Re: rookies

["Kevin Crawford" <176012@email.msn.com>]

    Everyone is raving abuout Mercer and complaining about Billups.  I just
saw some interesting info on ESPNet about this year's rookie class.

They had rankings of this year's rookies.  Suprisingly, Duncan was ranked
not #1, but #2 behind Brevin Knight.  Billups was ranked ahead of Mercer.
Billups was #6 and Mercer was #7.  These rankings reflect the entire season
which includes the first six games where Billups struggled immensley.  Since
this point, Billups has been improving greatly.  I also noticed that besides
Knight, Billups is leading all rookies in assists.  Jackson and Daniels were
both very close also.  So, I guess while Billups is not performing up to our
expectations according to ESPN he is not doing that badly.
    I was also speaking to some of my friends on the Basketball team at
Xavier Universtiy, a top 10 team this year with a style of play very similar
to the Celtics.  Xavier runs and presses whenever possible and is averaging
more points per game than the Celtics are. Anyways, one of the players told
me that it is very hard to pick up a fast paced, trapping game as a point
guard.  He said that it takes a long time for a point guard to develop in
that type system and development is usually slow.  As an example he told me
too look at up-tempo, trapping team such as Seattle and to see how long it
took Payton to develop and then showed me how at Xavier a point guard has
never glammored his freshman year.  Sure enough GAry Payton did, at first,
struggle to learn Seattle's fast pace game, and Xavier's point guard, Gary
Lumpkin, who is one of the best in the nation this year was horrendous
during most of his freshman year.  He average 9 point, 4 assists, and 6
turnovers.  Last year as a sophmore,  he had 16 points, 7 assists, and 2
turnovers while shootin over 40% from      3-land. This further shows my and
others on this list point that we should be patient with Billups in Rick's
system and let him develop into the great player he will be.

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From: JOzersky@aol.com <JOzersky@aol.com>
To: celtics@igtc.com <celtics@igtc.com>