A statistical look at... Antoine Walker

[Roy Hobbs]

basketball-reference.com decided to take a statistical look at Antoine Walker to see if it could measure his value.  It's an interesting study, although it's definitely geared towards stats geeks.

Link:  http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=1499

An excerpt:

As you can see, not once was Walker at an average level of per-possession offensive efficiency. And some years he was well below the average mark of 108.6 — including 2005 in Boston, when the excerpt above referred to his “positive impact on the Celtics”. After arriving in the Hub, his efficiency level was more than 10 points/100 possessions worse than the NBA’s average.

Antoine Walker, not efficient offensively?  I'm shocked!  Don't stop there, though; there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

[Andy Jick]

Roy...I just can't force myself to look at this.  Antoine Walker will go down as a player I both loved and loathed...the guy could have been one of the all-time greats, but his game was a hybrid of chaos...

[moiso]

Hybrid of chaos- I like that.  I havn't seen many players who play to their weaknessnes like Antoine.  He was gifted as an under the basket beast but he decided he'd rather be Mike James.

[JSD]

Will he ever play an NBA game again?

[Amonkey]

I don't care what you say about Antoine Walker, but the "comeback game" when he gives that passionate speech to the team and especially Paul Pierce has got to be one of the top Celtics moments ever.

[Roy Hobbs]

Will he ever play an NBA game again?

I don't think so...  which is why I put this in "Celtics History" rather than "Around the NBA".

[LB3533]

Here's my take on Toine.

Toine as a rookie: most C's fans get hardons for young players oozing with talent and multi-skilled sets. Toine was supposed to be our "savior" or at least the primary piece to turn around our franchise.

Toine's early career: after the C's lost out on Tim Duncan, the Celtic fans turned on Toine, because Toine never lived up to the "hype that fans bestowed upon him". Toine was booed a lot at the then Fleet Center. The Pitino Era never once helped Toine but only hindered the fans' perception of Toine even more. Here was a young player too egotistical, to self interested, too stubborn and immature to listen to his college and now pro head coach.

Toine's prime: during the Jim O'Brien era, Toine helped change the culture of the Celtics (BEFORE KG ever changed the culture of the Celtics). Defense was the staple of the Celtics during this era, and Toine was not one who refused to play defense. Was he a good natural defender...no, but here was an instance where Toine worked hard to makeup for the physical tools he lacked. Under Obie, Toine shot some of the worst percentages from the Field in his career, yet the Celtics still won games and still went to the playoffs and still won playoff series.

Toine's twilight years: it is very difficult to assess when Toine's twilight years began, but I will say it started to rear its head the moment Don Nelson decided to play Toine at Center for the Dallas Mavericks. Since then, Toine has had a significant impact on any franchise (other than the Celtics part 2 in 2005). On the Heat, Toine was more or a less a role player (sorry Toine, I meant "basketball" player). On the T-Wolves, Toine was a part time player. On the Grizzlies, Toine never played.

Conclusion: Toine was a player that had a lot of varying skills, but never really perfected one. I think he worked hard at trying to perfect one or two (3 point shooting, pass), but because there were too many areas to focus on he couldn't succeed. As a Celtic fan, I had high hopes for Toine, and he lived up to them. No he didn't bring us a championship, but when he was booed mercilessness by Celtics fans, my hopes for Toine and respect for fellow Celtic fans diminished. I felt Toine was unfairly treated by certain Celtic fans and it spread to the national media, to Danny Ainge etc. I felt most happy for Toine when he found some sort of success during the O'Brien era. I feel most bad for Toine right now, that he didn't work extra hard to stay in the league. I believe he can still play. But I do not believe he realizes that a player has to work extra hard later in his career to stay in this league.

[shookones99]

I don't care what you say about Antoine Walker, but the "comeback game" when he gives that passionate speech to the team and especially Paul Pierce has got to be one of the top Celtics moments ever.

TP   I remember watching that game like it was yesterday.  I had goosebumps the entire fourth quarter.  Thats was Toines best attribute was his leadership.

[Amonkey]

I think one thing that people tend to forget is that for a while, Pierce and Walker were considered one of the best couple in the NBA.  I believe they both score about half of the team's point and were almost a lock in every All Star game.  They may have been the most lethal duo of the NBA back in Pierce's early years.  Of course, nobody else helped, so they had a weak record and couldn't advance in the playoffs, but still.  Walker could score.

I have always compared Walker like a hot chick with a lot of drama.  He was very attractive and always scored, but there were many many moments that you just wanted to kill him.

[Fan from VT]

To me, 'Toine is one of many players who should never have been thrust into the role of a #1 player. Some players seem to be able to shed the pressure of being the #1 guy in one place and can adjust their game to become more efficient players in lesser roles on better teams. I think 'Toine developed very bad habits upon being thrust into a lead role, and never really changed his game from that point on. Yes, he won a title on Miami, but honestly, Shaq and Wade (mostly Wade) carried the rest of the team to that championship, and Walker did what he has always done: shoot a lot of ill-advised shots, rebound a little, pass a little, etc. He could have adjusted his game and fit that team much better, but he had already formed himself as a player and didn't adjust.

I wish that Walker had always been the third best player on his team from his rookie season on, and had a strong coach helping him perfect just his rebounding and post scoring and letting anything else come naturally in the flow of the game.

[cordobes]

Very good article indeed. One of the most thorough analysis I've read of Walker. I completely agree with the way he sums Walker up in the final assessment table. A few thoughts:

- During most of his tenure in Boston, Walker wasn't exactly a selfish player. The author never asks "How much of that was selfishness and how much was borne of necessity", but I personally believe Walker's bad offensive efficiency numbers even during his peak had a lot to do with the system he was playing in.

- It's always amusing to see how diverse are the net +/-, statistical +/- and adjusted +/- results, even when the samples are gigantic. Shows how incredibly useless are raw +/- numbers from a single season for a bench-player - let alone half of a season or even less.

- I don't like his methodology of using the ORtg/DRtg as measurements of efficiency. Especially for assessing Walker's defence. He found out Walker was a good defender when he was playing for good defensive teams and a bad one when playing for bad defensive teams. I mean, he had a giant decline from 2003 to 2004 but a couple of years later he miraculously turned himself into a solid defensive player again. Didn't happen that way. Walker played defense under JOB with lots of effort but not a ton of talent. Plus, the decline on the off. rebounding and the change on shot-selection had a lot to do with JOB's system as well. Ditto for the tendency to "call his number too often": that's what the best offensive players in O'Brien teams are supposed to do.

Walker was kind of unlucky that he never found a place where his strengths could be magnified and his weaknesses minimized during his career. But only "kind of" because it's difficult for a NBA team to fully take advantage a player with his skill-set unless he's so good enough to have a team build around him - and Antoine was never that good. He was a jack of all trades with an odd skill-set (the final assessment captures this very well - a shot-creator who couldn't really be trusted to keep the ball on his hands, etc) and who started declining relatively early. During his best years he produced more "fun" than wins.

[BASS_THUMPER]

I don't care what you say about Antoine Walker, but the "comeback game" when he gives that passionate speech to the team and especially Paul Pierce has got to be one of the top Celtics moments ever.

cosign

if it was better come back than this please sum body tell me.

walker cussing and spittin in the face of his team mates while he was yellin was exciting. it reminds me of my ex when i..uuhh...nevermind

[2short]

Antoine should have been the first big off the bench of a good team for his career.  If that AND he played a team game and didn't jack the ball so much maybe I'd think different of him.  If his number is retired I will be one who cringes.  Then again I don't think Max deserves his number up.