Sure he could have. One guy who wanted to come here: Chris Andersen. That move absolutely would have improved our team. Signing Quinton Ross -- who was without a team, and had to sign a partially guaranteed minimum salary deal late in the off-season -- would have helped, too.
I don't think Ross would have helped much during the playoffs. When I saw the Grizzlies play he was practically invisible.
If nothing else, he could have spelled Pierce in the regular season. He's a veteran who plays extremely good defense. Players like that are valuable (and he's just one example of the many players who were available, that Danny easily could have signed).
Danny *could* have improved the team. It's doubtful that he could have improved it enough to win a championship, but he absolutely could have improved it, with minimum salaried guys who wanted to play here.
True, but TA was doing a decent enough job of backing up Paul during the season. Ainge could have improved the team but a lot of the improvements would have been pretty marginal. Based on watching Denver play earlier this year I doubt Andersen would have gotten a lot of playing time before the injuries struck. Clearly he's a better player than Moore or POB but IMO not really better than Davis was or Powe for that matter.
You really believe that?
According to 82games.com in the 5-man rotation Tony was used most often in, he played with Pierce. Also, according to 82games.com, Tony only played 4% of the SF minutes on the team last year and was a Net -12 points and had a PER of 11 at the SF position.
I would say that Tony did the job Tony always did which was spelling Ray at the 2 slot and did his usual Tony Allen inconistent, unintelligent job doing it. Decent wouldn't be a word I would use to describe his play. Ray was the player that spelled Paul when Paul went to the bench. Ray came in and worked with the second team when Paul sat and Ra most often guarded the SF during those times.
Whatever. I guess since any time TA was in for Paul 82games listed Ray as the sf and TA as the sg then TA didn't back up Paul...
By the way, how much more could you slant your analysis? You mention that Paul is in TA's top 5 man unit but fail to mention that Paul isn't in any of the next 5 on the list. You give net points and a low PER when 82games list TA as a sf but completely ignore that he had a slightly better than average PER and a decent net point differential at the sg spot or that he had a nearly average PER and a decent point differential overall.
Which again would prove my point that he didn't back up Paul, he backed up Ray at the SG and Ray slid to the SF spot.
Also, I didn't mention that Tony then played the next 4 5-man rotations with Pierce or that according to those numbers played close to a third of his total season minutes with Paul on the floor. That number could be even much higher but I wouldn't know where to find those stats. For all I know Tony could have played as much as 50-60 percent of his minutes alongside Pierce which would make your statement even more off.
How is this different from last year in the playoffs when Posey was our backup wing? When Paul was out, Posey was the sf. When Ray was out, Posey was the sf and Pierce was the sg. The fact that TA was also backing up Ray Allen accounted for the fact that he played a significant amount of minutes with Paul. Say what you want, but when TA was healthy Paul and Ray were both playing about 37 minutes a game and TA was playing about 19. Unless you think TA was playing a lot of minutes af pf or pg he was playing most of the backu[ wing minutes, we were winning at a good clip, we weren't losing ground with TA playing and Paul and Ray were both playing reasonable minutes. Other than the fact that you don't like TA, what's the problem?
My problem is in saying he was a decent backup for Paul. He wasn't, at least in my opinion. He was backing up the wing because the wing consists of 2's and 3's. But he was more a back up for Ray who would then slide over to the SF spot to back up Paul. And just because he got 19 minutes doesn't mean he was decent. There are all sorts of players across the league that play 19 or mins or absolutely suck. And yes, they didn't lose a lot of ground by playing Tony but when he wasn't in the team played abot the same.
You are right. I don't like Tony. I hate his game of slashing with his head down and forcing shots and passes, his not being smart enough to know to give it to the PG on a break, his lack of knowledge as how to space properly on the break, his idiotic atempts to constantly block shots that he can't reach, his fouling three point shooters, his inability to take more than 3 steps without dribbling into a turnover, his getting lost on defensive rotations. I hate it, I hate it all. He's brainless and his great defensive game is a myth.
And he's not a SF. He's a slightly undersized SG and played SG. He did not back up Paul, heck no one did. This team did not have a backup SF but instead played a mostly three guard system when Paul sat with Ray Allen defending the SF on defense.
Topic: Could Ainge have improved the Celtics in 2009? (Read 14473 times)