The thing with this season is...

[OzerskyJA <OzerskyJA@cmog.org>]

>>Let's see what happens. I'm betting nothing. 35 wins sounds about right

The thing with this season is that 35 wins is really a disaster scenario.
  I mean, we had to completely self-destruct last season -- losing 8 of 9 
with Pierce out, going on a ten game losing streak in March, losing at home 
to Chicago and the Clippers, the works.  There's no way that's going to
happen
 again, realistically.  I think we might miss the playoffs, but I'm assuming
that it 
is pretty much a lock that, barring catastrophic injuries to Twon or Pierce,
we 
get 40 wins.  On the other hand, .500 is harder than it sounds.  If you lose
a 
game, you have got to win the very next one, no matter who it's against, or
you 
are two down.  Last year, we pulled within one, and then mailed in a subpar
(even
 for us) effort at Charlotte that  pretty much killed our year.  I thought
so even at 
the time, and there were still months left in the season.   Last season
could so easily 
have gone the other way.  

We all know what the variables are.  But with a refurbished bench, the team
should be better rested, more 
aggressive, more flexible, with a lot better practices.  They will have a
vocal veteran leader
for the first time in a long time, for whatever that's worth.  And hopefully
Pack/Brown
should give Pitino a much, much needed nonverbal weapon against Kenny
Anderson's malfeasance.  
(Last season, his only option was to turn the offense over to an ether-dazed
Dana 
Barros.) I think the time is at hand for Pitino to finally pick up the whip
and work his 
horses into a white lather.  That, I think, is what the new bench means.
Pitino didn't 
change the team 1-6, but 7-12 is all new.  Cheaney will be a defensive
specialist brought 
in to shut down dangerous 2s; Walter will be a monkey-outbreak specialist;
Eric 
Williams will go in when there is hay to be made against a slower three, or
when scoring 
is at a premium (a cornish game squad of Battie, Blount, Brown, and Carr,
say.)  The other new guys
will basically learn basketball from scratch from Pitino; they will be like
a Kentucky squad populated
by guys with NBA talent.  (All the new acquisitions have absurdly high
athelticism-to-skill ratios and
are quite young.)  I'm still not sure whether there will be Kentucky-style
continuous substitutions, or 
a 2nd unit "poultry in motion" team composed of new acquisitions, but I
suspect more of the former
than the latter, with the outbreak team brought in at the end of quarters.
In any case, the Pitino system
will be itself again, for better or worse.  A meltdown could still occur,
but there are more buffers and 
barriers now that "the system" and its interchangeable parts are in place
for the first time.  

Josh Ozersky	
Marketing Communications Specialist 
Corning Museum of Glass

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	damekmo@teleport.com [SMTP:damekmo@teleport.com]
> Sent:	Tuesday, August 22, 2000 12:39 AM
> To:	celtics@igtc.com
> Subject:	Re: Trade Polls
> 
> Just as Josh stated earlier, it is a sad day when the big money teams can
> do this and the little money teams feel they have no choice but to cut
> costs.  We are somewhere in the middle going no where fast.   Troy
> 
> Pitino's made how many trades in three years? Assuming that the point is
> to
> win more games, anybody think any of those trades......Oh Christ, I'm
> beginning not to care anymore. So Ricky has Pierce and all those picks.
> Let's see what happens. I'm betting nothing. 35 wins sounds about right.
> For a guy who's in charge of a team that's stunk it up the last three
> years,....Chris Carr? I can't wait.
> 
> Paul M.
>