Horse Crap Article

[Jan Crocker <pravda@tiac.net>]

I almost barfed in my eggs as I read this guy's horse crap article from on
hoops.com concerning the recent deal with New York. If you want to give him
a piece of your mind,I sure as hell did, here is the return email address:

mattnsteve@onhoops.com


****WARNING DON'T READ THIS WHY YOU ARE EATING OR AROUND SMALL CHILDREN******


Bring back ML Carr - at least we all knew he was going to make boneheaded
decisions.

The problem with Rick Pitino is that you're convinced he knows what he's
doing, and then he makes an absurd judgement like the Eric Williams for 2
second rounders trade, or the free agent signing of Bruce Bowen, or the
unfathomable deal he just completed with the Knicks.

If you haven't heard it yet, and if you're a Celtics fan - you may as well
stop reading right here,'cause you don't really want to know what happened.
If you do sadistically wish to continue,perhaps you should appologise to
those people around you in advance, because there's a highlikelihood some
un-repeatable language is going to be involuntarily dispelled from your
voicebox asyou digest the horror of what's transpired.

Yes, it really is that bad. Boston were a team on the way up. An
experienced coach and GM who'senjoyed success at the college and pro level,
a new playing style, a competetnt center, an experienced leader at small
forward, 3 top-6 lottery picks in the last 2 drafts, attesting to the wealth
of young talent the Celts are stockpiling. Sure, they're not necesarily
goingto make the playoffs, but at least they'd be more competeitive than
last year. We really did believe that; better than last year. But now,
we're having serious re-think...

In his infinite wisdom, Pitino yesterday traded 6-6 small forward Chris
Mills to the Knicks. It's bad enough that Mills had been ordained as one of
the teams leaders into the new echelon of the franchise. It's bad enough
that Mills had been the only saving grace from that apalling Eric Williams
trade. It's bad enough that Boston bothered to even bring him into town in
the first place. But what makes it infinitely worse is what the Celtics
ended up with in return.

Check this out. They give up Mills, one of the game's best pure small
frowards, and receive from New York Dontae' Jones, a 3 man who didn't play
a game last season because of a major foot injury, John Thomas, a rookie
power forward drafted so far down in the 1st round he may as well
have been a 2nd round pick, Scott Brooks, a slow, old, white, journeyman
point guard, and Walter McCarty, a lanky second year forward who only
averaged 1.8 points and 0.7 rebounds duirng his rookie year. It's a great
deal for the Knicks, as they get a legit 3 man who can take some pressure
off LJ, as well as reinforce their veteran, experienced core for a season
in which the Bulls and Heat are already ailing. The Knicks have gotto be
laughing the house down. One solid, professional,proven small forward. Four
bit players who've done nothing, and have very little potential. Yeah,
that's a trade...

So why did Rick Pitino do it? Reason 1, if you haven't guessed it already,
it that Pitino has a major Kentucky Wildcat bias. He goes to a team that
has Antoine Walker. He drafts Ron Mercer this June. He wants McCarty so
much simply becasue he played at Lexington that he deals his team's
starting 3 man and most consistent player. Mills makes the 4th small
forward Pitino have lost since
his reign commenced in Boston. Gone are Williams, Todd Day, Rick Fox, and
now Mills - all ofthem experienced, all of them play hard, all of them
scored around 15 ppg last season. Now you've got Bowen as your leading
candidate for the starting nod, and how's he feel going up against Jordan
and Penny in the Celtics first 2 games this season? Why? Why give up a
player of Mills calibre for 4 chumps? Because you just so happened to coach
one of them for a few minutes in a former life. ML Carr may have been
hopeless, but at least he didn't have any psycological biases destroying
the fabric of his team.

Reason 2 is the old sal cap issue. With the huge deals Pitino doled out to
the likes of Mills and Travis Knight this summer, plus the Celtics'
existing deals with overpaid ageing chumps such as Dana Barros, Dee Brown
and pervis Ellison, Boston had zero cap flexibility. The C's top priority
is to
re-sign Walker when he's able to exercise his free agency option next
summer, and, before yesterday, Boston had 2 ways of doing this - slim and
none. Now, they may have lost a valuable on-court commodity, but at least
they get to keep the teams' best player for more than 3 seasons, and maybe
McCarty or even Dontae' or John Thomas will develop into effective NBA
players.
Maybe. This does make a fair bit of sense, but if this is a major reason
for the apallingly lop-sided deal, why on earth couldn't Pitino have
realised it months ago before he even bothered going after Mills in the
first place. He could have just kept Williams or Fox in green for
relatively cheap money compared to the pact he signed Mills to, and saved
himself the bother. Besides, we think Williams might have played against
Pitino's Wildcats once or twice in college; we're surprised he let him go
at all...

The other impact this deal will hve is that Boston now have 16 players with
guaranteed deals on their roster. This suggests 2 things - Pitino has had
no plan at all from the beginning, and that Pitino is now
going to have to make some more deals and GM decisions in order to slim the
team's playing staff down to 12 in just 1 week. Fantasic.

So we advise you to expect some more one-sided moves coming out of
Beantown. The rate theirgoing, the Celtics are trying to look as much as
they can like Kentucky (maybe Pitino's going to trade Chauncey Billups to
the Hornets for Tony Delk next...), but the longer this offseasons gone on,
the closer Boston are looking like a rudderless franchise who's destined
fro nothing more than major,and very expensive, disappointment.

          -MattnSteve