Full throttle 2006 NBA DISCUSSION - Page 3

Originally Posted by Johnny Daywalker on 12-22-2005

Heading nowhere with how Kwame Brown and especially Lamar Odom are playing. Kobe is Kobe and to the mans credit he never seems to take a night off. If only the others didn't take a game or two off every week.

Originally Posted by fabfunk

I know I'm always discussing the Knicks, but this week has been considered the darkest in recent memory by the local press. First, the Antonio Davis situation, where he didn't even receive the backing of classless Isaiah, followed by rumors that he'd be released because of the controversy. Then, the sexual harrassment case against Thomas that is threatening to never go away. And, of course, the eight losses in the last nine games, headlined by an absolutely heartless showing against the Atlanta Hawks, which I actually bothered to watch last night.

And thus, none of these guys can be traded at the point. These guys are snakebitten, at least until summer when some salaries come off the cap. And the Bulls, who have their first round pick, end up with #1 overall.

At $120 million, this Knicks team has to be considered one of the biggest fiascos in sports history.

Originally Posted by fabfunk

Does "quitting" count as a prediction?

Originally Posted by fabfunk

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SEATTLE gets Earl Watson, Bryon Russell and Mike Wilks. I had no idea Russell was still in the league.

CLEVELAND gets Ronald Murray and Lee Nailon. Good for their perimeter offense- Larry Hughes may not be coming back.

MIAMI gets Derek Anderson. Doesn't seem to fit.

NEW ORLEANS gets Marc Jackson and Linton Johnson. Big bodies are a plus for them.

Originally Posted by Ian Thomsen, SI.com

Welcome to the Top 10, Paul Pierce.

The most improved player award this season will probably go to the Suns' 6-foot-8 Boris Diaw, who since escaping from Atlanta has more than doubled his production across the board while ranking second to LeBron James among forwards with 5.9 assists per game.

But I've long thought that the league's best players should receive more consideration for the award, because the quality of improvement that Pierce has demonstrated is rare and influential. There are a lot of good players like Diaw, but there are very few who reach the elite level that the 6-6 Pierce is achieving this season.

No other NBA player is leading his team in points (27.2), rebounds (6.9), assists (4.6) and steals (1.4). Pierce and Allen Iverson are the only players who have scored at least 15 points in every game this season. Critics who argued that Pierce didn't belong in the All-Star Game because of the Celtics' losing record (26-35 as of Thursday) were missing the larger point: that he has single-handedly kept his young team competitive. Try to imagine how bad the Celtics would be without Pierce's virtuosity. "We would be thinking about [Adam] Morrison and J.J. Redick and whoever else is going to be the first pick in the draft," admits coach Doc Rivers.

With the aid of a couple of NBA scouts, I was able to come up with only three shooting guards or small forwards -- Kobe Bryant, James and Dwyane Wade -- worth rating ahead of or equal to Pierce this season. He is more reliable than Tracy McGrady, tougher than Vince Carter and more versatile than Iverson, Michael Redd or Ray Allen. If ballots were being collected today, Pierce would be a second-team All-NBA small forward and therefore among the Top 10 players in the league.

This amounts to a huge U-turn in the arc of Pierce's career. Ten months ago he showed no leadership while getting himself kicked out of Game 6 of an opening-round playoff series at Indiana before making a fool of himself at the resulting press conference (wearing a bandage around his head to make fun of the altercation), and then yelling at Rivers in the huddle during a Game 7 blowout loss at home. Rumors of a proposed trade that would have sent him to Portland (for the No. 3 pick to be used on Chris Paul along with Nick Van Exel's expiring contract) were quashed not by Pierce -- though he instructed his agent to tell both teams he didn't want to go to Portland -- but by Blazers owner Paul Allen, who I'm told was turned off by Pierce's negative reputation.

After Pierce and Ray Allen were quoted last year as saying that players should be paid for representing their country during international tournaments, the USA Basketball selection committee decided that it would consider Allen as a future candidate for the national team but that it had no interest in Pierce, who had essentially been blacklisted after being seen as a negative influence during the 2002 World Championships in Indianapolis.

So convincing is Pierce's renaissance that the committee last month reversed its position and offered him one of the 23 invitations to the tryout camp from which this summer's World Championship will be drawn. "That's the great thing about America," says Pierce, who maintains he isn't surprised by his newfound reputation. "You can see a guy hit rock bottom and rise to the top so fast, just with a change of heart, a change of attitude. I truly believe that if you want to be a certain way and turn things around, or if you want to continue in a negative direction, then that's going to happen. Everything is all about what you focus on and what you put your mind to."

On Wednesday night Pierce unloaded a triple-double (10 assists, 12 rebounds and 31 points on 18 shots) in a 104-101 win over the visiting 76ers. He spent most of the game creating opportunities for 6-7 rookie power forward Ryan Gomes, a second-rounder who produced a career-high 29 points mainly because Pierce kept finding him under the basket. The Celtics were trailing 97-90 with 2:19 left when Pierce took over with 8 points in the final 90 seconds, despite the fatigue of playing 87 minutes in back-to-back games, the first of which he won with a 22-footer at the overtime buzzer in Washington on Tuesday.

The Celtics advanced to the Eastern Conference finals in '01-02 with Antoine Walker leading as a point forward, but Pierce is turning out to be a far more efficient and reliable conductor than his former teammate. His intelligence used to be questioned when he was little more than a one-dimensional scorer, but now -- against mediocrities like Philadelphia, at least -- he makes the game look easy. He plays under control and demonstrates a sense of knowing when and how to exploit defensive pressure. Pierce is shooting a career-high 48 percent, even though he's never had fewer weapons around him.

It's easy to laud Pierce in the midst of his ongoing franchise-record streak of 30 points or more in 13 of the last 14 games. But even he anticipates harder times to come as his performances inevitably slump and his young teammates struggle to help him. "I'm just like everybody, I'm going to have negative thoughts and sometimes I'm going to voice negativity," he says. "But for the most part I'm going to be more positive than negative. Sometimes you've got to let [teammates] know how hard it is and how much you've got to want it in order to be a winner. When you're losing there's going to be some negative stuff that's going to come out, but the guys have got to learn how to take it and move on."

Do the Celtics realize what they have in the 28-year-old, five-time All-Star? If they invest draft picks in more young players such as Al Jefferson and Gerald Green, who are years away from maturing into reliable teammates, then that means they're willing to squander his peak years. Instead, they need to consider packaging their lottery pick in this year's draft with Jefferson and other pieces to acquire players capable of helping Pierce to make a deep playoff run over the next two to three years.

For a long time people have questioned whether Pierce could elevate his game to the standards of great Celtics past. Now the issue has shifted to whether or not Celtics management has the vision to construct a team that meets Pierce's high standards. We'll find out this summer.