Re: The Train, Pitino, and Wallace.

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

>   1) The press will eat Pitino alive, and others in the press will praise him
>      In general, sportswriters (especially in Boston) like to think they 
>      know more about sports than the people they're writing about.  Putting 
>      others down is their way of "proving" that to themselves. 

This is very on-the-mark. It's also very accurate that sportswriters really
do not have anywhere near the knowledge that basketball professionals such
as Pitino do. That is why sportswriters don't have million dollar jobs in
the industry. 
 
>   2) Pitino will NOT return to college basketball, at least not until his 
>      Celtics contract ends.  He's not going to quit just because a low-stakes
>      trade went bad and the press said bad things about him.  Come on! 

Anyone who thinks that Pitino is going to quit because some idiot in the 
media (or on this list) is down on him is kidding themselves. He has his 
perfect situation here, total control of a rebuilding effort of the greatest
tradition in basketball. 

>      Even geniusses don't have perfect records, because true achievers have 
>      to take risks to really excel.  This is clearly a risky trade as he's 
>      giving up 1 or 2 decent backups, but if it goes well, it will be a major
>      boost... a definite medium loss for a possible major boost.  Pitino 
>      believes that's a risk worth taking.  Even if it doesn't work out, 
>      doesn't mean it wasn't a risk worth taking. 

Jerry West said after the Rice trade that "this is the ultimate risk-taking
business." Now I am not comparing the Rice trade to the Potapenko trade
but Pitino understands risk-taking. I am sure that if this list were a
Lakers list (ugh) that everyone would be complaining about the risk of
giving up a young Eddie Jones for an old, injury-prone, bad-attitude Rice.

Alex