This deal has been talked about for a few weeks, enough time me to formulate my thoughts on it -- and I've been bouncing back and forth. From a purely basketball standpoint, it makes sense: Robinson is a far more dynamic scorer than House. He's not as automatic from three-point land, though at 35 percent for his career and 38 percent for the year, he's no slouch. But you can give him the ball and let him take his guy off the dribble, something the second team has lacked in the KG-Ray Allen era. On the other end of the court, Robinson is small -- okay, he's really small -- but so is Eddie and, let's face it, we're not going to miss House's defense.
What we'll miss is Eddie's presence on the bench and in the locker room, his consistent effort, and his general leadership. What has some Celtics fans worried about this, I think, is that these are Robinson's weakest points. Eddie played 17 minutes a game and did his job without a complaint; Nate wasn't happy with 24 minutes per game in New York and will receive fewer than that in Boston. Eddie was Boston's biggest cheerleader on the bench; Nate sulked when he was benched basically for the month of December. Eddie's a likable guy; Nate's kind of a punk.
Here's the thing, though. As I just mentioned, Robinson played just 10 minutes, 33 seconds in December, before being benched by D'Antoni for the rest of the month. In his first game back on the court, Robinson hung a 41/6/8 in an overtime win over Atlanta, shooting 18-for-24 in the process.
Hard to argue with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment