Re: responses to ravi, gene, etc.

[Kim Malo <kimmalo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:15 PM 7/17/02 -0700, bird wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 17, 2002, at 01:56 PM, Kim Malo wrote:
> For me, it's not about his weight, but his height: he seems too short to 
> defend bigger NBA points.  Sure, defense is all about moving your feet, 
> but it's also about being tall enough to bother the vision and passing 
> lanes of the offensive guard.
Then you'll not be surprised to hear that they did some offense/defense 
player swaps with Khalid and Igor (who unlike Khalid is at least taller 
than I am) taking turns at the point : )


> But hey, at this point, I'd take back everything I've ever said about him.
>   I am ... distraught ... that the C's point guards could be Anderson, 
> Delk, Damon Jones (?) Cook, and Bremer -- or maybe Forte instead of Cook, 
> who may be gone (I can't tell, head swimming).  Unbelievable.
Yeah it is. And sorry, I wasn't recommending Khalid for the Cs if it seemed 
that way. I've got to admit that I think some of the practices with him 
leading the scrubs vs Kenny leading the starters would be worth paying to 
watch, but suspect there would be some other major headaches with an 
extended stay.


> And as for The Big O (and we're not talking about Oscar Robertson here), I 
> had my good laugh, now it's time to stop playing and send him back to the 
> NDBL.  Whaddaya mean, you're not kidding?
<g> My fervent hope is that the main idea is to use him as just another big 
man and yardstick in camp practices for the FAs and rookies. Like it or 
not, he's got NBA level skills and basketball sense, but unfortunately too 
big to get out of his own way and use them very well (watch him twitch 
towards a rebound but unable to move his feet to get to it. Rodney, forgive 
me for every calling you slow to react). So if he manages to make them look 
bad in practice with what he can do, it's a good quick way of filtering 
them out. Jackie M has a nice piece on him in today's Globe that sounds 
about right: 
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/198/sports/Weight_and_size+.shtml

Kim