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Celtics General Manger Danny Ainge has a unique perspective on Antoine Walker since he traded him away, traded to get him back and now has traded him to Miami. Before game six of the Indiana-Boston series he explained why he brought Walker to Boston for the stretch run: "He gives us a swagger. Antoine's a tough, competitive kid. He gets timely baskets. Again, I think that in the last game he scored our only baskets in the last few minutes of the game. He has some intangibles-toughness, experience. I think that he brings confidence with him to the other players on the team. I think that those are the greatest qualities that he has been able to bring to us, which are very important."
After Part I's recounting of the "good" Antoine Walker I hear some grumbling in the background, so let's proceed with no delay to the "bad": Walker has never shot better than .430 from the field for a season and is a career .657 free throw shooter. He accumulates a lot of turnovers and led the league in that category once. He is not athletic, which places him at a disadvantage in certain matchups. As I mentioned in Part I, Walker was the subject of a lively discussion at the APBR Metrics website: http://sonicscentral.com/apbrmetrics/vie... Some observers contended that because of Walker's field goal percentage and turnover rate he is a very inefficient player-one person went so far as to suggest that he is "one of the worst starting power forwards in the league and has been for quite some time." As for the "ugly," Walker's aforementioned suspension in the middle of a closely contested playoff series was a huge lapse in judgment (amazingly, later in the series his All-Star running mate Paul Pierce exercised equally bad judgment, the only difference being that he did not make contact with an official). When I spoke with Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan, he noted that Walker has a unique playing style that not everyone likes, particularly when Walker went through a period when he was launching three pointers from all angles, leading the NBA in three pointers made and three pointers attempted in 2001. Walker was heavily criticized for this even though he was doing exactly what the coaching staff asked of him (Rick Pitino and Jim O'Brien have always been big believers in shooting a lot of three pointers). Whether or not this is good basketball strategy is a subject for another day, but it led to one of my favorite NBA quotes. Walker grew tired of being constantly questioned about his three point shooting, so one day when a reporter asked him why he shot so many threes, he replied, "Because there aren't any fours." Ryan also pointed out that Walker's mannerisms-the dancing and gyrations after big plays-irritated older fans, although Ryan acknowledged that Walker really toned this down during his second run in Boston. Go To Page: 1 2 |
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