Re: coaches

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> Yes, but does that mean he's "one of the top 5 basketball coaches in the worl
 *d"? Heck, Jerry West also wanted to, and did, hire Harris and Rambis. I'm not
 * saying they're lousy coaches, but West's high opinion of a coach does not ip
 *so facto make him/her great. Besides, I think we all are well aware of the fa
 *ct that college-to-NBA transition can be treacherous for even the best colleg
 *e coaches. Arguably,  these are two quite different jobs requiring different 
 *(not incompatible!) sets of skills.  

I agree that you can't say in any concrete way that Pitino is one of the
top five in the world. On the other hand, the people who say that he doesn't
know how to coach basketball or that he has no clue about personnel are way
off base.
  
> > What is Williams doing now? He's getting paid $5M a year to come off the
> 
>  $4M. And he did abuse us down low when Denver was here. 

Hey, if you only include a player's better games, it's pretty easy to draw
any conclusion you want. I could say that we probably have eight or more
All-Star talents on our roster based on their best games. Based on Eric
Williams' performance over the season, he is a major bust. And McCarty's
stats are comparable to Williams', at a signifantly lower price. (I think
that McCarty's extension was a mistake but it's incomprehensible to me
that you're still defending Williams). 

> Because they didn't want to get tagged with his contract. But we're paying ha
 *lf of Radja's salary anyway, so we might as well have used him at full $5 mil
 * per. Low-post offense and rebounding were something we were sorely lacking t
 *hese 2 years.  

If Radja were worth $2.5M/year in the NBA, some NBA team would have paid him 
that amount after our buyout. 
 
> > Your description of Ellison could be used for Tim Duncan. 
> 
> OK. Was Ellison not a #1 overall pick? Did he not average 20 points and 10 re
 *bounds when he was healthy? Is he not a shotblocker? When he is healthy (yeah
 *, I know), he IS a Grade-A NBA talent. 

Let's use similar reasoning on Kenny Anderson. Kenny Anderson is a proven NBA
point guard who has shown he can average 18.8 ppg and 9.6 apg and be an 
All-Star starter. This is significantly more accurate than your assessment
of Ellison; does anybody believe that once Ellison gets over his injuries, 
that he'll be a 20 ppg, 10 rpg shotblocker. Give me a break. Beyond that,
by this reasoning we should also be praising Pitino's signing of Popeye
Jones because he is a double-double performer and one of the top rebounders
in the league. 

And a major difference between the McCarty and Popeye Jones signings and
ML Carr's signings are the lengths of the contracts. If they are busts, 
they'll be off the cap in a couple years, rather than strangling us for
most of the next decade.

Alex