Re: May: Pitino Disputes Bird Book

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

>From: j.hironaka@unesco.org

>BTW, the far more striking thing about the weekend Peter May article was 
>how Rick Pitino categorically called Larry Bird a liar. That blew my mind.

When I read that, it struck me as some sort of confusion, especially 
considering that Bird's words were filtered through Peter May.  Bird's book 
seemed to be saying that Bird was offered an "assistant" position.  I took 
that to mean assistant to the president in some sort of scouting, player 
mentoring capacity, as he had been doing before.  Pitino's answer made it 
appear he was asked if he had offered Bird an assistant coach's position.  
He was quoted something like, "I'd have loved to have Larry as an assistant, 
but I didn't think he was interested in coaching."

It is a little strange that, if Pitino had offered Bird a position as his 
assistant, he wouldn't know what Bird was talking about.  However, Bird's 
idea of a job offer could be a lot different than Pitino's.  Bird seems to 
be the type to do business with a conversation and a handshake.  If there 
was a conversation between them that went something like, RP: "You know, 
Larry, you're a huge part of the history of this franchise and I'd love for 
you to help me bring it back to glory.", LB: "Yeah, Rick.  Whatever".  I 
could see Rick coming away thinking he had planted a seed with Larry, just 
to see if he might want to stay with the team.  Larry, on the other hand, 
might think he's just had an offer for a job which, if he were interested, 
would only need to be put down on paper.

I guess that's enough blind speculation for a Thursday morning.  Basically, 
as Joe said, we all create our own little pictures of the people involved 
with the Celtics.  My picture of Pitino is that of a modern, intense, 
thoroughly annoying, completely focussed businessman, who can't understand 
why anyone would take anything for granted until it was in writing, and 
signed. My picture of Bird, on the other hand, despite Bob Ryan's attempts 
to convince me of his intellect, is that of a somewhat naive and simple man, 
who had the single, exceptional skill to play basketball as well as anyone 
ever has, but has learned his social skills in a dysfunctional family, in a 
place which has to be about 30 years behind the rest of the western world, 
who thinks anyone that doesn't sit down and negotiate "face-to-face" is not 
to be trusted, and that he can simply ignore teammates like Jim Paxson, who 
committed the unpardonable sin of talking behind people's backs, for life.  
With that you get a hell of a lot of integrity, but what appears to be an 
inability to deal with people who he finds lacking in his kind of integrity 
(how does he handle that as a coach?).  You also get an unimaginable work 
ethic, which is probably the closest thing that he and Pitino have in 
common.

>p.s. FWIW several weeks ago I e-mailed On-Hoops to defend the Mercer-
>Fortson trade after they had confidently trashed and ridiculed the deal. 
>Maybe some of you other Celts listers mailed them as well. In any case, 
>this might help explain the curious flip-flop (now OnHoops is claiming the 
>Celts made an excellent trade, and that's without mentioning the inclusion 
>of a likely Denver lottery pick to add to the Celts' playoff nucleus in a 
>few years).

I don't think you can expect On-Hoops to have any sort of consistency in 
their writing considering they are independently submitted by people with 
all sorts of different views.  Hell, the Globe has May or Ryan trashing 
Antoine one day and Holley deifying him the next.  That's the good thing 
about the site, in my opinion, at least it is balanced.  The bad thing is 
that you take stuff written by people with no more knowledge than anyone on 
this list, stick it on a slick-looking website, and a lot of people take it 
seriously.

Jim

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