Re: coaches

[KK <Kestutis.Kveraga@Dartmouth.EDU>]

Mark Berry wrote:
> 
> I usually agree with Paul on just about everything, but we have polar opposite
> views on Pitino.
> 
> The guy is one of the top 5 basketball coaches in the world, and that's a
> conservative estimate because there are plenty of people who know more about
> this game than we do who would put him right alongside Riley at the top of the
> profession.

And who might they be? Rabid UK fans? (Riley is a UK grad, btw.) I'll grant
that he's a successful college coach, but even if we limit it to NCAA, it's
difficult to see how he could crack top 5. If we include the NBA, the
statement becomes a complete joke; the guy is simply a mediocre, relatively
inexperienced NBA coach with a losing record (145-151), who has won exactly
1 playoff series. I understand that the Celtic fandom (Paul M.
notwithstanding) desperately wants to believe that we have the best coach in
basketball, but the reality simply does not bear this out. 

> You don't just get stupid all of a sudden. Pitino pulled off a miracle with last
> year's team. 

What?!? 36 wins is a "miracle"? The relentless Pitino propaganda machine
apparently is paying dividends - people actually bought this crap about
Pitino's inheriting a "15-win team". The truth is, if healthy, that team
probably would have kicked Pitino's Celtics' butts in a best-of-seven. (The
empirical verification would be somewhat difficult, as we'd need 2 Walkers,
Barroses, Minors, Browns, and, yes, Ellisons, even one of whom is difficult
to summon into service :-))) In other words, he already had at least a
36-win team when he took the job. The fact that he promptly dumped 4 of the
5 starters (Wesley/Fox/Williams/Radja), and then had to scramble to get 36
wins does not make his actions miraculous, but stupid and unnecesssary.  

>This year you might as well throw out. And I don't want to hear
> about Larry Brown, because he had cap room to sign Geiger and an idiot in
> Detroit who gave up Ratliff for Stackhouse. Remember, Pitino has been saddled by
> all of M.L.'s bad moves (so bad, they aren't even dump-able), although he would
> have wriggled out of some of it had Brown not gotten cold feet on the Radja
> trade.

Well, if the losses and screw-ups are just "thrown out" or blamed on M.L.,
and the positives are attributed to St. Rick, no wonder he looks like a top
5 guy. If we threw out M.L.'s second year as coach (IMO, more legitimately
than Pitino's 2nd year here, since it was a genuine tanking job ordered by
Thanksdad), their records as Celtics coaches are actually quite comparable
(33-49 to 36-46). 

As for GM duties, we hardly even need to blame someone else for M.L.'s bad
signings to make him at least comparable to Pitino - after all, M.L. made
the brilliant trade that gave us Walker and Mercer (NB!). If you think the
Ellison signing was bad (2 mil/yr), what about the Popeye signing (2.67
mil/yr)? At least Ellison was a Grade-A NBA talent, the #1 pick, a 20/10 guy
when healthy, and a shot-blocker to boot. The point is, both signings made
sense at the time. You say the Minor or Barros signings were bad? Well,
Minor's 2.6 mil/yr, and Barros' 3.67  mil/yr look like a bargain compared to
McCarty's 2.67 mil/yr, given their respective performances. And having Marty
Conlon, or even Szabo to round out the bench made a lot more sense than
getting the likes of Garnett and Schintzius. 
 
> Anyway, Pitino's one mistake, in my mind, is underestimating the value of
> veterans in the NBA. <snip>
> I think Pitino understands that now and will bring in some veterans this
> offseason. 

If he had understood it 2 years earlier, we'd be in the playoffs NOW with
the veteran leadership and defense of Fox and Wesley, not to mention
Williams's low-post game and ability to get to the FT line. Even the
much-maligned Radja's low-post offense and rebounding would've been a
welcome addition despite his defensive deficiencies. Of course, we would not
have had a crack at Pierce this way, so I guess dumping these players was a
genius move seen all the way through by Pitino. My bad, score one for El
Jefe.

> There are a lot of things I'm not sure about with this team, but one
> of them isn't Rick Pitino. The guy can coach. Period.

True belief can't be argued with, since it is by definition irrational. Hey,
if you want to believe against all evidence that Pitino is a better coach
than those in the Hall of Fame, and a better GM than West, Krause, and
Whitsitt combined, it's certainly your constitutionally guaranteed right.