Questions for Philly:
1) I've asked this before, but for the benefit of folks who haven't seen your response, how do you prevent teams from collapsing their defense on you when you have two close-to-the-basket bigs, and only one shooter from the outside who stretches the floor?
2) Many people are concerned about Bynum's health. How do you answer those worries?
3) How do you match up against the other teams in your division?
Questions for Toronto:
1) Can you address concerns that you don't have a "go to scorer"?
2) What was your pre-draft strategy? At one point, you had the third pick in the draft. You also held, at different points, the 16th, 19th, 25th, and 26th pick in the first round. Do you think you're in a better position now than if you'd chosen CP3, while perhaps surrounding him with another star?
3) How do you match up against the other teams in your division?
Obviously I believe that Kevin Garnett can be a go to scorer in this league. His stats took a hit as soon as he came to Boston becuase he didnt need to score as much. However as it is true that he was our leading 4th quarter scorer and leading playoff scorer the year that we won the championship I dont think you can argue that he wasnt a go to scorer on the celtics.
At the same time I find it very hard to pick out a player on my team that you leave alone to double team Kevin Garnett. Everybody on my team can score the ball and is an offensive threat.
I knew that I did not want to hold onto the third pick and then not have another pick until the end of the second round, this was very clear to me. I moved the third pick for a lower first round pick and from there kept making moves each time trying to get better pieces than I started with. I really didnt care where those pieces were on the board as long as I thought they had more value than what I was sending out. I was able to come up with a very competitive predraft board starting with the 7th overall a mid second, and two third rounders.
I believe that I do match up favorably against the other teams in my division. I believe that my defense is equipped to shut any team in my division down and as I said before on offense there isnt a single person that you can double off of, especially when big z and KG are in the game at the same time.
Throughout Artests Career he has a winning record against the three best small forwards in the eastern conference, Paul Pierce, Carmello and Lebron. This past year he held Melo to 18 points a game on 17/44 shooting and Ron's team went 2-1. Against Lebron in his career Artest is 7-3 and Lebron is averaging 5.1 turnovers a game against Artest teams,(no wonder he recruited ron so hard.) Then when you consider he has Camby and Garnett protecting the basket, this defense is going to be extremely tough against some of the best offensive players in the game.
Also, Artest's Defensive PER was 12.2 which is better than Bowen, Battier, Ariza, and Lebron which are commonly thought of as the best defenders in the league
I truely think that Philly will give us the biggest run for our money, but with Artest playing tough D on Carmello and our superior big man rotation I think we should squeak out a victory