The Literally Big Three

"Rasheed Wallace is going to stretch the floor for us. He's going to give us another post player. Defensively, he's going to be huge for us, with his size and with his verbal [ability]. I think he's one of the best talkers in the NBA. Verbally, when you put him and Kevin [Garnett] on the floor at the same time, and [Kendrick Perkins], I think we have a chance to be the loudest team, in a positive way, defensively, in the game.

--Doc Rivers, as quoted by The
Boston Globe

I don't really care about being loud on defense. What I do care about is the implication that we'll see 'sheed, KG, and Perk on the court together on occasion.

It's the answer to a question I had pondered for a while, ever since we signed Wallace in the offseason. I originally thought about it because, as I wrote in my offseason recap, I was worried about the effect the signing would have on Perkins -- particularly, who would play alongside KG, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo down the stretch. I assumed basically what this guy over at CelticsBlog did; that Perkins would remain the starter and Wallace would play most of the fourth quarter minutes. And I was concerned that it would set Perkins back after his breakout performance toward the end of last year.

If we had added Wallace last offseason, before the 2008-09 season, this would be an easy question. Wallace would fill James Posey's role off the bench, taking the majority of the fourth quarter minutes. It seemed to me that Rivers didn't trust Perkins in the fourth quarter.

But last season, out of necessity due to Garnett's knee injury and the lack of a guy like Posey on the roster, Doc's hand was forced. And the big fella, after taking a little while to get comfortable, responded in a big way. He was arguably the team's MVP during the playoffs, and he guarded Orlando's Dwight Howard as well as anyone in the league. That level of individual, one-on-one defense against a man of Howard's size is better than what we'd get with Garnett or Wallace trying to check.

So it became clear to me that at least against certain teams, Perkins was awfully valuable to be sitting on the bench during the fourth quarter of close games, whatever his offensive deficiencies might be. At the same time, a Perkins/Garnett/Wallace frontline could be historically good defensively.

It's a little tricky to see, however, in what situations Doc might go to this big lineup. Those three guys represent the only three players on the roster who can play center; our next-best big (Glen Davis) is too small to guard many fours, let alone fives; and the guy at the end of the bench, Shelden Williams, has averaged four points, four rebounds, and 15 minutes per game in a five-year NBA career. Especially if the goal is to limit Garnett's minutes, it's hard to see an opportunity for this lineup in the first 42 or so minutes of the game.

That leaves crunch time. At the end of games, we don't need to keep a backup center in reserve, and it's conceivable that the three of them could play together. If they do, of course, that means Rondo sits, as there's simply no way Pierce or Allen sit in the fourth quarter. While I'm not crazy about this prospect -- Rondo brings an important dynamic to the offense when he's playing right -- there have been times in his career, particularly on the road, when he hasn't been aggressive. In those spots, his questionable jump shot and poor free throw shooting can turn him into a liability on offense. You may recall how effectively the Lakers neutralized him during the 2008 Finals in Games 3 through 5 in LA. Ideally, those nights wouldn't happen, but it's unrealistic, at this point, to suspect that they won't, and when they do, this big lineup is a nice alternative.

Three questions may be jumping out at you at this point. The first is whether Rasheed can guard the 3. I haven't paid enough attention to him recently to say for sure, but if Doc is considering playing him alongside Perkins and Garnett, then at least the coach thinks he can. Certainly he could guard Lamar Odom if the Lakers went big with an Odom/Pau Gasol/Andrew Bynum front line.

The second is who would bring the ball up. This concerns me some, because I don't trust Allen's handle against a smaller player, and having Pierce dribbling can be an adventure. Still, those guys have some experience bringing it up, and at the very least it's worth seeing whether they can do it.

The third question is how Ray Allen guards opposing point guards. We already know that Pierce can guard twos, thanks to his excellent work on Kobe Bryant in the Finals two seasons ago. But Ray stands to be a real liability on defense against any type of scoring point guard.

Thing is, at this stage in his career, Ray's a liability when he's checking many shooting guards. We have to give Ray a lot of help as it is; does it matter all that much who we're helping him with? I submit that it doesn't, or at least that it might not, and that it's worth finding out whether it does.

Generally speaking, I don't want to see Rondo on the bench in the fourth quarter, and I'd be fine with Doc playing whichever two of our three bigs are going better that night or make sense because of matchups. And I don't think the big lineup would work against every team, although every matchup problem an opponent would give us on defense, we'd give right back to them on offense. But there may be times when our best five means Perk/KG/'sheed/PP/Ray, and I'd hope that we'd at least experiment with that combo during the regular season.

TMJF: First Day As A Timberwolf

I promise not to post every time anyone says anything good about Flynn, but the item below from a T-Wolves fan blog is exactly the kind of thing I love about the kid:

Jefferson gushed about Flynn at multiple points in the day, even venturing to raise the Chris Paul murmurs. When told of the comparison, Flynn couldn't hold back an ear to ear grin, but immediately returned the compliment by flatly stating this is Al's team.

--Canis Hoopus

Celtics Fill Out Training Camp Roster

Really minor news here, but yesterday, the Celtics signed draft pick Lester Hudson and journeyman Mike Sweetney,

Sweetney's deal is confirmed non-guaranteed, which is good, since he has zero chance of making the roster and it's a little curious as to why we invited him to camp. To my knowledge, it hasn't been confirmed that Hudson's deal is non-guaranteed, but the conventional wisdom seems to be that it must be; the Celtics already have 14 players with guaranteed contracts, and if Hudson were the 15th (and final), there would be even less point to inviting Sweetney to camp.

I assume Hudson will make the roster, because he may be the only guy on the team besides Rajon Rondo who can dribble. I further assume, however, to be inactive for the season's first month before heading down to the D-League when that season begins in late November, and that he won't see any floor time with the Cs this year unless something bad happens to Rondo.

Speaking of Hudson, I wonder how often a rookie showed up to training camp with a mohawk while Red Auerbach was still alive.

Media Day: KG, Tony Allen Injury Updates

Training camp for most of the teams in Association opens on Tuesday, which means that Monday was, in addition to Yom Kippur, Media Day around the league. And so while religious Jews spent the holiest of holy days at synagogue and fasting, those who worship the basketball gods first and foremost sat in front of their computers all day, eager for tidbits to break the basketball fast that is the NBA offseason.

The basketball blogosphere is atwitter -- and a-Twitter -- with coverage from Media Day around the league, but the truth is that Media Day is a little bit overrated, at least in terms of the quality of the information that comes out. To me, Media Day is exciting because it means the regular season is about a month away. But unless your point guard and presumed future of the franchise tells reporters that he can't play alongside the shooting guard you just took with the seventh pick in the draft, Media Day rarely produces more than sterile sound bytes about winning and being unselfish and being in better shape than last year.

Boston, however, was an exception, with a couple of items of interest regarding injuries. One is good, and one is bad. Sort of. (I'll explain in a moment).

First, the good. Kevin Garnett has apparently been participating in five-on-five scrimmages for the past week, and Doc Rivers said that there are no medical restrictions on Garnett as training camp opens. After a summer full of speculation regarding the extent of the knee injury that effectively ended the Celtics' title defense in February, this brings a sigh of relief to Celtics fans, albeit a conditional one; we similarly sighed last year when the team first announced that KG would only be out two or three weeks, and when he came back for four games in March, and when we were told he'd play in the last game of the season in preparation for the playoffs. And we all know how that turned out.

So Celtics fans who aren't inclined to believe a thing Doc and Danny say about KG's knee can be forgiven, although there's reason to think they're telling the truth this time. For starters, whatever incentive there was to keep everything close to the vest last year would seem to be gone at the beginning of this season, when the extent of the injury is known and the organization has had time to deal with it, basketball-wise. Secondly, and perhaps most telling, this would be a much farther-reaching level of deception, as Garnett and some of the players have confirmed his participation in the scrimmages. It would be more than just front office spin.

Now, the (kind of) bad. Tony Allen may miss training camp with an ankle injury that has bothered him for a while now. It's bad because Tony is a human being who feels pain, but basketball-wise, there's a rather substantial silver lining to this news.

First of all, even if Tony never plays again -- there's no indication that this is a risk; I'm just using the worst-case scenario for illustrative purposes -- it ideally wouldn't affect this year's team unless several other people got injured. Tony's minutes, all of them, should go to the newly-acquired Marquis Daniels.

Second, an extended absence would mean that Doc would have to give a serious look at Bill Walker. Ideally, the second-year man out of Kansas State would backup Paul Pierce at the small forward position; the only other three on the roster is Brian Scalabrine, who is more of a four defensively and is, frankly, a zero offensively. Walker's presence would create a second team of Daniels, Eddie House, Walker, Glen Davis, and Rasheed Wallace, allowing Pierce and Ray Allen more rest than they got last year (though both claim that minutes aren't really an issue). Walker spent most of his rookie season in the D-League and is headed there again unless he proves himself ready, and Tony's injury might give him that opportunity.

The Marvelous Jonny Flynn

I'd like to introduce the first of two new features to Rhymes With Hondo this season,: Periodic posts following the Timberwolves' rookie point guard, tagged "TMJF," which stands, of course, for "The Marvelous Jonny Flynn."

An avid follower of college basketball for most of my life, I nonetheless do not have a particular team I automatically root for more than others. (I am, however, partial to the Big East, because that's the conference I grew up watching.) Rather, I grow attached to certain teams and players that play a style I like. My favorite college team, for example, was the 1994-95 Virginia Cavaliers squad that Junior Burrough and Harold Deane led to the Elite 8. My list of favorite college players includes bona fide stars such as Stephon Marbury (who in his lone year at Georgia Tech teamed with Drew Barry to form the most entertaining collegiate backcourt I've ever seen) as well as role players like Josh Pace, the sixth man on the Syracuse team that won the 2003 national title.

Jonny Flynn is, hands down, my favorite college player of all-time.

The Flynn bandwagon is rather crowded these days, but I can safely say that if I wasn't the one who chartered it, I was among the first to climb aboard. After an outstanding sophomore season, Flynn declared for the NBA Draft as a projected first-rounder with a shot at the late lottery. He shot up draft boards due to his performance in pre-draft workouts, including registering the best vertical leap (40") of anyone in the 2009 draft class. He was picked sixth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves, and then performed so well at the Las Vegas Summer League that he was a legitimate contender for MVP. Add all of this up, and he's a pretty popular player these days.

However, I fell in love with Flynn well before that, the first time I ever watched him, in his second collegiate game at Syracuse, against St. Joseph's in the second round of the Preseason NIT. The previous evening, he had scored 28 points in his debut. Against St. Joe's, he made just one field goal, but it happened to be the game-winner.

That's now what caught my eye, though. What caught my eye was a pass he made on the fast break to Donte' Greene (now of the Sacramento Kings). I've never been able to find it on YouTube, surely because it wasn't flashy enough to earn highlight reel status. Here, however, is part of what I wrote after the game:

Flynn had the ball on a 3-on-2 break, and as he reached the top of the key, he glanced right, where Greene was fading out to the three point line. Flynn then crossed over to his left and put his head down, taking the ball hard to the bucket with a St. Joseph's defender on his right hip.

As he got to the basket, instead of throwing up a difficult left-handed layup or trying to draw contact, Flynn wrapped a pass around his defender. Seemingly out of
nowhere, Greene appeared, catching the ball and jamming it it one giant stride. And the foul.

Watching the replay, I could see that Flynn's vision of that side of the court was completely obstructed by the defender. He couldn't possibly have seen Greene cut to the basket -- I'm not even sure Greene initiated his cut before Flynn released the ball. Flynn made the pass with the understanding that Greene would be crashing the
boards in anticipation of his shot. Either that or -- and this is where it gets interesting -- he threw it to lead Greene where he wanted him to go, weighting the pass perfectly as to catch Greene in stride.

This is not the stuff of normal point guards. It's not even the stuff of very, very good
point guards. It's the kind of pass I haven't seen a college player make since 1994, the year Jason Kidd left California for the NBA. Yes, it was that good. I'm not saying Flynn's the player Kidd was and is, but he's clearly got a special understanding of the game. I'm excited to see what else he's got in store for us.

It turns out that he had a lot in store for us. For those of you unfamiliar with his game, he's a dimunitive point guard who is deceptively strong. He's not a sniper, but you can't leave him open, either: While he made just a third of his three-point attempts in two years at Syracuse, he hit 7 of 12 from behind the pro arc in Vegas. He's a slasher with the athleticism to finish spectacularly, and he absorbs contact well for someone of his stature. As I've mentioned, he has extraordinary court vision, and distributes with the appropriate amount of flair and enthusiasm, falling just short enough of showboating that the observer gets pleasure out of the joy with which he plays.

Perhaps most importantly for his career prospects, he is a true leader and warrior. In the epic sextuple-overtime victory over Connecticutin last year's Big East tournament, Flynn played 67 of a possible 70 minutes, converted all 16 of his free throw attempts, and led his team to victory despite the fact that it never held a lead in any of the first five overtimes. And in the final game of his college career, an 84-71 loss to Oklahoma in the Sweet 16, he was really the only Syracuse player to play well, despite suffering a painful back injury in the first half while trying to draw a charge from Blake Griffin.

His career is already off to a great start, despite the fact that he hasn't played a single meaningful minute. Flynn has been put into about as difficult a situation as you can put a rookie point guard in. The Wolves picked him right after they selected Spanish sensation Ricky Rubio, and could only watch and listen as Wolves president of basketball operations aggressively wooed Rubio (who eventually decided to stay in Spain for at least the next two years, to the dismay of many Minnesota fans). While Kahn expressed a vision of a Rubio/Flynn backcourt, few actually think such a pairing would be effective, and the two play the same position. It's not often that the sixth overall pick has to fight for playing time with another rookie, but Flynn never spoke out and let his play in Vegas do the talking. In fact, Flynn went so far as to say that he wished Rubio were joining the team this year, though because those comments came after Rubio's decision to stay abroad, it's hard to evaluate their sincerity. Flynn was similiarly positive after the Wolves signed former Bucks point guard Ramon Sessions - a rising star to some, a young guy who has maxed his potential to others - to a four-year deal, though the fact that Sessions played some shooting guard in Milwaukee means that Flynn's playing time likely won't suffer as a result.

How good can Flynn be? He doesn't have the size to be as effective as Chicago's Derrick Rose is going to the basket, and Rose is the rare player who combines that kind of size, strength, and scoring ability with a point-guard's mentality. Flynn's ceiling probably falls short of young point guards like Rose, New Orleans' Chris Paul, and Utah's Deron Williams - but not by much. I think he'll turn out to be the best point guard in his draft class, a talented group that includes Rubio, Sacramento's Tyreke Evans (#4 overall), and Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings (#10).

As excited as I am for the upcoming Celtics season, I'm equally as excited for Flynn's professional career to start. I am going to watch as many Wolves games as I can this year, and while I won't give them the treatment I give the Cs, expect fairly regular updates and analysis of Flynn's play in these pages.

Welcome Back, Blogger

(A more humble man would welcome back his readers, but if you want a more humble man, go read The Sports Guy. Besides, if I don't welcome myself back, who will?)

My summer job has been over for a month now, which means yours truly's return to blogging about basketball in obscurity. When I left you, it was the eve of Game 7 in an incredible playoff series with Chicago. Boston triumphed there and took a 3-2 lead in the next series with Orlando before running out of gas and losing to the Magic in seven. While I hate losing a Game 7 at home, the loss to Orlando simply finalized what we'd known since a few days prior to the end of the regular season: that the Celtics' title defense ended when Kevin Garnett went down with a knee injury against Utah on February 19. It would have been nice to see the team maximize its potential, and without KG, beating Orlando would have accomplished that. But we were never beating the Lakers without Garnett, and the truth is that if Phil Jackson had to get his tenth championship ring as a coach - eclipsing Red Auerbach's nine - I'm glad he didn't do it against us.

While nothing like two years ago, when Danny Ainge traded for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to set the stage for the 2007-2008 NBA championship, it's been a fairly busy offseason for the Celtics. Let's start with...

The Curious Case of Rajon Rondo
My memory is a little fuzzy as to who said what and when, but some time relatively early in the offseason, we started to hear the Celtics front office grumbling about its young point guard's immaturity. Word of a potential attitude with Rondo was something of a surprise to me, though ESPN's Bill Simmons has claimed for a while that his sources say that Rondo's not a good locker room guy. About the only thing that was clear to me at the time was that the Celtics were not looking to trade Rondo, as had been rumored, since Ainge wouldn't badmouth a player he was trying to move.

Another possible explanation was that Ainge was trying to keep Rondo's value down for when his rookie deals runs out after this year. The Celtics have the option to extend Rondo now or wait for him to become a restricted free agent after the coming season, meaning they could match any offer made to him. Despite Rondo's agent's desires, however, the team has not talked about extending Rondo, and the badmouthing could have been an attempt to keep his value down.

This doesn't quite add up, either. If the comments negatively affect Rondo and the team tanks this year, then yeah, maybe we retain Rondo at a cheaper price, but we've also squandered our best remaining chance at a championship with the so-called Big Three. If Rondo turns in a solid performance in the face of the criticism, teams are going to pay attention to his performance on the floor, not what his old GM said a year ago. And it's not like Danny could periodically throw a public tantrum about Rondo throughout the season. I suppose it makes a little more sense if the plan is to renegotiate with him before the season starts.

The only way I can make everything fit in my mind is that Rondo actually has an attitude problem and Ainge decided this was the way to fix it. Even if other measures had previously failed, this is a risky proposition. Rondo's a moody, sensitive kid whose short career has seen him going from leading a terrible team his rookie year to running a championship outfit the next. He's constantly scolded that he must lead this team, and incessantly reminded that he's playing with three Hall of Fame-caliber players who each deserve the ball. His teammates tell him that they can't win without him; the media tell him that he can't win without them.

My point is that Rondo has had to go through a lot more, basketball-wise, than your average NBA point guard with three years under his belt. Not only does this make his attitude problems at least a little understandable, but it also - to me at least - cautions against being too critical of him, at least publicly.

Moreover, where's the upside? Rondo has been for the most part solid and occasionally spectacular since KG and Ray arrived. We won a title with him running the show two years ago and were well-positioned to contend for a second one last year before KG went down. We've already shown we can win with a problematic (if he is indeed problematic) Rondo; we don't know if we can win with a sulky Rondo. A weird move by Danny that could really hurt us but seemingly has comparatively little payoff if it backfires.

Subtractions
Four guys who ended the season in green and white won't be back this season. In order of importance:

Leon Powe
Of the four, Leon is almost certainly the one who was hardest to say goodbye to. Not only was he the most productive, he's a great story, a great kid, and universally loved by his teammates, the coaching staff, the organization, and the fans.

Basketball-wise, however, this was a pretty easy call. Truth be told, had Leon not torn his ACL in Game 2 of the Chicago series, he'd probably be a Celtic this season. But that injury meant that he won't be ready for at least the first few months of the season, and with Garnett more of a question mark than Celtics fans are comfortable admitting - and a need to limit his minutes anyway - Boston couldn't afford to head into the season without a backup plan in place and ready to go. That's particularly true given how tight the race at the top of the Eastern Conference will be with Cleveland and Orlando. That said, while it's hard to see how Powe fits in with the Cavs' deep frontline, something tells me he'll be heard from at one point or another this season.

Stephon Marbury
Frankly, it's too uncomfortable to write much about the offseason self-destruction of the mercurial man once known as the Starchild, one of my favorite college players ever. All I'll say is that while Marbury was ineffective last season much more often than not, he did show flashes through his rust that suggested he could be a serviceable backup with a little continuity from his half-season in green. His departure, coupled with the team's inability to swing a sign-and-trade for Marquis Daniels which would have opened up a roster spot for someone like Carlos Arroyo, means that who will play behind Rondo is still something of an unanswered question, and probably will be heading into the season.

Gabe Pruitt
I still think Pruitt could have stepped capably into that role, but I'm apparently the only one who isn't a blood relative who believes that. Pruitt never got much playing time and didn't do enough with his limited burn for the team to bring him back, and a February DUI didn't help, either.

Mikki Moore
A late-season acquisition to attempt to fill the role of P.J. Brown from two seasons ago, Moore rarely contributed anything more than six (sometimes frightenly quick) fouls to Boston. He recently signed with the Golden State Warriors for the veteran's minimum.

Additions
Four new guys, again in order of importance.

Rasheed Wallace
Wallace is the Celtics' main weapon in the offseason arms race that saw the rich get richer - Cleveland acquired Shaquille O'Neal, Orlando got Vince Carter, the Lakers signed Ron Artest, and San Antonio added Richard Jefferson. 'Sheed gives rise to the possibility that the 09-10 Celtics will be historically good defensively, and he is still a potent weapon offensively. Moreover, while casual fans know him as a volatile coach-killer who is always near the league lead in technical fouls, NBA insiders and die-hards know that his teammates almost universally praise his locker-room presence and basketball IQ (more than once, I've seen him referred to as the smartest player in today's NBA). And while he mailed it in with the Pistons last year, it says here that this was more likely a response that organization's curious roster moves, and not an indication that he no longer cares or has lost the ability to be an effective NBA player. It's hard to see him losing focus on a championship contender with veteran leadership, and he's not yet old enough for me to be convinced that he's washed up.

My main concern with Wallace - and this is something I'll tackle more in depth in a separate post about lineups and minutes - is how his presence will affect Kendrick Perkins. Two years ago, Doc didn't trust Perk in the clutch, playing James Posey at the 4 and sliding KG to the 5 in crunch time. Last year, Doc's hand was forced due to Posey's absence and KG's injury, and while it took Perk several games to step up after KG went down, he was arguably our best player in the playoffs. Wallace gives us a true backup at the four who can also guard the five, a big step up over last year, when Powe and Glen Davis were understudies to Garnett and Perkins, and often played together on a woefully undersized second-team front line. I expect Perkins to remain the starter, but 'sheed is too valuable to never play in crunch time, and he's clearly not going to take those down-the-stretch minutes from a healthy Garnett. How this affects Perkins, who seems ready to break out, remains to be seen. Like with Rondo, handling Perkins can be a delicate task.

Marquis Daniels
It's been confirmed for weeks that Daniels would be a Celtic, with Ainge waiting until he was convinced he couldn't pull a sign-and-trade (most likely with Tony Allen) before giving Daniels the biannual exception. While Daniels' natural position is 2, at 6-6, he's big enough to guard the 3, and as such, he gives us something of a true backup to Pierce, something we lacked all last year. He is something of a replacement for Posey from two years ago in that he can guard two different positions (2/3 versus 3/4 for Posey), but he doesn't have Posey's outside shot (which is largely made up for by Wallace's prowess from beyond the arc). On the other hand, Daniels can put the ball on the deck and create his own shot better than Posey could.

There's also a hope that Daniels' versatility means he can handle the ball with the second team, which means Doc could theoretically play him in the backcourt with Eddie House - although we need to find a small forward (Bill Walker, perhaps?) on the roster if that lineup is going to serve the purpose of keeping both Pierce's and Ray's minutes down, which should be a priority. Additionally, word from Indiana fans is that Daniels has a pretty bad handle, so any hope that he could serve in the backup PG role may simply be wishful thinking.

Shelden Williams
Williams is basically filling Powe's roster spot. I don't expect him to fill Powe's role, however; Doc often seemed undecided between Powe and Davis, whereas I think the majority of those minutes this year will go to Davis. As an insurance policy, however, Williams makes more sense than Powe because he's a bit bigger, which makes it easier for him to finish around the rim, where Leon struggled at times. Should everyone stay healthy, his biggest contribution may simply be keeping the pressure on Davis to continue to improve.

Lester Hudson
We acquired Hudson with the 58th pick in the draft, and he "beat out" Pruitt for the sixth guard spot, though I use quotes because Hudson played all of 44 minutes over three games in the Orlando Summer League before sitting the rest out with a broken finger. In reality, the team had probably simply soured on Pruitt. It's hard to complain about a player taken that late in the draft, though I would have preferred that the Celts take Marquette's Jerel McNeal or, better yet, packaged the pick with a future one to take Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair, whose balky knees dropped him from the fringe of the lottery to the early second round, where San Antonio snapped him up. I know very little about Hudson, who played college ball in relative obscurity at Tennessee-Martin, but Ainge has made enough good decisions with second-rounders (Powe, Walker, Ryan Gomes) that he's entitled to a fair amount of deference here).

It's more than fair to say that the offseason was a successful one, though additional tinkering may be needed and how Doc allocates minutes remains to be seen. But the team is deeper and hopefully healthier, and that should mean another season with a realistic shot at a banner.

I'll be posting here and there over the next couple of months before getting into high gear again once the season starts. Subscribe to the RSS to be automatically notified when I post something, or check back often. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on Boston's offseason (or anything, really) in the comments section.