Von Wafer Doesn’t Look Where He Dribbles

Posted by Brendan Jackson on Jan 14, 2011 146849 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2011%2F01%2F14%2Fvon-wafer-doesnt-look-where-he-dribbles%2FVon+Wafer+Doesn%27t+Look+Where+He+Dribbles2011-01-14+18%3A36%3A13Brendan+Jacksonhttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D14684

Von Wafer has not seen a lot of court time.  With this reality Celtics fans have little to go in terms of evaluating just what kind of player Wafer is.  On Wednesday, fans got a little insight into how Wafer operates on the court.  And that would be “blindly”.

At the tail end of Wednesday night’s blowout win, Wafer gets an outlet pass from Semih Erden and proceeds to motor up the court.  Meanwhile, Luke Harangody sprints to one of his three allotted spaces on the floor  (elbow) and gets a rude awakening as Wafer seemingly without explanation charges into his back.  I wrote “seemingly” because there is a perfectly logical explanation for why Wafer did this: he fails to keep his head up when he dribbles.

I have watched Wafer with a critical eye ever since the season began because A) I love watching less-than-known commodities do cool things on the court, B) he hardly ever plays and could be Delonte West’s permanent replacement should he not successfully return from injury.  Wafer has been known as a shooter in this league but I have come to know him as something else:  a head down dribbler.

Wafer is also assertive.  When he comes off curls he has already made the decision to either pull up or make a strong move to the basket.  He completely shuns the notion of the “triple threat” position.  All of this is okay in the context of the Celtics.  Wafer will likely not make the final playoff rotation.  Still these are the attributes (among others) that separate the fringe NBA players from the Good to Great NBA players and do provide some comedy.  Especially when it involves Von Wafer dribbling right into Luke Harangody.