RE: Walker won't work here... sigh

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

Joe,

Forget Jermaine O'Neil or Bonzi Wells. I use those names because they've
been talked about before. Let's just forget specific players for a second.

My problem isn't with what Toine said or Holley wrote. My problem is with
what it revealed about Toine-he didn't work out this summer like Pitino
wanted and has wanted for the past three summers. At some point you have to
stop excusing the guy, stop saying he's young, and stop waiting-and making
the franchise wait-for him to come around. Toine's lousy work ethic isn't
just about being in shape for the first 10 games of the season. Look at the
NBA these days. Look at the star players. There aren't any who look like
Toine. Not anymore. The best players don't just live in the gym, they live
in the weight room, and on the track.

Do I think Toine should be traded because of this latest spat? No, I think
Toine should be traded because he has shown a complete unwillingness to get
with the program. If he played for another team and someone suggested
trading for him, we'd all view him like Shawn Kemp or Vin Baker-lazy,
overweight and an underachiever. Do you think Cleveland or Seattle are
getting "fair value" for Kemp or Baker? No, but they realize that counting
on a player who continually lets you down does more damage to a team (that's
the important thing, isn't it?) than not counting on him at all. In
Cleveland, I'm sure they've spent the last two seasons saying, "If Shawn
just comes to camp in shape, we're a lock for the playoffs..." Sound
familiar?

So maybe it's Jermaine O'Neal. Maybe it's Glenn Robinson. Or Keith Van Horn.
Whatever.  The point is, it's time to move on. I don't want to hear about
another Toine-Pitino resolution. Toine is like Kenny in that he has learned
how to say the right things while all the time doing the wrong ones. You
read their garbage and you start to buy it. But actions speak louder than
words, and Toine's lack of action this summer has spoken volumes.

It's time for Pitino and the Celtics to move on with their lives. Let Toine
go somewhere else and waste his offseason, come in out of shape, fail to
improve on his fundamental skills, ignore the coach, play lousy defense and
shoot 40 percent. Believe it or not, I think the Celtics will survive.

Mark 

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Joe Hironaka [SMTP:j.hironaka@unesco.org]
	Sent:	Monday, August 28, 2000 4:07 PM
	To:	Berry, Mark S; celtics@igtc.com
	Subject:	Re: Walker won't work here... sigh

	"Berry, Mark S" wrote:

	> But if Pitino and Toine spend the season together, it could get
ugly. Toine
	> clearly is going to show up out of shape. Pitino clearly will be
fed up if
	> that happens. A lackluster Toine will mean another 35-win debacle,
a good
	> bye to Pitino and a rebuilding effort (probably without Toine).
No, the best
	> option for everyone is to do the deal now. Maybe Toine will turn
into Chris
	> Webber in a different environment. Or maybe Juwan Howard or
Derrick Coleman.
	> None of us really know, but it's clear it isn't going to work out
in Boston.

	    My last wordy post this morning seems to have disappeared into
the ether, so
	at the risk of often repeating myself, I'll try to rephrase what I
wrote:

	1) What happened over the weekend to me is simply NOT news.
Everything will be
	resolved if it already hasn't been, to the degree that what Walker
said is what
	you'd expect a frustrated young person to say. He vented badly, but
he notably
	did not burn any bridges. Everyone is interpreting his words in
exactly the same
	way (the worst way) but I would suggest that Antoine's words sprang
not from
	being offended by the notion of working out all year, or even
following the
	coaches regimen. Those words could have arisen just as easily as a
result of his
	being offended/betrayed by the stereotype (in his mind fueled by
Pitino's camp
	comments) that he has done nothing all summer but flip pancakes into
his mouth
	and do danceaerobics. He feels this is a one-sided portrayal of his
work
	committment and reacted defensively/immaturely to it. It was
catharsis.

	2) Just as Walker didn't burn any bridges, neither did Pitino. I
always thought
	his reported comments at the youth camp were actually constructive
and positive
	(if the same words were spoken about my work, I'd take it as a
complement). The
	media including Holley drove a wedge between Pitino and Walker by
reporting it
	as the greatest diss of all time. As noted above, Walker may have
felt he was
	following Pitino's regime faithfully up to that time and didn't need
to hear
	this stuff reported in the papers. He felt it was one-sided, so he
stewed and
	then rashly, idioticallly chose talk radio to give his side. But
these two are
	one phone call away from patching things up this time, because
frankly they can
	call things even now, and more importantly neither guy really said
anything that
	bad about the other. Pitino will NOT trade Walker for less than what
he
	perceives as equal value, and it is obvious that he regards that as
a franchise
	caliber player. If he gets offered that, he'll trade him. Otherwise
no. So say
	bedtime for Bonzi. Dream on about that. The WEEI non-incident won't
make that
	come true.

	3) Fans routinely blame Antoine's off-season conditioning for
Pitino's
	considerably below .500 record over the past three seasons. Despite
this, the
	Celts started 7-4 last season with big wins over conference
finalists the Knicks
	and Pacers. Similarly, the year before they were a solid 6-5 in the
opening
	month of the otherwise disastrous 98-99 season (19 wins total was
it?).  Sure
	Boston might have won more than the 7 games  last March if Antoine
had produced
	rebounds and shot the ball effectively (I think he shot at or just
under 40% in
	March).

	But move from the small picture to the big picture, and the sobering
fact is
	that the Poultrino outbreak eventually ran out of gas for reasons
unrelated to
	what kind of shape Antoine Walker was in early on, or how committed,
hard
	working or talented the other young Boston players stayed last year.
As the
	season wore on, the teams we surprised early on (we also whupped
Miami and
	Toronto early) plausibly caught on how to shoot over 50% against us,
plus we
	tired ourselves out running the system over 82 games. Hey, look at
the Pitino
	record on back-to-backs. Look at the overall seasonal pattern of the
past two
	seasons. And remember that Pitino called last years training camp
team one of
	the best conditioned teams he ever had.

	Now all things depend on how you interpret the facts. My worry is
that the
	easiest answers ("Antoine is out of shape" or the equally popular
"Potapenko's
	22 minutes per game have actually been killing us!") don't alway
gibe with the
	facts. That's why I can't support a drastic solution based on said
easy answers.
	I see just as much evidence, for example, that dumping Spintino
offers as good a
	chance for improving the club as would dumping either our best
rounded or
	hardest working player for Jermaine O'Neil. I'm convinced many
people base their
	summer-of-hype on having seen O'Neil play all of ten minutes, or a
couple of
	benchwarming playoff games tops. So I'd rather take my chances on
Moiso (1/4th
	of O'Neil preposterous salary, plus no personal baggage or work
ethic concerns).
	And I view one or the other as a redundant part anyway if they were
both on the
	same roster (even without Battie in the mix).