Antoine was a very good player when he was here and his team's never lost due to a lack of effort or heart on his part. My problem with Antoine is he should have been so much better than what he was. I attribute that to Rick Pitino never surrounding Antoine with quality veteran's early in Antoine's career that would have taught him how to keep himself at his best and Antoine's own lack of discipline in allowing himself to take the easy way out when it came to off season conditioning and improvements in his game.
He should never have moved his game out of the paint or at least any further out than 15 feet. He should have used his unique ability to dribble and pass as a weapon going towards the basket. He should never have been taking the ball up the floor or shooting ungodly number of threes.
But he helped motivate a young Paul Pierce and helped in the molding of the Truth. He will a fairly bad team to the ECF along with Pierce's astonishing clutchness. And this team was his every moment he was here, at times to a horrible detriment to the team, at other to a tremendous benefit.
I think he was horribly over rated because once his skills started diminishing at the ripe old age of 26 or so, he lived on the reputation of his passing skills, dribbling skills, post moves and rebounding that just disappeared seemingly overnight(though it was more like over a couple years). He became very Allen Iverson like in that he stagnated offenses, became a defensive liability, stopped making intelligent passes and shot way too much and scored extremely inefficiently. Finally in his last year or two here he couldn't make a layup, his FT%, FG%, and rebounding and assist numbers fell every year some for more than those two years, and he started getting eaten up by athletic 4s.
But all people could remember was that 2002 playoff stretch and his early years and lost focus of just how many games he may have cost this team because his ego and laziness got in the way. Antoine played like an All-Star for about 3 seasons here. But he attained some of those All-Star numbers at the expense of his team's success and the greater good of his team and team mates.
I still think he was horribly over rated and that his legacy amongst Celtics fans remains as such.
Topic: Was Antoine Walker ever good? (Read 30674 times)