Dallas News Article (Long)

["Juddy" <norine@together.net>]

Pitino really has no defense 

12/17/2000 

 Seems like it's happening everywhere these days, as if the concept has become an official sport within a sport. 

Player Mutiny. Coming soon to your NBA town. 

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It was Seattle and Paul Westphal last month, Denver and Dan Issel this week and Chicago sitting poised to revolt next. The Bulls' locker-room discontent with Tim Floyd is approaching Krause-ian proportions. 

Then there's Boston and a not-so-common problem, an even bigger novelty than mutiny. That's where the man in charge constantly threatens to boycott the inmates. 

It might even happen again Monday night, if the Mavericks can repeat what they wrought on their last FleetCenter visit. In February, Dallas erased a 78-58 parquet deficit to score a 108-100 triumph, the third-biggest comeback in franchise history. 

Which also qualified as precisely the sort of Celtics meltdown that has prompted Rick Pitino, more than once, to tell his players that he might be better off resigning. 

No, not a strategy out of the Celtic Pride handbook. 

The Rick's rants can't be considered as dastardly as what the Nuggets did Monday, organizing a unanimous practice strike to protest Issel's negativity. Denverites, no doubt, were left wondering when they'll see that sort of teamwork in a Nuggets road game. 

Pitino nonetheless makes Issel sound like Mister Rogers. Negative? Telling your own players that you're thinking about quitting again and again is only inviting them to quit first. Nothing is further from positive than a coach who continually hints at giving up. 

Just before Thanksgiving, Pitino warned his team that he would walk away from the $22 million remaining on his 10-year, $49.1 million contract if he didn't see improvement – specifically on defense – by January. It wasn't even the first time Pitino trotted out what he later downplayed as a "motivational tool." 

Foolish and ungrateful are our adjectives in response. 

Pitino should be more thankful than just about any other bench man in the league. He works in the Eastern Conference, where even the roster he has mismanaged should be good enough to reach the playoffs. 

He also has the safety net of college basketball, where countless glamour institutions are waiting with more millions. 

Most of all, Pitino has Paul Pierce – the biggest stroke of Irish luck since Boston's Bird-watching days. 

Pitino contends that he only accepted the Celtics job in 1997 because he was sure they would land Tim Duncan in the draft lottery. When Boston didn't, Pitino approached the '98 draft banking on Dirk Nowitzki, who went to Dallas one spot before Boston's pick. 

And still Pitino was spared. Pierce inexplicably slipped from top-three projections to No. 10, giving Boston a versatile swingman who's averaging 23.2 points per game in his third season. 

Pierce, incidentally, is doing all that after being stabbed and hit with a bottle in a nightclub altercation a week before training camp. 

Not quite enough for Pitino, though. He wants to see more defense out of Pierce, whereas the rest of us are simply glad to see him alive. 

All the Celtics, Pierce included, could undoubtedly defend better. But Pitino better start coaching better, too, or just stop teasing us and leave. Antoine Walker is the only Celtic he didn't acquire. Which means that these are Pitino's guys, and it's not just up to them to respond to his "motivational" tactics. 

Toronto's Mark Jackson recently reaffirmed his assertion that Pitino "is the best in the business – a basketball genius." But he's the only Pitino fan we could find, and even Jackson decided over the summer that a bigger free-agent contract in Canada was more enticing than a Knicks reunion with Pitino. 

The rest of the fans? In Boston, they were loudly urging Pitino to quit for good during Wednesday's 104-86 home loss ... to that overmatched Chicago squad on the verge of its own mutinous implosion. 

In at least one NBA city, the increasing uncoachability of the modern athlete isn't considered nearly as revolting as a coach/adult/authority figure who can't decide if he wants to do his job.