Also mentioned this morning on WEEI

[jmc@ptc.com]

One thing that Eddie Andelman mentioned this morning is that not only 
has Pitino brought in Bill Russell, and the young Celtics are actually 
aware of how great he was and are paying attention to him, but Pitino 
found out that Dave Cowens was in the area now that his head coaching
job is over, and has had Cowens come in and to talk with the players in 
their new training facility in Waltham.  

Both Eddie Andelman and Dale Arnold were impressed that the young Celtics 
seem to be aware of how great Russell was.  I attribute some of that 
awareness to the new training facility itself.  I saw a tour of it on 
a Celtics pre-game show just before it opened last season, and along all 
the hallways are photos from Celtics championship teams of the past, 
including plenty of shots of Russell in action or holding championship 
trophies, and Auerbach's victory cigars.  There are also all those clips 
they show just before introductions at every Celtics home game, so if the 
players didn't know much about Russell before they were on the Celtics, 
they learned pretty quickly.  The fact that Russell was part of the 
ceremony honoring Red Auerbach last night was probably also not lost on 
the Celtics.  The players came out of the locker room in time to see the 
last half of the ceremony, and proceeded to outscore Washington by 16 points 
in the 3rd quarter.  Any correlation?  I don't know, but that's what happened.

I'm sure there are some Cowens shots on the wall, too, and the fact that 
Cowens was coaching an "enemy" team and is now willing to come in and help 
the current Celtics players probably really impresses on these young guys 
what "Celtic pride" is all about, and that these guys who won all those 
championship banners are STILL proud to be called Celtics, long after they've 
left the team and worked in other organizations.  That kind of loyalty is 
probably a big surprize to these kids, and hopefully makes them feel a bit 
more privileged to be a Celtic. 

Eddie Andelman said if Pitino accomplishes nothing else as coach, he's still 
done well by bringing these older championship Celtics back into the fold. 

Jon Mc