Well, that was disappointing ...

[Kim Malo]

At 12:16 PM 11/2/2006, Alex Goldblatt wrote:

>3. I want Ratliff to start - and ASAP.... Perk is still nowhere.

Wow. I think Perk had a reasonable but not fabulous game until Doc 
benched him and forgot about him, same as last year. And did you SEE 
how bad Ratliff looked in the preseason?

He didn't offer much on offense, but then he's not in there for that. 
But he did pound the boards (no, it wasn't a dazzling total that he 
got, but he was in there carving out space that also helped some 
other guys get some and I don't see you saying the same about 
Jefferson who had even fewer in more or less the same minutes) and he 
also had that one beautiful long outlet pass, something more people 
are going to have to look to do if we really want to run. Raef's one 
big virtue (you have to understand that I hate the 3 point shot) was 
that he always looked to make an outlet pass when he got a defensive 
board. Always. Perk was second best on the team at doing that last 
season and was the only one who did it last night. As to his 
reputation as a foul machine and that's why he has to be benched, the 
first one on him was a bad call and he only got three, while 
Jefferson was the one who fouled out in about the same minutes.

Back to that thing about the outlet - one of the things that 
frustrates me even more than rotations is that Doc's teams don't seem 
to do the little fundamental things well and don't show any signs of 
being coached to improve them. Enough little things become big 
things. Things like looking for the outlet pass (and this includes 
Pierce rarely looking for the PG over bringing up the ball himself) 
are habits and you have to work to work to build good ones so that 
they become instinctive. I haven't seen many signs of that since 
Doc's been here, from looking for outlets to moving when someone with 
the ball is getting trapped to give them an outlet to learning which 
fakes you don't get taken in by (e.g. yes his arms are moving but 
he's not gathering the rest of his body and his feet aren't set for 
him to be going anywhere), etc

As to last night's game, yeah it was disappointing but yeah, I agree 
with people who think the emotion of the night played a big part. 
That's one of those things about being so young - younger players 
*are* more affected by emotions. I don't think it's likely we'll have 
many more games were Wally can't hit the broad side of a barn, which 
was a big factor in the slow start and had a ripple effect through 
the game at times when you'd normally look to him to score with a 
jumper. Delonte was streaky last year shooting and this was also one 
of his off nights. That won't last either.  Pierce's FT shooting, 
unfortunately we've seen before. One positive - despite his fouling 
out, I did think Jefferson looked much better than the player we saw 
last year. Some nice moves in the post, he was genuinely trying to 
play defense by doing more than just trying to draw charges, and was 
going after and grabbing at rebounds more often than just trying to 
bat at them.
Kim