till the
end of the year.  So get over it.  We didn't have one
last year, but we still managed.  Of course, we had
Antoine then, who could demand the double team and
pass to Paul.  Luckily for us, Danny traded for
Antoine's little brother, Ricky Davis.  Not only is he
our second best player like Antoine was, he also can
dribble and pass just as well as Antoine.  We need to
put the ball in Ricky's hand.  Instead of initiating
the offense with Paul, put it in Ricky's hand.  Let
him dictate to the defense, let him command a double
team, let him find Pierce in easy places to score. 
This is in direct violation of our supposed motion
offense, but who cares?  Danny's going to fire you
after the season anyway, so like I said, let's go down
with our guns blazing.  

To elavate Ricky's place on the team, he needs to
start.  Go back and read his comments regarding coming
off the bench (made around the time of the Cleveland
game).  He's not taking well to it.  Further, he's a
better player than Jiri.  Additionally, the old reason
he wasn't starting (no defense) isn't a concern
anymore, because no one is playing defense.  Ricky's
your second best player and you need to start bringing
that out.  You can't sit there, losing 7 of 8, and not
use one the team's few strengths to its fullest. 
Right now, Ricky is lost, he doesn't know his role on
this team and is still trying to fit in.  That's your
fault, John.  With all the turmoil on the team, you
need to take your magic coaching wand and annoint
Ricky as Antoine 2.0.  Sit him down, tell him we
expect 20 points out of him per night, that we'll get
him 37-42 minutes a game and that he has the green
light until the season ends.  Light a fire under
Ricky's ass.  Why bother trying to make something out
of him that he clearly isn't?  We all know the type of
player Ricky is; help Ricky re-discover his inner
thuggish ruggish persona.  Worry about the defense
later (actually, I'll touch on defense towards the
end).  By getting Ricky off, you further benefit Paul,
which, as a mentioned before, is the best way to get
this team going again.

So, to recap, everything on offense should be geared
towards getting Paul off.  First, we need to ball out
of Paul's hands.  He's too easy to guard that way,
plus it makes our team too dependent on him.  Instead,
we're putting the ball in Ricky's hand more often,
letting him create and find others while all the time
looking for his offense.  To do this, we're starting
Ricky, giving him 37-42 minutes a night.  But what
else can we do?  Well, by now I think it's obvious
that Mike James does not fit as a starting point guard
(or even as a point guard, but I'll get to that).  I
would start Marcus in his place.  There are numerous
reasons for doing this.  First, we have the fire it
would like under Marcus' ass (the fire is in the form
of this speech made to Marcus moments after telling
him that he'll be the starting point: "Marcus this is
your chance.  You have one thing over any point in the
league; your quickness and speed.  I want you to fight
your man to the death every night.  You've had a half
season to get your feet wet.  Your in perfect shape
and ready to play big minutes.  We're not going to
bench you for stupid plays; in fact, we're going to
leave you out there and let your teammates give you
that look.  That'll impress upon your conscience much
more than anything I can say.  Lastly, just play. 
Forget about everything except beating your man"). 
Second, Marcus has really been improving on the
defensive end and with the way we haven't been playing
defense, it's of the upmost importance that we have
people on the court that can keep their men in front
of them.  Of course, starting Marcus and giving him
more playing time will also increase the turnovers,
the drives into traffic, the bad passes and the
occasionally bad shooting.  Honestly, I can live with
that.  Most of his turnovers are pressure turnovers;
him just trying to make something happen.  You need to
get in Marcus' head and motivate him.  Quit making the
game so intellectual and instead just tell him to beat
his man with his quickness, both offensively and
defensively, and let the chips fall where they may. 
As an organization, we really haven't taken advantage
of Marcus' quickness, mainly because we haven't played
him that much.  Take these last 30 games or so and
play him 30-35 minutes a night; it'll a least give
Danny an idea of whether we need to start looking for
another point guard of the future.  But more
importantly, I think Marcus and not Mike James
represents our 'best' point guard and thus are best
chance of winning.

But what to do with Mike James?  Being a disciple of
O'Brien and thus hating change, you're probably not
going to like this suggestion, but hear me out.  Play
James as our backup two guard.  Mike's best feature is
his ability to score.  Let's capitalize on this. 
Luckily for us, we have players that'll allow Mike to
play the 2 guard spot without hurting ourselves on the
defensive end.  So, when Paul is resting, bring James
in for offense and put Jiri in to run to the point. 
On defense, Jiri and Mike will just switch positions. 
Now, obviously, Jiri isn't a good point guard at this
juncture of his career.  So, again, make sure Ricky is
on the floor.  With Jiri, Mike and Ricky, we should be
able to handle any pressuse in getting the ball up the
court.

Things are shaping up with either Ricky or Paul on the
court at all times.  This is necessary.  Ricky and
Paul can be the Scottie and Micheal of this team (or
the Paul and Antoine) if we set the team up that way. 
As I said earlier, even though this may not be a good
idea (either because they don't have enough talent or
because it might upset our motion offense), I think
it's our best idea at this point in the season.  Name
me a better plan!

One of the downsides on this plan is that Jiri's
minutes will go down.  But, honestly, that's not a bad
thing.  This is Jiri's first year playing substantial
minutes in the NBA.  Just by looking at him, you can
tell he's mightily beat up.  By reducing his minutes,
you give him a chance to heal and to mentally regroup.
 Even though he's young, you're running the risk of
running him into the ground by letting him play so
many minutes, so early in his career, while he picks
up so many nagging injuries.  I'm not advocating
benching him (he's better than James and should get
more time than him), though we should be playing him
no more than 20 minutes a night.

So, right now, we have Marcus, Paul and Ricky
starting, with James as the backup two and Jiri as the
backup everything.  

But what about the front court?  Let's start at the
obvious (or should I say, the horribly obvious). 
Walter needs a serious reduction in minutes.  I can
see why he plays though.  It's nice to have someone
out there who knows what you're talking about.  His
mere presence does help team cohesion.  However, and
let me put this a frankly as possible, his mere
presence also grossly reduces are chances of competing
out there.  First, you're playing Walter out of
position.  At power forward, he doesn't defend and
can't rebound.  Add to these deficiencies his normal
Walterness (bobbled passes, boneheaded pass attempts,
stupid fouls, fouls so light they lead to easy three
point plays) and there is no way he should be playing
more than 15 mins a game.  This is how you use Walter;
once in the first half for 7 minutes, once in the
second half, for as long as you can get away with it. 
Specifically, Walter should come into the game with
one purpose only; to ascertain whether he's making any
shots.  If so, get him those shots; every once in a
while, we get lucky and Walter will hit 5 threes.  On
those nights, give him more than 15 mins.  However, if
he comes in, bricks his first 3 threepointers, start
getting ready to bench him.  Also, on the nights his
shot isn't falling, he also plays bad in other facets
of the game.  He's the ultimate all-or-nothing player,
so we need to start playing him like that; either a
lot (in the games where he's hitting his shots) or not
at all (when he comes in and starts bricking).  

Once we get over the Walter problem, we have the
Jumaine Jones problem.  All things considered, Jones
is probably our third best player, skills-wise.  In
every imaginable category, Jumaine is a better player
than Walter.  He should be fully healed by now.  And
actually, if I were you, I'd be playing Jumaine over
Walter in every respect (I wouldn't even be giving him
the 15 mins per night I advocated for above).  In the
Bulls game, Jumaine actually played well in the first
half (when we were still in the game).  He was active
on the boards (more so the offensive boards where he
had one put back and a couple near put backs), he hit
a few shots, and played good defense.  He'd make a
fine backup three or four (more so three because he'd
be able to take advantage of his height while still
having the quickness of a three--at the four, he has
problems blocking out the other teams' power forward).

But these are all backups, what of our starters? 
Well, I agree with Tommy in saying that Hunter should
start the game.  He's right that you can 'hide' a
player in the starting lineup in the sense that the
game doesn't really get going until about 3-6 minutes
into it.  Plus, Brandon's the type of player who gets
alot off his hard work; thus it's possible that he
would be able, in the beginning of the game, to sneak
in for some put backs before the other team realizes
the amount of beef they'll have to put on him to stop
that part of his game.  Starting Hunter also preserves
Mihm and Blount in terms of foul trouble (which in
turn would limit the amount of time that Walter would
get at the four--always a good thing).  Also, there's
always the chance that Brandon will start tearing it
up.  He's a hard worker and those types of players
need to be played, if just to tell the other team that
we came to play.  In closing, Brandon's a bruiser,
gives this otherwise soft team a physical presence,
and is actually quite talented for someone SO big. 
Give him a chance; it's not like we have anything to
lose by doing so.

As for Mihm and Blount, I like how you've been playing
them, though I would start Hunter over Mihm for the
reasons explained above.  Also, John, you need to
remember to take Blount out; you can't play him 48
minutes; he's a 30 min a night guy, tops.  

This of course brings us to Kendrick.  I'm not as
delusional as some on this list.  I don't think he's
ready to play, nor should be playing very many
substantial minutes.  However, you need to look at it
from this perspective.  Rookies are exciting, both to
fans and to the players.  You put a rook into a game,
he makes a few good plays, and it energizes the entire
team (and the crowd, if we're playing at home).  Plus,
you need to reward Kendrick for all the hardwork he's
put in so far (dropping his body fat, improving his
verticle).  Players are here to play and, as with
Hunter, it's not like we have anything to lose.  I
would look to get Kendrick 4 minutes here, 5 minutes
there, usually at the end of quarter/half.  Maybe
10-15 minutes a game, depending on how well he does
out there.

So, that's it (almost).  Remember that your number one
project with this team is to get them believing that
they can compete and win.  Right now, they've resigned
themselves to the fact that this team is dead.  That's
why you need to make changes.  These changes will
provide hope.  That hope, through a little luck, may
transform into belief which will lead to winning.  But
you first have to foster that hope.  Show guys that
you're trying, that you haven't given up, and that
you've gotten desperate.  Remember, there are two
kinds of desperation.  The kind that manifests towards
the end of something when all seems lost (such as the
end of a game when you're way behind and have no way
of coming back) and the kind that is only rational
solution towards fixing a situation currently devoid
of hope.  Our situation falls into the latter
category; we still have time to come back and be a
legitimate playoff team (and forget about the fact
that we're in 8th place--any team that loses 8 of 9
cannot call itself a playoff team).  What you have to
do is stand up and fight for that chance.  Don't
resign yourself to O'Brien's lot.  You are not
O'Brien.  You are not O'Brien (repeat after me).    `


Yeah, but what about defense (since you're not
O'Brien, you probably had not worried about that)? 
Here's a radical plan about defense: leave it in the
player's hands.  Challenge Pierce to shut his man down
(since he's not initiating the offense now, he'll have
energy to play defense).  Challenge Banks to shut his
man down.  These are competitive men and they respond
to competitive challenges.  Make defense easy; tell
them to shut down their man.  Not only would
man-to-man defense be good in and of itself, it would
also help our rebounding problems.  But what to do
with players who won't/can't play defense?  I'd let
the players police themselves.  I'd tell them that
they know when one of their teammates isn't playing
defense.  I'd tell them that it is their own
responsibility as a team to get each other to play
defense.  I'd tell Blount that, if he sees Ricky
dogging it, he should get in his face.  I'd tell
everyone that if they see one of their teammates
playing lackluster or lazy defense that it is their
duty to get in that player's face.  The rationale for
this is simple:  this is how it works (or should work)
on every team.  When I play and a player starts
playing bad defense, the other teammates always let
him know about it; with either dirty looks or
encouragement or getting into that player's face. 
It's time that players be taught to take
responsibility for things within their control and
since defense is essentially a desire-based endeavor,
it's not like players can't ascertain who is or isn't
bringing it.  In fact, I'd let this player control go
as far as making substitutions, such as Jiri putting
himself in when Ricky starts letting people get to the
basket.  

Ok, so that's it.  

Ryan  

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