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Re: Mihm

At 04:36 PM 1/8/2004, Cecil wrote: 
Not sure.  But my point really revolves around the question of whether he is
deliberately ignoring what the coach is asking him to do.  The coach is
always heard screaming for the ball to be reversed, yet if Paul is not
willing to do it, is he getting a pass from us because he is our most
talented player?  A 10 turnover effort is pretty ugly by anyone's standards.
If that is the case, what happens when Ricky Davis, or someone else, does
the same thing?  Will we be willing to excuse it so easily?  And if not,
what about everyone who wants to see the return of Celtic basketball, the
movement, crisp passes and intelligence?

Deliberately.... Well, at risk of seeming to be caught up in semantics, I'd have to say there is deliberately and there is deliberately. It gets into what I was saying about why Antoine is history but Paul is less likely to be, despite apparently committing some of the same sins. I don't think Paul is deliberately and personally targeting the coach or anyone else (other than maybe whomever is guarding him) and trying to one up them on a control of the team trip when doing it his way, vs just letting his ego about the situation get in the way. Classic immature superstar of today attitude - I am The Man and I can take these guys and there is no one else who is a better option so why should I even look for them. Immaturity vs intentional revolt, a key difference. I think he's getting cut some slack by management and by some fans (including me, although I realize it may not sound that way) for still being in the process of figuring out his role on the revised Celtics. There are also turnovers and turnovers, and I really don't have fits over all of his. Just the ones that could and should have been easily avoided.

As to Douglas' question... Tough to really compare those things. He can get to the line lots of times that are not inherently because of driving into traffic, even if the foul occurs on such a drive. He is also perfectly capable of losing it on his own without actually getting stripped by the defense. But also, there's normal driving into reasonable traffic to draw the foul or when there aren't better options and then there is the 1 on 5 I can take you all and am not going to even look elsewhere 'cause I'm The Man sort of idiocy that will almost always lead to a turnover, and an unnecessary one. Again, maybe it sounds like I'm drawing the lines too fine, but IMO context is almost always as important or more so than pure stats, because context includes a lot of things that stats will never show. What if he gets a TO driving into traffic in a well intentioned effort to draw a foul when he had 3 open teammates within an easy pass near the hoop. IMO that's worse than one that occurs because he was making a good drive and the defense just did an exceptional job stopping him, with no call made. Even though they appear the same on a stat line. But what if the same thing happens when he was concentrating on trying to get the 6th foul on a player who had been killing us all game. Context changes again...

Yeah, I know. Have fun picking those nits Kim...
Kim