Saturday Notebook: Tough Talk on Jamison, Ainge “Spins,” Nate’s on His Way
Posted by Zach Lowe on Feb 20, 2010
• The Celtics appear unconcerned—for now, at least—about Cleveland’s acquisition of Antawn Jamison. Check out these quotes from Steve Bulpett’s piece in the Herald:
Rajon Rondo: “I don’t think Jamison was the piece they were missing. They were already good. They already had LeBron (James). They were playing fine. But they didn’t settle. They wanted to get better, and we’ll see.”
Paul Pierce: “I mean, the Cavs were a bigger challenge with LeBron. Regardless of if Jamison is there, they still have the best record (in the NBA)…But we’re not worried about them right now. There will come a time we’re worried about them. Right now we’re focused on us.”
And my personal favorite, from KG: “We worry about Celtics around here. We worry about what’s going on in Boston.
• Also from Bulpett: Ray Allen had a predictably mature take on trade talks:
“I knew coming into the season that with this being my last year, making it through trade deadline was going to be a major coup just to stay on this team…And I think the Gilbert Arenas situation (in Washington) affected a lot of people in the NBA. All of a sudden Washington was trying to make changes. It definitely was interesting.”
But Ray’s still here, and he’s been on fire since the All-Star break.
• So did the C’s throw Allen’s name around in trade talks? Of course they did. Here’s Danny Ainge discussing some players the C’s pursued—to varying degrees—during an interview with WEEI:
Yes, we did have interest in Kevin Martin.
And:
We did like [Caron] Butler and we did have some discussions about him. He is a terrific player — he is young and athletic and his contract — so we did try to see if we could do something with him.
Allen was almost certainly a part of all of those talks.
• But what about Nate Robinson, the player the C’s actually acquired? Here’s Ainge again on WEEI (the underlines are mine, for emphasis)
We really like Eddie House and what he brought to the locker room and who he was, he’s a good guy. But Nate as a player is just a more dynamic player. He’s got speed, he’s got athleticism and as you guys watch as play, nobody gets in the paint except Rondo. And this guy creates space he creates energy and on top of that he can shoot, but he can create his own shot.
The hosts then asked Danny about Nate’s perceived lack of passing ability, and Ainge gave an interesting response in which he said that, with few exceptions around the league, guys who handle the ball are not asked to make complicated passes:
We are sitting watching LeBron and Carmelo last night, and they’re not doing anything. There is no ball movement. LeBron comes down and runs a pick and roll, and if there is a double team he kicks it to an open three-point shooter…Moving the ball around is overrated. Moving bodies is not overrated — everybody cutting and moving – and that is something we need to do more of down the stretch. But when you have someone like LeBron and you can just give him the ball and all of a sudden here comes Varejao and he sets a screen, that’s all the offense they have…And that’s kind of what Nate it. Nate has the ability to just run high pick and rolls for the whole quarter.
Moving the ball around is overrated. Wow. When was the last time you heard an NBA decision-maker say that?
I don’t completely disagree with Ainge here. There aren’t a huge number of options on a high screen/roll, and they’re the same in basically every system. You can take the ball to the hole, shoot a jump shot, pass to the roll man or find a three-point shooter whose guy has dropped down to help on the roll man.
That said, not everyone makes those decisions equally well or executes with the same precision as the best passers. The Magic have discovered that Hedo Turkoglu is better at the passing part of the high screen/roll than Vince Carter is. LeBron may be the best guy in the league at making the jumping skip pass across the court to a shooter spotting up in the corner, and his height helps him execute that pass so well. And Chris Paul and Steve Nash are masters at keeping their dribble for an extra second or two so that options #4 and #5—options not really in the playbook—can present themselves.
Nate can’t do that. But he can do the basic stuff well enough.
• Blazers Edge, the outstanding Portland blog, has its usual interesting analysis of last night’s dominant Celtic win, plus this quote from Portland coach Nate McMillan on whether the C’s defense is the best he’s seen this season:
Uh no. I thought the Lakers when they came in. A big team like that played well here. But we’ve, for whatever reason, have been getting off to some poor starts here.
The Celtics, for now, still lead the league in defensive efficiency.
• Portland Roundball Society has video interviews of Portland players after the game, and Bustabucket has a photo of KG as Godzilla and a dynamite first two sentences to its game recap.
• Let’s go back to the Ainge interview on WEEI again, because Ainge had some detailed thoughts on Rasheed Wallace—thoughts that Bill Simmons labeled “high comedy” and obvious “spin”. Here are some excerpts:
I think that Rasheed is about what we expected. We had hoped that Rasheed would be a 35 percent three-point shooter. Right now I think he is shooting about a 30 percent…I’m hoping — Rasheed is one of those guys that in a seven-game series is capable of shooting 50 percent from the 3-point line, but he has never been that way in his career. And so you are counting and hoping that he is a 35 percent three-point shooter. He has given us about what we expected defensively.
And:
My biggest concern with Rasheed when we were looking at him this summer was that he didn’t come every night. But he did come in big games. He did drift, but he has the ability to step it up and be the best player in a game on any given night. But you know in a seven game series he is not going to be there every night, but most role players aren’t.
So, where’s the spin there? Is it the way Ainge claims the Celtics had very low expectations for Sheed—to hit 35 percent of his three-point shots and play well for a few games over a course of a seven-game series? (Side note: Sheed’s three-point percentage has been amazingly consistent over the four seasons before this one, ranging from 35.1 to 35.7. This year, he’s down to a ridiculous 29.1 percent, though that could have something to do with the fact that he’s taking them at a higher per-minute rate than he ever has before).
Or is the alleged spin in Danny’s hope that Sheed can be ready to play better in the post-season? Or in his giving Sheed a passing grade on defense?
• C’s observers are going to watch every KG movement like Kennedy fanatics watch the Zapruder film, and Julian Benbow of the Globe believes KG has been moving better since the All-Star break. Doris Burke made the same claim last night, when she mentioned at least eight times that KG seems to be “running north to south” better. Here’s Benbow in the Globe:
Though he missed 10 of his 16 shots Thursday, Garnett looked as lively and mobile as he has since his return. Certain aspects of his game – such as offensive rebounding – are still works in progress. But “you can start seeing some of that swagger and some of that confidence coming back from knowing we can get stops,’’ he said.
KG’s movement aside, let’s clarify one thing: KG has never been a great offensive rebounder, and he hasn’t been a good once since 2006.
• Doc Rivers reflects in the Globe on why players around the league seem to like playing for him. He gives credit to what he learned from one of the least popular figures in the NBA among Boston fans.
• Red’s Army wonders if Rajon Rondo should dominate the ball more in crunch time. A very good question.
That’s it for the notebook. We’ll be back with more analysis heading into the Denver game tomorrow.
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