He was the leader of Boston, and the most versatile player in the league at the time. He gets a bad rep because he 'sat at the three point line', when in reality it was because he had dumbass Rick Pitino as the coach to start his career. Then Jim O'Brien left the system the same. O'Brien's gameplan was let everyone sit at the 3 point line and chuck it. At the time, it worked because they were an effective shooting team. Hell, I even remember one fantasy season where Antoine Walker was #1 and Paul Pierce was #2.
His rookie year, the second best player on the team was David Wesley, with Rick Fox being third. Then he had seasons where it was Walker/Pierce/no one else.
Pitino made Walker his point guard, his small forward and his power forward every game early in his career because his teams were absolute dog shit. When he had legitimate teams, he posted 22/9/5 consistently while shooting a pretty decent clip from the three point line. He was the leader of the team during those ECF seasons vs. the Nets. You'd see a disengaged immature Paul Pierce in the huddle while Antoine Walker amped up the team night after night, including that game where they came back from 20+ down in the 4th quarter vs. New Jersey. If you can ever find the video, go watch it. You'll see Walker screaming at his team while everyone else looked defeated.
Yeah he was a knucklehead outside of his NBA career, and tailed off tremendously at the end, but it's not like that's not a common theme with the best players in the NBA of the late 90's/early 2000's (Shawn Kemp, Marbury, Steve Francis, McGrady, etc.)
Find me a 6 foot 8 power forward with the post moves, passing, dribbles and rebounding that Walker had
