Havlicek17 wrote:
+1
Comparing the minutes played by Gomes, Jefferson, West, whoever you may pick from those teams, vs Walker and JR on this team isn't equitable because the quality of the personnel is totally different. That team was young, inexperienced and it showed. This is a veteran team focused on defense almost exclusively. Doc complained a ton when he had to play guys like Gomes, Al, and Delonte. Those teams played crap defense and also had a hard time scoring outside of PP and maybe Al when he was healthy. In fact there used to be a lot of debates on this board about whether or not Al was for real in his 2nd and 3rd seasons due to injuries and his inconsistent play.
I don't think we can draw any conclusions on JR and Walker until we see them play and get some reasonable burn.
I honestly believe that both Walker and Giddens (at least Walker) would've made the rotation after the allstar break if not for the injuries to Garnett and Powe. Doc has a pretty consistent history of keeping his rookies and second year guys out of the rotation until the end of January or Febuary.
I think its a big part of the planned development process that Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge have used since they joined up in 2004/05. It is very simular to what most teams did back when they were coming into the league as players themselves where teams wouldn't throw rookies out on the court until they actually knew the system and to keep them from hitting the rookie wall.
The problem this year was that with the early schedule being such a nightmare that both Giddens and Walker were sent to the NBADL because the Celtics weren't even really practicing because they wanted to rest KG, Pierce and Ray after having such a long season last year followed by an awful early schedule.
This resulted in both of them still needing to learn the system better once they were brought back to Boston and with Giddens injured his chance to make the rotation was dead in the water. With Walker it was just a matter of us needing Pierce and Ray to play such heavy minutes to keep winning once Garnett and Powe went down.
If not for those two injuries we'd have been playing with double digit leads more often then not with that part of the schedule as we did last year when Glen Davis and Leon Powe got their minutes increased as we rested the big three.
To even further compound the problem this year was that Doc had to try and intergrate Marbury and Moore into the rotation and couldn't done the same with Walker or Giddens at the sametime without losing the #2 seed.
I honestly believe that unless something of a no brainer comes up for Danny Ainge this summer that Walker will be getting 8-12 minutes a game from November on and seeing closer to 15-20 down the stretch next season.
Giddens role largely depends on what happens with Tony Allen, Eddie House and Stephen Marbury this summer. Only two of those three guys will be back here next year and if Marbury is back I don't think Tony Allen will be. If that is the case then i'd expect Giddens to get a shot at some point but if Tony is back Giddens will be waiting for an injury.