Re: (no subject)

[Dan Forant Sr <dforant1@nycap.rr.com>]

Absolutely, Pitino get's a *C* for coaching last nites game. He must have
picked starters and matchup's out of a hat. I'm beginning to wonder about him.

At 01:54 PM 10/14/99 +0200, you wrote:
>    I'm of course only relying on the boxscore, but IMO Pitino is
>wasting our time and Fortson's time by handing opponents the same
>mismatch Denver did all season strictly out of desperation (starting
>Fortson at center). Since we have a center to play alongside Fortson
>(Vitaly), by all means we need to already have them getting reps playing
>alongside each other, rather than going at each other hard every
>practice trying to make one or the other guy redundant.
>
>    One reason I'm concerned about this meaningless exhibition game is
>because Pitino did something very similar with Battie last year. Despite
>ALL the evidence, Pitino continually groomed Battie as a backup center
>for 80% of the season, insisting he just needed "work in the
>weightroom". When Antoine went down, Pitino finally had no choice but to
>test Battie's play at power forward, and naturally Battie flourished to
>fan expectations, exploiting his natural born advantages to average just
>a shade under 10 rebounds and tons of blocks. IMO, Battie would never
>shed his career-backup "El Busto" tag and inconsistent play until he was
>allowed repeated repetitions and confidence-building at his natural
>forward position, where he actually has hope of guarding people.
>Thankfully, Pitino changed his tune with Battie (saying he could guard
>even a Grant Hill etc. blah, blah, blah).
>
>    Yet now we seem to be going through Pitino's same stubborn "learning
>process" with Fortson, a guy with the perfect temperament and talent to
>be an Oakley-type menace playing alongside any true center.
>
>    Taken on its own, last night was just an innocent game, wherein
>Pitino tried out  two distinct lineups so he could evaluate as many of
>his players as possible. But IMO he desperately needs to evaluate his
>players at their natural positions, playing shoulder-to-shoulder with
>the lineup they'll play most regularly with. Instead Pitino's starts
>Pierce at forward, Walker at power forward and goes with a 6-7 center,
>and our poor-man's Ron Mercer (Duck Cheaney) at guard.
>
>Is that an improved lineup over last season? Gimmeabreak. I feel like we
>wasted an entire game having our key players doing reps at a position
>they logically should only play in emergencies during the season.
>Remember, we have three absolutely critical starters playing a brand new
>position (Pierce, Walker and Fortson). I can't stress enough my feeling
>that Pitino should give all of  them the reps now, or the fans will
>suffer the consequences.  When I first read that Fortson and Vitaly were
>going at each other hard every second of practice, I knew the Celts were
>falling off-track. Now I read that VP got 13 minutes last night and was
>the 10th guy off the Celts bench (presumably on the "pressing unit" no
>less) and I just feel like my worst "he's not THAT dumb, is he?"
>suspicion was confirmed. Under the new cap, we are going to be facing
>many clubs with starting lineups that have played together daily for
>many meaningful games in a row. We fans don't have time for this BS.
>
>    IMO Fort and VP should be working together going against Pervis and
>Battie every day, who are an ideal practice (since they represent a
>fairly typical, mobile and tall 4-5 combination in the NBA). If Fort and
>Vitaly can't win a daily war of attrition against Pervis and Battie,
>then fine we should scrap the whole idea. But it sounds like we aren't
>even trying, and that really worries me. The Celtics have talent. Pitino
>needs to proactively define the potential mismatches the Celts pose for
>other teams, rather than worry about how we match up with opposing
>talent.
>
>    On top of this, Pitino should stop wasting Fortson's career like he
>nearly did with Battie. The NBA is full of player whose offensive game
>slowly (or immediately) deteriorated as they lost confidence in their
>ability to score. In the case of Fortson, we are asking the kid to stay
>reasonably confident offensively (he was a terrific scorer in college)
>despite giving up at least half-a-foot in wingspan and equal bulk to the
>guy defending him (last night it was Eldon Campbell). If it were you,
>would you be able to maintain your form and keep trying to shoot over
>these guys? That kid is physically mismatched at center, even if he
>still did incredibly gutsy work last year (let's face it, so far in his
>fascinating career he has made phenoms like Battie, Keon Clark and now
>apparently even Vitaly look like "El Busto" benchwarmers). Nevertheless,
>Fortson is a lottery team center, the type of 6-7 guy who will
>unavoidably always be in foul trouble (and eventually break down
>completely) trying to guard seven-footers only a desperate team and
>idiot coach would force him to guard.
>
>    I know it's only a preseason game, everything seems innocent enough,
>and Pitino is as glib and confident as ever. Bottom line, I'd like to
>see from now on that our players get as many repetitions as possible at
>the position that suits them and exploits the Celtics' overall team
>"strengths" (rebounding, toughness, and clearly defined roles and  go-to
>scorers). Until we start doing this (even if we start now it will take
>time), opposing teams with less talent but far more year-to-year
>cohesion will beat us. I guarantee you that this, in turn, will lead us
>to make misguided evaluations of certain players, and then the
>merry-go-round of wholesale player transactions will start all over
>again (as if we haven't seen it coming). :-) Obviously, there are people
>on this list that advocate that sort of thing.
>
>    The only solace I'll take is that Pitino has always been relatively
>weak at coaching big men, so any input from Bill Russell can provide
>great synergy. As incredibly gifted a coach as Pitino is, I don't think
>he'd make any informed "top 100" list of guys you'd want to develop low
>post talent. I think his string of fantastic success in college without
>any true center (Walter McCarty may have been his best), made him think
>his innovative system might continue working at the next level even with
>a Mark Pope-type finesse guy manning the middle (Travis Knight etc.)  If
>Russell watched the game last night, he was probably tempted to get on
>the cell phone and cackle in Pitino's face. Now that he has the bodies,
>Pitino needs to cut down the gimmicks and think only of building team
>chemistry and defining each starter's role. The way his mind seems to
>work, I'd actually be surprised right now if Pitino starts both Fortson
>and Vitaly to open the season.
>
>Joe
>
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