Happy Poultrino Day

[Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

Boston Herald reports:
    "As for Gaston's reaction to the front-page story elsewhere
reiterating Pitino's pledge to offer his resignation after the season if
the Celtics don't show ``marked improvement,'' Pond said, ``There's
really no reaction. It really is a non-story to us because this is the
same thing it was before. Paul basically gives him pretty much free
reign to do what he needs to do with this team, and that hasn't changed.
And I don't believe it will change.

    ``Again, he has Paul's complete backing. What he thinks he needs to
do to make this successful, he's pretty much got carte blanche to do.
And he continues to have that.''"

---------

    In the spirit of open-mindedness, I have to say that the Houston
win, much more than the Philly loss, strengthens the argument of Mark
Berry that it is principally the players, and not coach "Poultrino",
whom we should blame for how bad the headless chicken outbreak looks.
The Celts came within a few garbage time baskets allowed from setting a
record for lowest FG% allowed. Of course, even if the headless chicken
works to perfection, it won't normally hold teams to .375FG%. And
granted the Rockettes were on the second leg of a back-to-back. But they
had just whupped Indiana the night before and brought a four game
winning streak into the game and a 7-5 record.

    As for the other commonplace argument (is it Pitino the GM or Pitino
the coach that has led to bad defense and ugly offense?) I do think
Pitino himself probably supports the mass consensus that he is still a
great coach but couldn't get the right players. That's a self-image
Pitino can probably live with, after all.

    Whatever, but I will say that as a fan I'm optimistic right now in
particular about the frontline Pitino has patched together, which I view
as relatively athletic and productive at all three positions compared to
most teams. Of course, everyone knows our two young captains are putting
up better offensive numbers this year (their combined 41.4 ppg, 15.4 rpg
and 6.6 apg has to compare favorably with almost any starting NBA
forward duo).

    But much less noticed is that our "two-headed-Chernobyl-chicken"
center rotation, with  Battie's athleticism and Potapenko's toughness,
has combined (in 44.5 mpg) for 12.7 boards, an impressive 2.0 steals,
2.36 blocks and 16.4 ppg on a combined .497FG%. I don't think there are
so many coaches in the East right now who would object to having that
production average out of the middle. What we have is not quite
Parish+Kite, but it is closer than most of us think. One thing about the
league right now is that there is not only a shortage of great starting
centers, but a shortage of quality backup centers as well.

    Now obviously our frontline is not going to remind anyone in town of
the "Big Three".  But maybe in a few years nearly similar numbers in
similar minutes is a possibility. Potapenko is 11 months older than the
next oldest guy in that group (Battie), yet VP only turned 25 this year.
So let's see if Pitino can make this team less ugly to watch for
old-school Celtics purists. If he fails, I'm sure there are a lot of
other qualified NBA coaches who wouldn't mind "rebuilding" with some of
the players we already have. If this team could play adequate man-to-man
defense (like even ML Carrs teams generally could) the Celtics this year
would be winning a lot of games. The problem is we allow the most points
in the East, aside from the Piston right now. There is no question,
statistically speaking, that bad defense has been a Pitino
trademark/legacy as coach here.

****