Boston Celtics Camp Battle: Harangody Or Gaffney?
[picappgallerysingle id="8260701"]Training camp is about to open for the Boston Celtics. The roster is deep so there will be battles for playing time. Small forward is an interesting battle for the Celtics. However, there will also be battles for an active roster spot on the team. Marquis Daniels is locked in to back up Paul Pierce. If Wafer plays anything like 09 he is locked in as well. I doubt Ainge would have rolled the dice if Wafer showed him nothing. At the small forward position the Celtics have Luke Harangody and Tony Gaffney battling for the last depth spot at small forward. Due to the injury history of the above players and Doc wanting to use rotations to limit minutes, this is a more important spot than one would think.
Tony Gaffney is a nice little player. He is a natural small forward that makes all the right plays defensively. He also plays defense with energy. One of the reasons Danny Ainge picked the man up last season was to push Paul Pierce in practice. The other plus is he works hard on his game. His problem is that he is not much the offensive player. He will not make many mistakes on the offensive end, but his game is limited. He does not have a great shot. However, this team has plenty of offense and maybe Tony’s defense is enough to win Doc Rivers over.
Luke Harangody is every bit the hard worker that Gaffney is. He has worked hard on his offensive game and now has good range. He also has great low post moves to score. He is an energy player that has a nose for rebounding. However, his defense is not there yet. He is being converted to small forward and is a tiny bit slow on the defensive end. However, he will work hard and I am sure improve his game on the defensive end. Will his shooting and potential be enough to win Doc over?
This team has a question mark. Will it go with the young rebounding shooter in Harangody or the defensive specialist in Gaffney? Defense or offense is the question. That is Doc Rivers question to decide. Get ready for a training camp battle. It could have ramifications during the season.
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Keep them both! I see both as having a special role to play on this year’s team. Both of these guys have unique talents that (if used right) can benefit the C’s right now. Gaffney is a very talented defensive standout (Atlantic-10 Defensive player of the year)and Harangody is a straight-up “bruiser” with exceptional scoring ability.. Let Erden go down to D-league. I don’t see where he will get any playing time this year anyway, unless we seriously lose one of our other bigs..then, the C’s can always call him up. But quite honestly, he doesn’t (yet)appear to have nearly what it takes to compete with true NBA-caliber players. He couldn’t even legitimately compete with the summer-league caliber players this summer….and is not doing anything noteworthy for Turkey in the World Championships against soft European teams (yesterday he scored 6 pts against Slovania). Send him to Maine and let both Harangody & Gaffney make the 15-man roster.
I agree. Great points