Re: Tim Duncan

[Kim Malo <kmalo19@idt.net>]

At 03:28 PM 11/10/98 -0900, Paul M. wrote:
<snip>
>This
>comes back to what I said about the Celtics being a joke. This organization
>reeks of desperation. ML Carr was all about rolling the dice...and losing.
>Now you have an impatient screamer who hasn't been in the NBA for almost a
>decade who was never adept or really cared about devising a half-court
>offense who is.....in charge!...of everything!...for seven years! Did
>anybody think he looked desperate playing gm last year?

Y'know, a lot of this sort of talk gives me a giggle because it so closely
resembles what can and was said about Red before he got his hands on Russ.
Constant churning of players in and out, improved the team but just enough
to miss the playoffs, impatient screamer, etc etc etc. Don't forget that he
had Cousy, Easy Ed and some other talent, and despite the way he's venerated
now there was a lot of criticism before Russ arrived. Was Rick all genius
last year, on and off the court? Not even close. But we didn't sink as low
as we got overnight -it took us 10 years- so I didn't expect instant
turnaround either. Took the genius Auerbach several years and some luck to
do the trick. And unlike Red, Rick had a bigger mess to clean up in the
first place, because of the cap and the consequences of ML as GM. So I'm not
ready to write him off yet.

And I'm not so sure it was desparation, or not primarily. I mostly buy RP's
own explanation about feeling he needed as complete a change of personnel as
possible, even if I don't think he gave the full reason. What he said was a
mixture of needing to get rid of guys who were too settled in the old
losing/whining mode and would just give up and say 'same old, same old' at
the first sign of problems and infect everyone else, with the need to do
everything possible to change the cap structure (aside from dumping some too
rich long term contract, the guys he signed may not have been much better
than most he got rid of but between being raw enough to still have the word
potential used and their relatively low salaries, they're much better trade
bait if not big time trade bait). What he didn't come out and say is that I
think there was a good sized chunk of his looking at them and seeing losers
and just having his stomach turn at the thought of being associated with
losers. Losers not so much because of W/L record, BTW, but because they
seemed perfectly happy to accept the way things were under ML so long as
they got paid. Despite saying all the appropriate things about ML as nice
guy, etc he's been pretty consistant wbout trying to expurge those couple of
years from the record as thoroughly as possible. And he didn't intend to get
rid of Fox -one of the 2-3 players who cared- after all, but had to because
they screwed up on cap calculations (per Holley I think, they did not think
they had to let him go to sign Knight until the day of the signing). So I
think it was more a mixture of impatience, arrogance, rejection of losers
and misjudging a few things rather than desparation. That's for the future
if things don't improve : )

Oh, and BTW, to respond to a bit from another post of yours, the rapid
departure from the Knicks had a lot more to do with internal power struggles
in team management than dissatisfaction with RP per se.

-Kim 
Kim Malo
kmalo19@idt.net