Yesterday, a few friends and I were discussing how fortunate us Boston sports fans are these days. Now that I don't actually live in the city, it's easier for me to appreciate what's going on. For instance, yesterday in the Rocky Mountain News, there was a three-page story on the New England Patriots. That is amazing since it was A) Thursday and B) the Broncos aren't playing the Patriots this week (or this year for that matter). That is the sort of coverage Bostonians are used to seeing in the Globe or Herald, but not an out-of-town publication. In the midst of this discussion, we inevitably turned our attention to the lean years, with one of my friends impugning Antoine Walker. Now, everyone had their views on Antoine Walker, but he was a fairly polarizing figure - you either loved him or you hated him. I loved him - "Employee #8" was and is one of my favorite basketball players of all-time. But I wanted some facts to back up my counter-argument, so I started digging. What you see below is the resulting email/rant, which took me basically my whole lunch break yesterday to write. Enjoy!
While i understand Toine was a fairly polarizing figure, I think you're WAY, WAY off base. First of all, Toine rarely, if ever, had good talent around him. His rookie year, 2 of the 6 leaders on the team in minutes were Todd Day and Marty Conlon. ANYONE would have sucked with "marquee" teammates like that. His rookie season he was brought into a team that said, hey, it's nice to have you, but our strategy is going to be to openly tank this season so we can get Tim Duncan. Look, we didn't even fire ML Carr, he's going to be coaching again!
Then, after his rookie season they didn't get Duncan. But the guys they did get weren't given a chance to succeed. Pitino traded Chauncey Billups in his ROOKIE SEASON, and Mercer the next year. There is just
no way anyone can be expected to be successful or be responsible for failure in that type of environment. Chauncey was the third pick in the draft. Can you imagine what would have happened if Carmelo was
traded during his rookie year? Or Mercer, who was the 6th pick, was traded in his second. What if the Clippers traded Chris Kaman (a fellow #6 pick) two years into his career? Kaman is just now becoming
a force in the league.
So Pitino set the team back there, and there were countless other occurrences, I don't even have to remind you. You guys know.
But for all his wiggling, all his three jacking, there was one thing that Toine did. He showed up. Toine spent his first seven years in the league here before the trade to Dallas:
Year GP Gposs Pct
96-97 82 82 100
97-98 82 82 100
98-99 42 50 84
99-00 82 82 100
00-01 81 82 99
01-02 81 82 99
02-03 78 82 95
TOT 528 542 97.4
The man played in 97.4% of the games he could have possibly played, and if you throw out the lockout year, he never missed more than 4 games a season, and the 2 or 3 of the 4 he missed in 02-03 were when
he hurt his knee the last week of the season and the team forced him to sit out so he would be 100% when the playoffs started.
He may never have taken accountability - something I would strongly debate - but he never whined either. He saw us through the hardest times this franchise has ever seen, and helped us advance in the playoffs not once, but twice. Here are some of the other players from Toine's early days that played significant minutes, let me know if you think it's still all his fault - Andrew DeClerq, Travis Knight, Greg Minor, Vitaly Potapenko, Adrian Griffin, Bryant Stith, Milt Palacio. Do those sound like the type of players you want playing a lot of minutes on your team?
Let's take a look at the draft picks after Toine got there:
97 - Billups and Mercer (we discussed this)
98 - Paul Pierce
99 - NONE - could have been Andre Miller, Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, Corey Maggette, Ron Artest or Andrei Kirilenko. Instead we got Potapenko.
00 - Jerome Moiso - could have been Turkoglu, Q Richardson, Desmond Mason, Jamaal Magloire, Speedy Claxton, Michael Redd
01 - Joe Johnson, Kedrick Brown, Joseph Forte - Johnson good, but the other two picks could have been Richard Jefferson, Tony Parker, Zach Randolph or Gerald Wallace
02 - NONE - traded with Joe Johnson for Rodney Rogers and Tony Delk - could have been Amare Stoudemire
Exactly one player in six drafts was successful as a Celtic - Pierce. While allowing that 2000 was a fairly weak draft, there were players taken after Moiso that have had good careers. So what help did Walker really have? Three of the players drafted were traded within 18 months of their drafting, the other three were complete and total busts, and two picks were forfeited for veterans.
Look at what could have been:
PG Billups, SG Pierce, SF Walker, PF Marion, C Stoudemire, Bench - Q Richardson, Joe Johnson, Tony Parker, Richard Jefferson, Ron Mercer
That'd be a hell of a team right? Well, now you can say things would have happened differently, we would have had different picks, etc, and none of that would be wrong. But even if they had just kept Mercer and
Billups and not traded for Potapenko, we would have had Walker, Pierce, Billups, Mercer and Marion. That's a good, if undersized, starting 5. Instead we just had Walker and Pierce.
I'm sorry, but Antoine was a pawn in all of that. Pierce came two years after Toine, but it still took until 2002 to make the playoffs. Somehow though, this has always been Antoine's fault and not Pierce's, because Antoine wiggled and Pierce didn't. That, to me, is unfair. I don't think it's Pierce's fault, but it can't be one and not the other. It's either all on the players, or all on the coaches/front office. It can't be a little of both. To me, I think it's very, very, very, very clear that it was the front office's fault. Antoine showed up for every game, and made the All-Star team in a then-crowded with talent Eastern Conference three times in his first six opportunities (since there was no ASG during 99). If you look at basketball-reference's "Most Similar Season" tool, you see names like Bernard King, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Webber, Jamal Mashburn and Terry Cummings. Those are all great players, and are recognized as such. Ya, Antoine wiggled, but that doesn't make him a bad basketball player, but people like Bob Ryan decided that was worth crucifying him for without looking at what he had to put up with in Boston.
And despite that criticism, and being run out of town by an unruly mob led by an opportunistic Danny Ainge, he pushed to be traded back in 2005 because he loved Boston that much. How you can hate on a man like that simply boggles my mind. Hate on Pitino and Chris Wallace and Leo Papile. Don't hate on Toine.