Dr. Chestnutt

[Josh Ozersky]

Roasting Ainge on the subject of draft evaluation is pretty
much prima-facie evidence that Dr. Chestnutt is an idiot
in the blame game for its own sake.  Ainge hasn't even
had a high pick until this year, you can't even criticize him
on even that score.   I like Dr. C's rants but he's getting into
psycho territory.

Josh

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kestas" <Kestutis.Kveraga.Adv04 at alum.dartmouth.org>
To: "kelts" <celtics at igtc.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 3:05 PM
Subject: Dr. Chestnutt


The good Doc makes some astute points about Ainge's drafting, copied
below. I think he's right on - to Ainge, it's all about finding the
unobvious choice who exceeds expectation given his draft position. He's
mostly done well with it (again, relative to the draft position), and
it's fine when you're only holding low picks. But the whole strategy is
highly questionable when you actually have a high pick. Ainge is like a
  Scrabble player who has the letters to put down a common seven-letter
triple word that's acceptable to everyone, and earn 70+ points.
Instead, to show how clever he is, he'd rather trade a few letters and
go for an arcane fill-in-the-gaps word with archaic spelling that nets
him 11 points and a missed turn, but may earn him a few grunts of
admiration when it survives a challenge.

 From Dr. Chestnutt:
"The Rondo pick for next year's #1 was inexcusable and embarrassing.
This is Ainge at his absolute worst – fixated on obscure talent he finds
singular, unable to let it go. See Robert Swift, Marcus Banks, and
Telfair. In the same embarrassing way that he seeks to prove his
scouting ability by drafting under-heralded 2nd rounders who succeed as
fringe NBA players (when everyone else figured they just plain sucked),
he refuses to simply draft the best players available, instead harping
on those semi-diamonds in the semi-rough that he's obsessed with
polishing into stars. That's why he could never make a conventional pick
like Randy Foye or Brandon Roy. They have no allure to his scouting
heart, they are fully formed good players, and by picking them it
marginalizes the only role as an executive he's comfortable with. His
dream is to draft someone he finds under a rock who becomes the next
LeBron James, allowing him to take sole credit for the team's
turnaround. In this way he is the exact opposite of Larry Bird, who has
contented himself with being a patient gardener, and for the most part
has succeeded by not overreaching."

The whole thing can be found at:
http://www.celticsdoom.blogspot.com/

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