Sportsline's Pitino interview

[Kevin.Lok@outokumpu.com]

Have you guys read this yet?

http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/basketball/nba/teams/insider/celtics.htm


Boston Celtics team reports
GETTING INSIDE
In part 2 of the question and answer session with Celtic coach and
president
Rick Pitino, we delve into his handling of the front office half of his
job.
It was an eventful year on the Boston roster, with Eric Williams and Dino
Radja going, Kenny Anderson and Popeye Jones coming ... and Chris Mills
and Chauncey Billups doing a little of both. And that was only part of it.
By the way, the references to players were all made before the lockout went
into effect.
Q: What has it been like running an NBA personnel operation for the first
time?
Pitino: The one thing I had to do is I had to make changes -- not for the
sake
of making changes. But I know when you take over a situation like this that
what creates a team to win 15 games and what creates a team to be at the
bottom is a total lack of discipline from the players and from the
organization.
And changes have to be made, because the other players, when things go
wrong, they don't dig in and they don't bunker down and fight. They say,
"Same old, same old," and they go that way. So we had to make changes --
we had to get fresh faces, fresh starts -- in order to change around the
discipline.
In order to do that, you don't create a Band-Aid situation. You look down
the
road. And what I have done was change the faces -- not to change the wins,
because I could have won 35 games with the team they had last year,
maybe a few more, maybe a few less, depending on the center position.
The only difficult thing I had to do was let Rick Fox go. That was the
tough
one. David Wesley would have put us over the cap for good, and the other
players were really of no consequence as far as what we had to do on the
court.
It's very difficult to deal with the salary cap, and that's why we were
lucky to
get into the Kenny Anderson deal. We struck right away because of our
relationship with the agent (David Falk). We knew Kenny wasn't going to
show up in Toronto, but New York was in the mix for him. We just took
advantage of a difficult situation, and now we have an important player who
is tied up contractually.
Q: Did you make more moves than you expected this year?
Pitino: We had to make a lot of moves. I don't think anyone realizes how
difficult the situation was here. When you win 15 games, there are more
reasons for that happening than just what goes on on the court.
Really, it's the apathy and the belief that you're not going to win. It
permeates the organization. A mind set has to be changed. So, yeah, we
made a lot of moves. The key to our success was Dino Radja and freeing up
the money there.
Every move I've made, I've looked at it beforehand and said, if we make a
mistake -- and everyone mistakes -- can we fix it? You can find some Celtic
draft picks over the years that didn't work out, and you should have seen
some of the people I recruited and the mistakes I made in the early years.
The question was, if we take a player, can we move him if he doesn't fit
in?
Like Chris Mills. I can move any player I brought in because he has value
and marketability. There are certain guys on this basketball team that you
cannot move.
We got very lucky with Dee Brown. He can still be very effective, but we
had
a difficult time moving him because of his contract. We could only do it
because it was a special situation and the trade deadline was ticking down
on Toronto. But we have value in our people. Throughout the year we had at
least five offers each on Andrew DeClercq and Travis Knight because they
fit
into a puzzle and they're affordable. Their salaries don't blow people out
if
the water.
The important thing is to have maneuverability. But once we sign Antoine
Walker, we're probably going to lose that maneuverability because we'll be
over the cap.