Re: patience and stability

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

Do you disagree with him, Tom? Do you actually think that this team,
withthis talent, is ever going to compete for anthing other than 8th
playoffspot? I think he's made some horrible mistakes acquiring players and
he'd abe a fool to come back with the same team. Red couldn't win with
thatbench. Pitino's been a horrible gm. Perhaps the solution is to keep him
onthe court and out of the front office. But I just don't believe he
winsanything but the 8th spot at best with this current group. Anybody
youbring in to replace Ricky is going to have to make some major changes.
Morelater. I have to go to work.

You know, a lot of Pitino's moves have been defendable. Chauncey for Kenny,
even with Kenny as weak as he is, seems like an upgrade. Battie for Knight
was a slam dunk before we signed Batgirl to his ridiculous contract. Vitaly
was an upgrade over DeClercq. But Pitino's mistakes are made in haste.
Toronto traded Chauncey to the Nuggets for a first-round draft pick that, I
believe, became Vince Carter. He signed Battie before he had to when the
free  agent maket is going to dry up after the top three or four players.
Vitaly is better than AD, but is he so much better that we wouldn't rather
have Andre Miller? Do you think the Cavs would trade Vitaly straight-up for
Miller? The Celtics would. These deals aren't terrible, but they're not as
good as they could have been.

The Mercer trade was Pitino's one true disaster, but we won't get into that
again.

I've been a proponent of blowing this team up for some time now, and it
sounds like Pitino has come to the same conclusion. That's good. My concern
is that he'll again make mistakes in his haste to turn this team into a
playoff contender right away. Alex made a great  point about some possible
deals-Brown and Mashburn, Davis and ??-but he's right in questioning whether
or not those deals really help our future. If Pitino is going to do this,
he's going to have to commit to it all the way. But does he have the
patience to do that? He hasn't shown it yet.

Mark