Backup QB syndrome. Doc Rivers got to see these guys play and he evidently felt TA was better or at the very least we needed to showcase some guys for trades down the road..
TA was hurt - and that was the reason for his awful play of late. If he comes back healthy I doubt Bill Walker can match him at this point. TA healthy would rip up the D. League. It's like watching Ricky Davis in the SPL. Scalabrine would be a stud in the D. league..
was he hurt all but the first two weeks?
because if not, hes been sub par at best.
At the begning of the season, I agreed to give tony a chance if others agreed that this year we wouldn't coddle him with
"awwww, but poor whittle tony is still coming back from/ is injured, don't you remember those good 16 games he had in a row 2 major knee surgeries ago? thats the true tony allen, you'll see! just suffer through him for one more year!"
Tony allen is a defensive specialist at best. He is an offensive black hole, and the dumbest basketball IQ player i have ever personally seen, espically with the ball in his hands. he should get 10 minutes a night on the hot hand, tops.
If any other celtics bench player displayed the turnovers, lack of pose, reckless drives, poor shooting touch, silly fouls, reckless passes, and inability to dribble at a high school level at times that tony showed, people would want them benched immediately, and traded soon after.
But because tony is one of the remaining "up and comers" from the bad times, and people feel sorry for him due to his injury bug (hey so do I, that sucks for him.) he is quite literally the most coddled basketball player i have ever seen. anything he does wrong is never tony's fault, its an injury, or your to criticle, or at least he was trying hard.
He's like that little brother in some families that everyone knows is a mess, but no one wants to breach the subject because he's so lovable. It's never their fault either.
People want to believe that tony is somehow going to become the magical package we thought he would be for 16 games, i understand that. They want to believe a switch is going to turn, and finally, he will be a solid guy. You need to get over it, it will not happen.
Tony is what he is, a 8th or 9th man on a good teams bench when he's playing well (which isn't often) and a guy you shift to last resort when he's running cold. He has hurt us VASTLY more than he has helped this year and im tired of making excuses for him
he had his new shot, he's failing at it. Time to try to take some of the pressure off, because he is a giant flop as a 6th/7th man.
The ENTIRE bench has been inconsistent, and yet time and again all we hear about is how TA is the one who has to go. Yeah, let's improve the bench by removing its best player...that makes sense.
TA's got the 60th best net PER in the league, which is the equivalent of being the 2nd best player on the worst team in the league. That net PER is 5th on the team, ahead of Powe, House, and Perk, among others. Yes, he makes the bad turnovers that make everyone cringe, and so everyone picks up on that because it's easy to see. But the 2nd unit's problems are not limited to stupid TA turnovers. At their root, the 2nd unit struggles because there's no point guard and no veteran leadership (lots of those stupid turnovers would be eliminated if TA played with a real point guard). That's why Pruitt needs to play--he's the best point on the team other than Rondo. He can do everything Eddie House can do, and a bunch of other things House can't do (like dribbling, defending the perimeter, creating his own shot and shots for others, shooting off-the-dribble, etc...), and even if it makes us younger it's the best thing we can do right now to improve from within. We need Gabe's fresh legs. Eddie should only play point when he's hitting his shot--and even then the cost to the flow of our offense probably isn't worth it. Luckily, he can play the 2 when Gabe's the point, because Gabe has enough length to guard 2s. But even with TA out, Doc hasn't played Gabe enough...instead those extra minutes at the 2 went to House, even when he wasn't hitting anything.
But getting back to the point of this thread--Bill Walker. Since TA reinjured the ankle, it makes sense to give some run to Bill in the next few games. He's definitely not the answer to what ails the 2nd team (since he's neither a point guard or a veteran), but in the short term he could be very beneficial because he is the answer to what ails this team in general: there's not one instigator on this team. Say what you want about the other things Posey did or didn't do, but what he was absolutely great at was getting under the other team's skin. Right now, we don't have any one like that. We need an instigator, somebody willing to hit the other team in the mouth once in a while. Teams have been pushing, grabbing, clutching, and bumping us around since the Laker game, and we haven't hit them back. Bill can do that. Bill's tough and we need toughness right now.
All you have to do is use your eyes. Tony Allen is not a good basketball player, and if we go into the playoffs with him as the backup 2, we will be in major trouble. He is offensive posion - he has possibly the worst handles of any NBA shooting guard I've ever seen, he has horrible court vision, no basketball IQ to speak of, one of the ugliest jumpers in the league, he's not a 3-point threat, whenver he gets the ball he disrupts the flow of the offense, he's predictable to guard, easy to help off of due to his poor shot, he's a walking turnover, and he's not even a very good finisher. The only thing he has is natural athletic ability, which can be said for a billion other guys in the NBA. He once had 2 redeeming qualities (leaping ability and quickness), and now he only has 1, because he lost his leaping ability after the knee surgery. On top of all that, he's injury prone, and his defense has deteriorated this year to the point where he's simply not worth having on the floor anymore.
Your eyes see what they see, and my eyes see something else. And if you use net PER and what it measures, TA's our 5th best player, and certainly worth "having on the floor," since he consistently outplays whomever he's guarding. But feel free to ignore the stats when they don't back up what your eyes see--people do that all the time
Listen, I'm not saying he doesn't have flaws or holes in his game, or that he could stand to improve in some areas. Personally, I think he stands around too much. He'll play great man-to-man defense, but when his guy gets rid of the ball, he relaxes, stands up straight, and thus isn't in position to gather loose balls, track down long rebounds, or get out in the break. It's all about maintaining focus and those mini-breaks when the ball isn't in front of him really hurt his ability to contribute in other ways other than steals and points. If he wants to take the next step as a role player, he needs to play until the whistle blows instead of resting when the ball is in play.
As a TA backer, you're really not going to accomplish much by arguing that it's the rest of the bench's fault and not TA's. The rest of the bench was on the floor in the playoffs last year winning an NBA title, while TA played sparingly. TA, besides one short stretch 2 years ago, has no track record of success in this league at all. All the other rotation players have at one point shown for an extended period of time that they can be useful to an NBA team. Tony Allen has not, and if the Celtics do nothing else they need to replace Tony Allen in the rotation with a veteran (or even with Pruitt) in time for the playoffs.
Yeah, and when did I argue it was the rest of the bench's fault and not TA's? All I'm arguing is that TA is the bench's best player, for better or worse, and replacing him seems like a step in the wrong direction. If we want to improve the bench, we don't replace it's best player, we attempt to supplant him, but we don't replace him. And that's why I've said repeatedly: the bench's weakness is not about TA, it's about the ENTIRE bench and their inconsistency. There isn't one bench player having a good year, or playing up to their 2007-2008 levels. Why is that? I argue it's because we don't have a real point guard and because we don't have much (if any) veteran leadership on the 2nd unit. Shore up one of those areas, and EVERYONE plays better, even Mr. Much Maligned Tony Allen, regardless of what your eyes are telling you about his supposed terrible game.
As for the rest of our stellar bench, which you argue has somehow proven themselves already ('on the floor, winning a championship,' yeah right!), I think you're sadly mistaken. Powe had one good playoff game and otherwise was a non-factor, Baby was as non-existent as TA in the playoffs, and House was benched in favor of Cassell for most of the playoffs until it was clear that we missed his hustle. All those guys were inconsistent last year and surprise surprise, they've been inconsistent this year too. To me, we could remedy that inconsistency with a real point guard and/or a veteran big man. But if I hear you correctly, replacing TA would make everyone else on the 2nd team become, like magic, consistent ball players and allow them to regain the ability they showed last season in the playoffs. That's quite a stretch. In reality, there are two things that bring teams together--a point guard and veteran leadership. Add just one, and we'll be fine. Take away Tony? That's a step in the other direction.
Topic: Time to Bring Bill Walker up? (Read 19271 times)