Bob Ryan Is Depressed About The Celtics

[kai_brunnen_g@ix.netcom.com]

Bob seems to have written this same column for the last five
years. Alas, he's been right for the last five years. But there's
hope next season with Pitino's eminent exit....


Celtic slide sends them into oblivion 


By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 11/17/2000 



Desperation is not too strong a word to describe the emotional reaction some of us have to 
each of those treasured occasions - a Boston Celtics win.


That's correct. I said ''us.'' That's ''us,'' as in we, the media. We are truly desperate to have 
the Celtics become, well, respectable. Let's just start there. Let's not talk about the playoffs, 
and let's not embarrass ourselves by using the word ''championship'' in any serious context 
(e.g. ''championship-driven'').


All we are asking is for the Boston Celtics to once again be part of the NBA dialogue. Is that 
too much to ask?


In the contemporary NBA, the Celtics are not a joke. They are something else entirely. They 
are irrelevant. They are what Sacramento once was, a forgotten destination on the circuit. 
The Celtics have become the resident no-there-there East Coast stop.


All anyone needs to know about where the Celtics stand in the NBA pecking order is the 
fact that not one of their 41 home games on the 2000-01 schedule will start at 8 p.m. What 
this means is that they will not be the home team for any TNT or TBS games. In fact, their 
entire national TV exposure will consist of a Dec. 21 game at New York on TNT and two 
late-season NBC regionally split - split! - telecasts against Chicago (March 25) and New 
Jersey (April 15, when Pedro will already be at least 2-0).


Once upon a time, the TV crews never seemed to leave town. What people saw on national 
TV was Boston, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles against Somebody, preferably each other. 
Sure, we all knew things couldn't continue on that idyllic path forever, but at no instant did 
anyone ever think the Celtics would become so utterly peripheral to anything important and 
meaningful going on in the league.


There is only one aspect of their operation that interests anybody in the outside world, and as 
one who has been in 41 states since Dec. 26, I have seen something of the outside world. 
That topic is the coach.


''Is Pitino going to stick around?''


''Where will Pitino be next year?'


''Geez, I thought they were gonna be good once they got Pitino.''


''What's up with Pitino?''


But that's it. To the outside world, it's all about Rick Pitino, not the Boston Celtics. OK, once 
in a great while somebody will say, ''Are the Celtics gonna be any good this year?'' But 
mostly it's curiosity, and confusion, about Rick Pitino that fascinates people.


It's bad enough that the Celtics have disappeared from the NBA's radar screen. But there is 
something else going on that makes the situation ever more galling for the old-line fans, who 
can now probably be defined as ''anyone who ever saw the Celtics win a playoff game.'' 
Make that two things that infuriate people on a daily basis.


1. The Lakers


2. The 76ers


It wasn't all that long ago that Celtics fans could console themselves with the thought that two 
of their three greatest rivals (along with the Knicks, of course) were in the same sorry state 
they were. Remember the Randy Pfund era in LA? The Lakers were 39-43 in 1992-93 and 
33-49 the following year, when Pfund was dumped and Magic Johnson himself took over. 
When Magic's 16 games of purgatory were over, he left in a real huff, denouncing the players 
as so many uncoachable, unfocused punks. C'mon, be honest. You loved it.


The Sixers? How about this five-year run from 1992-93 through '96-97? 26-56, 25-57, 24-
58, 18-64, 22-60. Didn't that give you a warm glow? And please don't lie about this. We all 
know that Imus is 100 percent correct when he says we all enjoy reveling in the agony of 
others.


So what do we have now? The Lakers are the reigning champs and the 76ers are the lone 
unbeaten team in the league. It's enough to make remaining Celtic diehards want to stick their 
heads in some mammoth industrial oven.


What this has all led to in Boston is some major straw-grasping. We who would like to see 
the Celtics attain some degree of NBA relevance are desperately searching through each 
game for some positive signs that maybe, just perhaps, the team might actually be better this 
year. I know I am, and I'm trying to decipher the inner thoughts of the other scribes, as well. I 
detect a truly desperate attempt to identify a pulse ticking inside the Celtics.


In one sense, there is legitimate reason for optimism because in Antoine Walker and Paul 
Pierce, the Celtics have the two highly talented team anchors conventional wisdom dictates 
are the necessary minimum for any team to attain real success in the NBA. In the not too 
distant past, that appropriate was three, but in the expansion-bloated, post-Michael, Nursery 
School NBA of today, two stars suffice.


This is not to say either is, or will be, an All-Star, but each is capable of being one, and that's 
good enough. It therefore becomes a matter of the other so-called ''role players'' to do their 
jobs. It doesn't help matters that Kenny Anderson, clearly the No. 3 talent on the roster, is 
sidelined for a significant period of time, but this may give Chris Herren, a very different 
player, the greatest opportunity of his career. He may turn out to be an excellent pickup.


There is one more key player in the mix. That player is the maddeningly inconsistent Tony 
Battie, a.k.a. ''Mr. Tease,'' who alternates energy bursts and somnambulism to a degree that 
may be unmatched in the league. If he could get the Good Tony/Bad Tony ration up to 50-50 
(The Coach might even settle for 40-60), many of these tough losses could possibly be 
turned into victories.


Anyway ... the last playoff game in Boston was May 5, 1995. The last time anybody talked 
about them as someone who mattered was, who knows?


This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 11/17/2000. 
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.