Re: Fellowship of the miserable

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

John Lyell writes:
 
[Alex wrote]
>> I am not saying that he should not be held accountable for all of his
>> moves. My problem is with the "accounting" techniques that are used to
>> justify your criticism for him. For instance, you criticize him for
>> multiple bad moves in signing Travis Knight and trading for Tony
>> Battie, when the net effect has essentially been trading $2M of 97-98
>> cap space for Tony Battie.
> 
> $2M plus knights $3M equals $5-6M of cap space he could have used more
> wisely. You are correct this does not get you much at today's rate but could
> have gotten us a Bo Outlaw, or some cap space.

When I was talking about misleading accounting, I wasn't being literal,
but this literally is bad accounting. Pitino spent $2M of the cap space
he had before his first season (from buying out Radja, trading Williams,
and renouncing everyone else) on signing Travis Knight - under the 
previous CBA, you could sign a 7 year, $21M contract with $2M of cap 
space before the first season, because of built-in raises. After all
of his moves, the team was capped out. Trading Knight for Battie was 
a straight trade of approximately equal salaries and cost no cap room,
so you don't add their salaries when you calculate how much cap room
Battie's acquisition cost.

>> My main point is, judge Pitino's personnel moves by the team he
>> actually has now, not through some misleading accounting system that
>> judges individual moves out of context. I have no problem with people
>> not liking the current personnel but personally I think he's done a
>> nice job with what he started with. And stop the "Boston can't attract
>> veteran free agent" BS unless you can somehow substantiate it.  It's
>> just one of those criticisms that gets constantly repeated and as far
>> as I can tell has absolutely no factual basis.
> 
> With no actual big name signings either, you could argue both positions can
> or can not be substantiated.

Ok, let's agree that both positions can't be substantiated then. Then
don't bring it up as if it was some sort of fact. That's all I'm asking.
If it's true that there's no substantiation to this "Boston can't
attract veteran free agent" rumor, then why do people keep repeating 
it? If you want to make that statement, have some proof. I don't mind
people criticizing Pitino, but I do object when people dream up
statements with no factual basis to do it. 

Alex