Stith ready to launch career with Celts

[kevin from singapore <bostonceltics17@yahoo.com>]

http://www.insidedenver.com/nuggets/1018nugs2.shtml

Stith ready to launch career with Celts
By Michael BeDan
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

LEXINGTON, Ky. — He is above it. All of it.
Bryant Stith is playing for the Boston Celtics now.
He gave his body and soul to the Denver Nuggets for eight seasons. His
reward was a seat at the end of the bench. Then, whispers of a trade
weeks before the trade became public. Then, without so much as a
formal goodbye — goodbye.
"Change happens," Stith said Tuesday by telephone. "You have to be
able to deal with it. I'm not going to let this hang over my head and
be a cloud over me."
He doesn't have time. Celtics coach Rick Pitino won't let Stith think
about much more than his next wind sprint.
"I'm just going out off of sheer will," Stith said. "Man, my goodness,
my legs are screaming right now."
As always, Stith showed up to camp in shape. But the Celtics do things
a little differently. For instance, they will practice twice a day for
the entire month of October. The Nuggets ended two-a-days before they
left for their first preseason trip.
"It's going to take a while to get into Pitino shape," Stith said.
It might take longer for him to figure out what went wrong in Denver.
Stith battled injuries for much of his career after three consecutive
healthy seasons from 1993 to 1996. But he came to camp in the best
shape of his life last season.
It made no difference.
"I just think it was predetermined that I wasn't going to play last
season," Stith said. "I think with (Nuggets coach and president) Dan
(Issel) coming in (to coach), there were also new personalities in the
organization. New philosophies. I think that all contributed to my
basic demise with that organization."
And while he expected to be traded, hearing about the potential trade
weeks before the Nuggets and Celtics agreed, it caught him off guard.
"I still don't think I was ready to hear that," he said. "It was still
a bit of a shock."
Stith insists he has no regrets. Not even his decision to sign a new
contract with Denver as a free agent when he could have signed
elsewhere with a contender.
"I made that decision, and I made that decision with conviction," he
said. "I just wish things had worked out a bit better."
Instead, the wheels fell off. And as his friends continued to
disappear one by one, he prepared himself.
"I had three pretty good friends who kind of went through the same
ordeal ... Dikembe (Mutombo), LaPhonso (Ellis) and Chauncey
(Billups)," Stith said. "I knew if it could happen to them, I was no
different."
Stith will be a free agent July 1. And his focus is on the future.
His past?
"I grew up in Denver," he said. "I learned a lot. I think the
transformation of Bryant Stith is quite apparent. I became a man
there."