Comments on: Player Audit: Antoine Walker

By: Antoine Fan

Antoine Fan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:59:59 +0000

I am sick of the Walker bashing. Your team wins a title and you have nothing better to do then bash a guy that worked his butt off for this team.

I don't care about his stats. He was a true Celtics, never quit and he knew what being a Celtic was all about.

Stats do not tell you everything. What I will remember is Antoine saving our butts hitting game winning shots or playing great defense against other teams when we needed him. So you enjoy the jokes but in the end title with Boston or not Antoine knew what being a Celtic was all about more then anyone in the last 20 years and that includes Paul Pierce.

By: Blake Kennedy

Blake Kennedy — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:53:27 +0000

Why aren't S/G (shimmies per game) included in the Energy Index?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:30:03 +0000

Is there a listing of the "energy index" with positional averages for various seasons readily available?

By: Neil Paine

Neil Paine — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Thanks for the links, David. And regarding the point about Antoine being used as a floor-spacer, perhaps that's one of the reasons his Statistical +/- looks a lot better than you'd expect from a guy with his shooting %. As Dan Rosenbaum wrote in the original SPM paper, "[...] players with more three point attempts tend to have higher offensive adjusted plus/minus ratings. This suggests that in addition to the points they score, the ability of three point shooters to spread the floor is very important for offenses. Also, note that more three point attempts is not associated with worse defense. It does not appear that the long rebounds from missed three pointers is typically leading to easy transition points." So perhaps there was some kind of "hidden value" to what I perceived at the time to be simply careless chucking. And that's very true, Saxmo... I refuse to call it that, though (and I always will), because I hated it when he did that -- specially on shots that didn't even matter (after he had missed a half-dozen that did matter). As you can tell, I was one of those C's fans in the staunchly "anti-Antoine" camp -- although I've mellowed over the years, and I think I was pretty fair in this article. But, man, at the time, that guy was one of my least favorite players ever.

By: Saxmo

Saxmo — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:15:16 +0000

The "shimmy" was not called the shimmy, it was the Walker Wiggle.

By: 94by50

94by50 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:16:47 +0000

We should try to get Bill Simmons to comment on this critique. As a Celts fan, he had the "pleasure" of observing much of Walker's career first-hand. I suspect he would agree with most of it. Let the record reflect: I object to the listing of the shimmy as a liability.

By: David Friedman

David Friedman — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:34:57 +0000

Just to clarify: I'm not breaking any news, Doc Rivers is still Boston's Coach. I meant to say "recently hired."

By: David Friedman

David Friedman — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:32:27 +0000

Neil: Thank you for providing a thorough and well-balanced take on Walker's career. The APBR discussion you referenced inspired me to interview several people who had up close views of Walker's career--including then-Boston Coach Doc Rivers, Bob Ryan and Tommy Heinsohn. Here are links to the two-part series that I wrote about Walker after doing those interviews: Part I Part II One important thing to note about Walker's shot selection and his declining offensive rebounding is that in Boston he was filling the role that Coach Jim O'Brien assigned to him, as noted by Heinsohn: O'Brien wanted Walker to spread the court by shooting three pointers. Obviously, this took Walker away from the offensive glass. One can debate whether or not O'Brien was employing the best strategy considering the roster composition at that time, but it is not really fair to blame Walker for doing what the coach asked him to do. Note that Walker's offensive rebounding rate--as shown in your chart--increased when he went to Dallas and never again dropped to the levels it fell to when he played for O'Brien.

By: Eddy

Eddy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:19:33 +0000

Whoops, I meant to say "listing" in my above post. My mistake.

By: Eddy

Eddy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:18:44 +0000

Interesting post. I would agree that Walker was always a bit of an enigma during his playing career. Clearly the end conclusion that was reached shows that .. in terms of listening his strengths & weakness as a player.

I find it slightly humorous that the "shimmy" is both a strength and weakness. I got a nice laugh when I saw that.

All in all, nicely done on the analysis.