RP show - Feb 13

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Not too much information on the show today.

1) Rick compared this year's team to the team from his first year and 
noted that this year they are one game behind where they were the first
year at this point. He feels they are more competitive this year in
playing the good teams close but it doesn't show in the standings. Also,
there are fewer teams ahead of us in the conference (which is probably
because the East was the stronger conference back then). Offensively the
team is about the same and defensively they gave up about the same FG%,
but the first year they forced a better turnover differential. He still
thinks they'll be in the hunt until near the end of the season. 

2) The upcoming road trip is brutal, of course. They'd like to win every
game obviously but two out of six would keep them in it enough to make
a run in March. 

3) He looked at how teams compare now to two years ago. The top teams
are generally the same - Miami, Indiana, NY - except that Chicago has
gone into rebuilding. He thinks Chicago is doing a good job because 
they are going to have cap room and picks also; in contract, the Celtics
only had draft picks when he came aboard. Atlanta is on the way down
and will probably blow up their team for a full-fledged rebuilding 
project. Orlando is doing well also with rebuilding. Cleveland has had
rotten luck with Ilgauskas and also the decline of Kemp. Washington is
pretty hopeless because of their cap situation. 
 
The two teams that have made big strides are Toronto and Philly. Both
teams traded youth to get experienced and tough in the front line.
Philly essentially gave up the #2 pick (Van Horn) and Stackhouse to
pick up Ratliff, Geiger, and Hill. Toronto gave up Camby and three
first rounders, including the #5 pick, to get Antonio Davis, Oakley,
and Willis. The Celtics have to consider whether they want to
similarly shore up their front line at the end of the year. Pitino is
not planning on doing anything to that effect midseason.

4) Pitino was asked whether he would ever quit. He said that he
basically left his college dream job and he couldn't go back there, so
he doesn't have any place to go even if he wanted to leave. But he
says that at some point he has to evaluate himself if he's not getting
the job done. At that point, he would move into an executive role and
hire someone else who could do a better job. He thinks that the
current situation is far from that bad though.

He was also asked whether he had underestimated the difficulty of the
job. He said that the pro experience was far different from the college
experience because in college he could recruit the exact players to
fit his system like a glove. His expectations might have been high
because of his success with the Knicks, when they were good by the 
second year. Of course, he had Jackson, an All-Star point guard, and
Ewing, a dominant center. He said other than those two, the Celtics
have better players (I'm guessing he means our 3-12 vs the Knicks 3-12),
and beyond that the league was tougher back then. So it's been tougher
than he anticipated.

Alex