Rasheed Wallace considers comeback
Rasheed Wallace is considering a comeback, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
Bill Simmons nailed Wallace’s mindset a couple years ago:
Sheed loves being on a winning team. Loves the camaraderie, loves needling opponents, loves riding the refs, loves barking encouragement after big plays. I would bet anything that this past summer, Sheed knew he was done and decided, "Instead of retiring, I’ll just sign with a contender, pocket another $20 million, hang with the fellas, jack up some 3s, play myself into shape during the regular season, then go hard in May and June."
That obviously would eliminate the Pistons.
Posted in Notes • 7 Comments
Leave a Reply
Jan 13, 2012 • 10:08 am
by JT's Hoops Blog
Seriously if this is true, i’d love to see him in the Raptors. They can use the veteran presense and the added mean streak that Sheed brings to a team.
Jan 13, 2012 • 10:22 am
by gmehl1977
Dan I thought you said “Watch out, NBA. The Pistons are back”. I believed you and all ;-)
Jan 13, 2012 • 12:17 pm
by RyanK
Of course Sheed would want to comeback after training camp…skip the hard part and just go to a contender. But $20 million? I’d think more like the Vet’s minimum…he’s not the type of player anymore that puts a team over the top for a championship.
Jan 13, 2012 • 2:09 pm
by Jeremy
Are you kidding me? I know two teams right now that would immediately enter the favorites to win it all discussion: Lakers and Orlando. Is he going to start? No, but whether he is out there on the court with Bynum or Gasol for LA or Bass/Davis/Howard for Orlando he is going to immediately stretch the D and open up driving lanes because all Sheed will want to do is toss the money ball up. I also dare to say he would probably be amongst the best inside defenders in the game.
Jan 13, 2012 • 6:15 pm
by kamal
I say convince him to sign with us and have him teach Monroe how to play on the block better. He could also teach him some veteran tricks since Monroe plays like a vet who’s lost his legs already.
Jan 14, 2012 • 2:38 am
by MrHappyMushroom
I will never, ever get the deference toward Rasheed Wallace. A talented and even interesting guy? Yup. Was he that key addition that made the 2004 championship possible? Yep.
As Simmons said, though, if you put Sheed in the ideal situation in which he’s winning, gets to determine his role, and doesn’t have to face adversity, he was great.
But life ain’t like that. I’d argue that outside of 2004 and 2005, he wasn’t much of a positive for the Pistons, especially considering his play off meltdowns. (Getting booted against Cleveland, of course, but check out his stats against the Celts on that last decent team.) He actively didn’t give a fuck during the AI year.
So, he goes off to Boston and shows up with huge breasts, since all that mattered to him were the playoffs. And, you know, if he’d been counted on to play fifteen key minutes in Game Seven, that might have been enough. But Perkins went down. Sheed was needed for a full thirty-plus minutes. He had about twenty in his tank. As the Lakers came back from a big deficit in the fourth quarter, it was mostly due to some crazy (something like 15-2–though I’d have to look it up–offensive rebound advantage. It was Sheed’s job to prevent that and he failed miserably, likely because he hadn’t kept himself in shape.
Sheed as a coach? Give me a break. The moment the situation becomes displeasing to him and he has to follow someone else’s agenda, he becomes a cancer.
Jan 14, 2012 • 3:30 am
by MrHappyMushroom
Just looked it up. Overall, the Lakers won the OR battle 23-8, and 15-2 in the second half. Sheed’s match up, Gasol, outrebounded him 18-8.
I understand that it’s a team game and you can’t assume that these stats tell the whole story. But here is my argument, and please tell me where you disagree:
1. Sheed joined the team out of shape, and didn’t try to kick it into gear until the playoffs approached.
2. Being out of shape was a choice he made; that is to say, that he was not rehabbing from an injury.
3. At the level these guys play, it is not possible to be in optimal shape after coasting for six months and trying to turn it on for the last two. The players who worked hard on their conditioning for the past year almost certainly were able to perform at their peak levels over the course of a thirty minute game.
4. At the end of the day, the Celtics lost a fourth quarter lead and fell by two possessions.
5. Laker dominance on the offensive boards was the game’s deciding factor and the Celts would quite possible have won, even if they’d only been out-ORed in the second half along the lines of, say, 10-4 (rather than 15-2).
6. Sheed’s job was to be the team’s primary inside presence alongside KG and his match up opponent accounted for 40% of the Lakers’ ORs.
7. Rasheed Wallace’s lack of conditioning made him incapable of playing with the energy and effectiveness that the Celtics needed for 35 minutes on that night.
8. Rasheed Wallace’s selfishness cost his team an NBA championship.
Points 7 & 8 are, of course, open to interpretation and there can be no definitive answer. But they seem like very reasonable conclusions to draw. And more to the point, I see no reason why anyone should give Sheed the benefit of a doubt here. True, KG had a miserable night on the boards. But does anyone think that it was out of a lack of effort, focus, or professional commitment. I dislike the guy intensely, but he is driven and his effort has never been questioned. Sheed, on the other hand, was fairly open about not taking his ($6 million a year) job seriously and he failed to deliver when he was called upon. These two facts may not be related. But the real possibility that they are is a legitimate part of Sheed’s legacy (and, in my mind, fully consistent with much of his career).
Done obsessing about Rasheed Wallace. I will cut and paste when someone starts arguing that he should be in the Hall of Fame.