RE: Fellowship of the miserable

["John Lyell" <Jlyell@concentric.net>]

Unless you are talking about players obtained in pre-pitino moves, which the
only two remaining I can think of are Barros & Ellison,  I would have to say
he has complete control over all the moves that have been made since he
arrived. The reason he gets paid the big bucks is for his talent evaluation
skills, and to teach young players with raw talent, how to become more
rounded players, and spot talent in the late first or early second rounds
like a Hornacek, Cuttino Mobley, etc. If they do not want to listen, its
time to look to move them elsewhere as you will never win a championship
with selfish players.

If you look at the moves he has made, that have actually made this team
better, you could probably count them on one hand. Paul Pierce who pretty
much fell into his lap, Kenny Anderson still questionable , but if healthy,
an upgrade over Billups, and Adrian Griffin.

Now count the ones that haven't, which I am probably missing some.

Trading high second round pick for a front office person (Who was taken by
Miami with this pick Mark Strickland ?)
Mills
Massenberg
Popeye
The guy with bad knees that never played whose name I can't remember, from
the Anderson or Massenberg trade.
Tabak
McCarty (stupid big contract)
Billups (Tough draft with not a lot of talent, but could he have traded for
a veteran ?)
Knight (Big contract to unproven player. Did he really think he could play
the 4 or 5 spot ?) (Good move to jettison him though !)
Schintzius ????
Battie (Another big contract for an unproven talent)
Potapenko (jury still out, based on big men market value)
Fortson (Still to be shown, Mercer is playing well in Denver)
Cheaney (only FA who really wanted to play in Boston ?)
Williams - he wasn't worth the contract before his injury, why would you
take him back after it, with his big multi year contract ???


Not a good track record so far.  I think any of us fools could have done
just as bad.

I think he is still having a tough time attracting people to Boston in free
agency.






-----Original Message-----
From: owner-celtics@igtc.com [mailto:owner-celtics@igtc.com]On Behalf Of
Alex Wang
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 1999 10:53 AM
To: celtics@igtc.com
Subject: Fellowship of the miserable


If you listen to some of the more negative people on the list, you'd
think that the Celtics somehow have a winning record despite having
inferior personnel acquired by an incompetent GM directed by a
clueless coach. It's a lot easier to complain about things that go
wrong in hindsight than to actually do them well.

We have people criticizing Pitino for trades he doesn't make, or for
not making trades that we don't even know are possible. It's easy to
look good as an armchair GM because you don't have to be realistic at
all. It's easy to rip Pitino for not acquiring a couple of true centers
who can not only block shots but play strong man-to-man defense and
score inside so that we can compete with the Spurs.

We also have a lot of second-guessing of Pitino's coaching, which is
fine, but remember that second-guessing is a lot easier than actually
doing it. It's easy to say, the Celtics should pass the ball well,
take good shots, and play good man-to-man defense but getting the
players to do that well is another matter. They're not exactly pawns
on a chessboard that do the coach's bidding.

Alex